Searching for Benjamin’s Father 5

Post 4 in this series examined Benjamin Heinrich Buller’s nuclear family in greater detail, with a focus on the five daughters and two sons of Benjamin and Maricke Cornelsen Buller listed in the Przechovka church book: Maricke, Heinrich, Ancke, David, Trincke, Efcke, and Elizabeth. This post first introduces one more piece of evidence concerning Benjamin, then takes a step back and reflects on the state of the family in the decade before the entire Przechovka church moved to Alexanderwohl village in Molotschna colony.

The 1789 Census

We return first to part of Glenn Penner’s statement about the identity of Benjamin Buller 1, father of Benjamin Buller 2, father of David, father of Peter D, and so on. The second paragraph of Glenn’s full explanation (here) reads:

I also believe that Benjamin 1 was the Benjamin Buller found in Deutsch Konopath in the 1789 census of Mennonite land owners in West Prussia. Note that 32139 was married in Deutsch Konopath in 1774.

The census to which Glenn is referring has been transcribed here; you can find the Benjamin listed by searching for “Buller, Benja.” (ca. a fourth of the way down the page). What we learn from that census is that in 1789 a Benjamin Buller who resided in Deutsch Konopath owned 3 Morgen of land (ca. 4.2 acres). Of course, from our last post we know that Benjamin Heinrich Buller lived in Deutsch Konopath, Klein (lesser) Konopath, to be exact, where his seven named children were born between 1775 and 1788.

If this discussion of a 1789 census of land-owning Mennonites feels a little familiar, there is good reason: Buller Time addressed it in some depth in early 2016 (here). That post goes into much greater detail about the historical context and purpose of the census. It also identifies all the other Bullers who appear on the list.

Suffice it to say that Glenn is undoubtedly correct to link the Benjamin on the 1789 census with the Benjamin Heinrich Buller listed in the Przechovka church book. Thus far his hypothesis has held up nicely. There are, of course, more pieces of the puzzle to examine, but so far so good. 

Benjamin Buller in 1815 

Having examined the details of Benjamin’s family in the previous post, we need to step back and take in the bigger picture. What did the family look like in the decade prior to the emigration of the church to Molotschna? We begin by surveying the seven children:

1.  Maricke: born 1775, married Peter Nachtigal in 1796


2.  Heinrich: born 1777, married a Lutheran, died in 1807


3.  Ancke: born 1779, married Peter Becker in 1811


4.  David: born 1780, married Anna Unrau in 1808, died 1813


5.  Trincke: born 1783, married Johann Peter Ratzlaff at some point


6.  Efcke: born 1784, married Peter Schmidt in 1808


7.  Elizabeth: born 1788, died in 1807

By 1815, of the five daughters born to Benjamin and his wife Maricke Cornelsen, four were married and one was deceased. Both sons born to the couple had passed away at a relatively young age. But that is not all.

As noted earlier, Benjamin’s wife Maricke is entry 409 in the Przechovka church book. The two sides of her entry in that book (left-hand page and right-hand page) are shown below.

According to the first extract, Maricke (the middle line) was born in 1753, baptized at age fifteen in 1768, and married to 352 (Benjamin Buller) in an unspecified year (we know it was 1774 from his entry). The second extract is our primary concern. The right-hand column records the date of death, which was 15 September 1807—the same year that son Heinrich and daughter Elizabeth also passed away.

One more extract from the church book will complete the picture.

Pictured above is the right-hand page for number 352, Benjamin Heinrich Buller. One might wonder why a blank page is worth showing. There are actually three groups of columns on right-hand pages. The first group of columns provides space for recording a second marriage, since the early death of a spouse was so frequent. In fact, young adult mortality was so common that the church book provided a second group of columns for the recording of third marriages. The fact that the entire right-hand page for Benjamin Buller is blank indicates that during the time of the Przechovka church book (i.e., through the early 1820s) he was alive (nothing recorded in the third group of columns, as there is for his deceased wife Maricke) and unmarried (no remarriage is recorded).

In other words, by 1815 Benjamin Buller had buried two sons, a daughter, and a wife; his other four daughters were married with, one assumes, families and homes of their own. Did Benjamin live on his own or with one of his daughters? We cannot say at this point. Neither do we know if Benjamin still owned and farmed the 3 Morgen of land listed on the 1789 census. Benjamin will reappear on the pages of history later on, but as of 1815 this is all that we can say about our possible ancestor.