Searching for Benjamin’s Father 3

So we begin in earnest our search for Benjamin’s father. To repeat and reiterate, the purpose of this series is to search for the father of Benjamin 1, who is the father of Benjamin 2, the father of David, the father of Peter D, and so on. Glenn Penner’s entire explanation can be found here. This post focuses on the first sentence of the first full paragraph, which is repeated below:

I believe that your ancestor Benjamin Buller (GRANDMA 402138) was the son of Benjamin who was both 60393 and 32139. I believe that not long after Benjamin 2 moved to Volhynia, his father Benjamin 1 (who would have been a widower of about 70 or more years) left for South Russia with his daughter Catharina and her husband Johann Ratzlaff (and the majority of the Przechowka congregation). Considering the rarity of the name Benjamin among the early Bullers I cannot think of any other possibility without inventing more Benjamin Bullers (and I have no documentation available that would justify that).

To be clear, when Glenn identifies “your ancestor Benjamin (GRANDMA 402138),” he is referring to Benjamin 2, father of David. Thus, Glenn is claiming that Benjamin 2 was the son of Benjamin 1, who is actually listed twice in the GRANDMA database with two different IDs: 60393 and 32139. 

This hypothesis thus has two parts to explore and check: Are the two Benjamins 60393 and 32139 the same individual? If so, is it possible that this Benjamin is our Benjamin 1? We begin with the first question, which requires us to examine the GM entries for the two Benjamins.

At first glance, these two would appear to be completely different individuals. The wife of the first is unknown, that of the second clearly known. The first Benjamin has only a single daughter, the second five daughters and two sons. In fact, the daughter of the first, Katharina, was born about the same time as the second Benjamin’s daughter Trincke, in 1783. Moreover, the first is known only from the 1835 Molotschna census, while the second is dutifully recorded in the Przechovka church book that we have consulted on a number of occasions. Still, first glances can be deceiving, and the hypothesis deserves a closer look.

Because we know that the second Benjamin, 32139, appears in the Przechovka church book as entry 352 (the P352 in the notes section), we can find out more about him from that primary source. The two screen shots below show the information recorded for Benjamin and the first five of his children.

The top image has number 352, Benjamin Buller, listed as the son of entries 343 (Hinrich Buller) and 308 (Ancke Beckers). That information matches the parents listed for GM 32139, so we know we are dealing with the same person within GM and the church book. 

We do not learn everything we would like about Benjamin 32139, since birth information is missing. However, we can see that he was baptized on 31 August 1772 and married on 30 June 1774—as accurately recorded by GM. He married number 409 in the church book, which turns out to be, as expected, Maricke Cornelsen. The site of their wedding was Deutsch Konopath, a village just to the west of the Przechovka church.

In the second image, the listing of the first five children Maricke, Hinrich, Ancke, David, and Trincke correspond exactly to the GM listing; because they were born later than 1783, the year of Trincke’s birth, children six and seven, Efcke and Elizabeth, appear later in the church book (numbers 1198 and 1264, respectively). Worth noting is that the baptismal information is provided for all five children except the first; however, marriages are recorded only for the first three.

How does this information compare to the GM data for Benjamin 60393? Most important to note is the different locations of the information sources for the two Benjamins. Everything we know about Benjamin 32139 originates in Poland (Prussia), from the Przechovka church book; all that we know about Benjamin 60393 derives from a Molotschna record, specifically the 1835 colony census. This raises the possibility that the two sets of records concern the same person and are distinguished merely by their provenance, where they originated. Not to be forgotten in all this is the fact that the Mennonite congregation at Przechovka (where Benjamin 32139 is attested) moved during the early 1820s to the Molotschna village of Alexanderwohol (where Benjamin 60393 is reported to have lived before his death). 

One datum seems to stand in the way of identifying these two Benjamin Bullers: the existence of two different daughters born at the same time. Benjamin 60393’s daughter Trincke was born 4 January 1783; Benjamin 32139’s daughter Katharina was born about 1783. Does this settle the question? In fact, it does—although perhaps not as one might think.

As is demonstrated in a number of Mennonite records, the names Trincke and Katharina were often used to refer to the same person, much as Chris and Cornelius both reference Grandpa in our own family. To state the matter directly, Trincke daughter  of Benjamin 32139 and Katharina daughter of 60393 are almost certainly the same person, which means that, not surprisingly, Glenn Penner is correct to suggest that GM Benjamins 60393 and 32139 are the same person. If the two daughter listings refer to the same person, then so do the two father listings.

This justifiable merging of records enables us to fill out the history of this Benjamin Buller. Whereas the Przechovka Benjamin vanishes into an unknown future, the Alexanderwohl Benjamin appears on the stage from an unknown beginning. By combining the two records, we now know the full story, where this single individual’s life began and where it ended. 

To be clear, we do not yet know whether this Benjamin is a direct ancestor of ours; to this point all we have established is that the two Benjamins of the GRANDMA database are, in fact, one and the same person whose life details merit further exploration, which we will do in the subsequent post in this series.