The previous post identified with reasonable certainty a record of Peter D Buller’s baptism in the Alexanderwohl church book. Little information is provided in the main part of the entry, only an identifying number (675), his name, his village (Waldheim), and the date of his baptism (7 June 1866).
Fortunately, that is not the extent of the entry. As shown in the scan below, the body of the church book consists of two parts: the main entry on the left half and additional comments on the right half.
Peter Buller 675 (Peter D) is one of those individuals with an additional comment recorded. His is the middle one shown below.
Thanks to Mark Dillon, we have a transcription of the handwritten comment: “Attest genommen nach Margnenau 1866,” which one might translate woodenly “Certificate taken to Margenau 1866.” Duerksen and Duerksen offer the more idiomatic “Letter of transfer to Margenau 1866” (1987, 68a).
Translations of the German may differ, but the point remains the same: Peter Buller 675, who was baptized on 7 June 1866, transferred to the Margenau church that same year and carried with him, it seems, a letter attesting his good standing as a baptized member in the Alexanderwohl church. (The transfer document requires further research on my part, but I believe this description is generally accurate.)
Why, one might wonder, would someone just baptized in one church transfer to another? The answer seems obvious in the case of Peter D Buller: to join the church of his wife and her family. Recall that Peter D and Sarah Siebert were married only two months after Peter’s baptism. When one places that fact alongside the record of Peter’s transfer to the Margenau church about the same time (at most within a few months), it seems highly plausible to think that the transfer had everything to do with Peter’s joining the household (recall our discussions of matrilocality; for Peter D, see here) of his in-laws—and any good son-in-law living with his wife’s parents would naturally attend church with them, which presumably was the case with Peter D and the Johann Sieberts.
Based on all this, we can probably conclude that Johann and family, who had lived in Kleefeld since 1857 or 1858 (for a discussion of Johann Siebert’s settling in Kleefeld, see here), were members of the Margenau church in 1866 and that Peter D joined that church when joined the Johann Siebert family after his marriage to Sarah.
I am unaware of any church records from the Margenau church; it may be that early on the Margenau church records were incorporated into those of Alexanderwohl, if indeed “in 1842–1874 the church was known as the Margenau-Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church” (Krahn and Redekopp 2017). (I think it wise always to search for documentation of such claims.) A close association of the two churches might also shed light on Peter D’s baptism and relatively quick transfer to another congregation: if the two congregations were linked, Peter was not so much leaving one church as moving from one group to another within the larger church body.
There is certainly more for us to learn about the identification and organization of Molotschna’s churches: which Mennonite groups were represented in Molotschna and which churches belonged to each of these groups throughout the nineteenth century. That is obviously a task for another time.
I am unaware of any church records from the Margenau church; it may be that early on the Margenau church records were incorporated into those of Alexanderwohl, if indeed “in 1842–1874 the church was known as the Margenau-Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church” (Krahn and Redekopp 2017). (I think it wise always to search for documentation of such claims.) A close association of the two churches might also shed light on Peter D’s baptism and relatively quick transfer to another congregation: if the two congregations were linked, Peter was not so much leaving one church as moving from one group to another within the larger church body.
There is certainly more for us to learn about the identification and organization of Molotschna’s churches: which Mennonite groups were represented in Molotschna and which churches belonged to each of these groups throughout the nineteenth century. That is obviously a task for another time.
Works Cited
Duerksen, Velda Richert, and Jacob A. Duerksen, trans. 1987. Church Book of the Alexanderwohl Mennonite Church in the Molotschna Colony of South Russia. Translation of the Kirchen Buch der Gemeinde zu Alexanderwohl. Goessel, KS: Mennonite Immigrant Historical Foundation. Velda Richert Duerksen is the translator of the Gemeindebericht.
Krahn, Cornelius, and Alf Redekopp. 2017. Margenau-Alexanderwohl-Landskrone Mennonite Church (Molotschna Mennonite Settlement, Zaporizhia Oblast, Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.
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