David and Helena’s Children: Helena

The Buller Family Record offers only the most skeletal information about David and Helena Zielke Buller’s firstborn: Helena. Unlike all other entries in the BFR, this one lacks any specific dates, and some of the names are only partially supplied.

The reason for this scarcity of information is simple enough: Helena was the only one of David and Helena’s children who did not emigrate to the United States; consequently, when the BFR was first put together in 1959, its compilers had limited access to reliable information from the former Russian colony, which was then part of the Soviet Union.

Happily, we do not face the same constraints today, and we can fill in quite a number of the details of Helena’s life. GRANDMA offers one resource, to be sure, but Helena also receives passing mention in a 2016 James O. Harms article about her husband, a renowned clockmaker (available online here). The Harms article is well worth reading apart from our particular interest in Helena, and I encourage you to click over to it now or later.

1. Birth

The BFR, as already noted, has no information about Helena’s birth, but GRANDMA and the Harms article can fill that lacuna to some extent. Both of these latter sources indicate that Helena was born in 1842, although the exact date is unknown. GRANDMA cites as its source the Berlin Document Center A3342 EWZ50, page F026/2484. This source is new to me, but it appears to be a microfilm collection of records gathered by the NSDAP (i.e., the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei, or Nazi Party). The record in which Helena’s birth is likely referenced is in the Einwanderer-zentrale, or  Immigrant Center, collection. (If anyone more expert cares to educate me about this source, I will be grateful.)

The Harms article has a different source: “the family record in the Bible of Aganetha (Mandtler) Block (b. 22 June 1886). She was the oldest daughter of Jacob P. Mandtler and his second wife Maria Wiebe” (2016, 5 n. 9). This dual sourcing of the year of birth permits us confidently to date Helena’s birth to that year.

GRANDMA adds one other detail, presumably from the same Berlin source: Helena was born in the village of Waldheim. We know that to be true because we can confirm that David and Helena lived in Waldheim at least by 1839 and did not leave until 1848.

2. Baptism

There is no known record of Helena’s baptism.

3. Marriage and Children

According to the BFR, Helana married Jacob Mandtler and bore him six children: Jacob, Susana, Helena, Peter, David, and Elisabeth. GRANDMA supplies a number of corrections and additional details.

First, Helena and Jacob had ten children, not six, and GRANDMA records the following names and dates of birth:

Jacob, 11 February 1866
Katharina, 15 March 1867
Helena (or Helene), 1 November 1868
Peter, 27 January 1870
Elisabeth (Liese), 19 February 1872
Maria, 4 July 1873
Heinrich, 6 January 1875 (Harms 2016; GRANDMA has 1874, which is no doubt incorrect)
Johann, 18 December 1876
Sarah, 9 February 1881
David J., 13 April 1884

Second, all but Sarah, who died before reaching her second birthday, lived to adulthood. David emigrated to Canada in 1924, while Helena followed in 1925. We have no record of the other children leaving Russia, although that does not prove that they remained.

The Harms 2016 article linked above has a picture of Jacob Mandtler surrounded by his children. The photograph was taken in 1887, when he was married to his second wife. However, given the ages of the children shown and the fact that his first daughter by his second wife was only a year old at that time, we can conclude that all the children shown were those of Helena Buller and Jacob, thus Peter D’s nieces and nephews.

4. Residence

Harms summarizes well all that we know about where Helena and Jacob lived:

Jacob P. was still living in Muntau in 1876, and 1892 Alexanderwohl school records show his son Johann was born 18 December 1876 in Muntau. The 1883–1884 Alexanderwohl school records list three of his children—Peter (13), Maria (10), and Heinrich (9)—indicating that Jacob P. and his family had moved to Alexanderwohl by 1884. We have no record of when they moved. Family records suggest Johann may have been the last child born in Muntau. So Jacob P. and his family might have moved to Alexanderwohl as early as 1877. [Jacob’s father] Philip died in 1884 and Jacob P. inherited his father’s farm. (2016, 4)

Presumably, then, Helena and Jacob first lived in Muntau after they were married in the early 1860s. Muntau was one of the original (1804) villages founded in Molotschna, located in the extreme northwest of the colony. Muntau was where Jacob’s family lived when he was born, so it made sense for him to locate his new family there.

It appears that, when nearly the entire Alexanderwohl church emigrated to the United States in 1874, Jacob’s father Philip acquired a Wirtschaft associated with that village and moved there. As Harms notes, we know that Jacob and family had moved to Alexanderwohl before 1884, and they may have taken up residence there as early as 1877. Either way, Jacob acquired his father’s farm in 1884 and seemingly lived out the rest of his life there (d. 1915).

5. Death

We do not know the exact date of Helena’s death, but it was the same year as the birth of her tenth and last child: 1884. Whether there is any link between that birth and her death is unknown, although it would not be surprising if that were the case.

Whether the family moved to Alexanderwohl in 1877 or sometime in 1883, Helena no doubt died—and may be buried—there (see here for a post about the possible location of the Alexanderwohl cemetery). In any event, she did not live to a ripe old age, passing away in her early forties.

Work Cited

Harms, James O. 2016. Philip Mandtler and His Son Jacob, the Clockmaker from Alexanderwohl. Mennonite Historian 42.2:2, 4–5. Available online here.