I have missed Buller Time badly over the last month, but work did not permit any time to think, much less write, about things Buller, Molotschna, or Mennonite. I hope to return to regular blogging over the next days, weeks, and months, at the least to publish eight posts during the month of December so we can hit an even one hundred for the year—a far cry from 2016’s two hundred but still more than the number for 2015.
To pick up where we left off, the series on Exiting Waldheim was wrapped up with post 10, with the discovery that those who were exiting Waldheim in 1848—which group included our ancestors Benjamin and David—were landless for at least six months and probably a full year before they left Molotschna colony. To summarize the series as briefly as possible (I invite you to read all ten posts in sequence to see the argument develop), we asked the question as to why some people who had settled in Waldheim in the late 1830s decided not many years later, in 1845, to leave their new homes and move back to Volhynia. Our investigation implied that, although the motivating impulse may have been a desire to escape the rigid control of Johann Cornies over life in Molotschna, the precipitating and determinative cause was the governmental removal (at Cornies’s instigation?) of their long-time elder Peter H. Schmidt from his key role within the church. In all likelihood, that single event led to the decision of those loyal to Schmidt to separate themselves (in fine Mennonite fashion) from those who had committed such a grave offense against one of God’s own servants.
Unfortunately, the other series announced a while back—Searching for Benjamin’s Father—remains not only unfinished but also barely launched. Only one post appeared, and it merely quoted the basic information that we will examine: Glenn Penner’s suggestion of how Benjamin father of Benjamin father of David (and so on) is related to the Bullers of the Przechovka church. In anticipation of new posts in this series, I invite you to reread the inaugural post Searching for Benjamin’s Father 1.
What else has been happening in the background, and what topics might we expect to cover in the days to come?
1. One project that has been ongoing behind the scenes is the transcription of Franz Isaac’s Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten. This seminal work, the first full history of Molotschna colony, is freely available online, but it was published in the Fraktur script common for German works of that time. This makes the book difficult for many to read and less accessible to those who might profit from it. The long-term goal is to transcribe the Fraktur into modern Latin characters so that the book can be made available in some form online.
2. Recent posts were a little rough on Johann Cornies (justifiably so, I believe), but we should admit that Cornies was a multifaceted individual whose good accomplishments often outweighed the bad means he used to enact them. Several posts will, I hope, present additional evidence about Cornies so that we develop a fair and balanced view of this pivotal Mennonite of our ancestors’ day.
3. Recent reading has included Delbert F. Plett’s The Golden Years: The Mennonite Kleine Gemeinde in Russia (1812–1849). Although Plett’s primary interest is the Kleine Gemeinde (as indicated in his subtitle), he spends a great deal of time setting the stage by describing early nineteenth-century life in Molotschna, where the Kleine Gemeinde arose. To that end, he includes, in translation, long extracts from Isaac’s work referenced above as well as from other key sources on the history of that period. Plett’s work is out of print and thus available only from used booksellers, so we may post sections of his work in order to fill out our understanding of the world in which Benjamin and David and their families lived.
4. Again with a view to learning more about the world in which our ancestors lived, we may even devote a post or two to the 1783–1784 Laki volcano eruption in Iceland. This may seem a stretch for our particular interests, but the global effects of this natural disaster likely affected all residents of Europe in the several years that followed, including our own family members, whether they still lived in Poland or were perhaps somewhere else by that time.
5. We may even find time to talk about taters, which we know Benjamin Buller planted when he first arrived in Waldheim. Drawing on David Moon’s work in The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1930, we will explore when and why potatoes became a staple of many people’s diet.
We will certainly not lack topics to explore and books to examine in the coming weeks and months. Here’s hoping that the time to read, think, question, and write will be as plentiful as the information we seek to understand.
4. Again with a view to learning more about the world in which our ancestors lived, we may even devote a post or two to the 1783–1784 Laki volcano eruption in Iceland. This may seem a stretch for our particular interests, but the global effects of this natural disaster likely affected all residents of Europe in the several years that followed, including our own family members, whether they still lived in Poland or were perhaps somewhere else by that time.
5. We may even find time to talk about taters, which we know Benjamin Buller planted when he first arrived in Waldheim. Drawing on David Moon’s work in The Russian Peasantry, 1600–1930, we will explore when and why potatoes became a staple of many people’s diet.
We will certainly not lack topics to explore and books to examine in the coming weeks and months. Here’s hoping that the time to read, think, question, and write will be as plentiful as the information we seek to understand.
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