We pick up where the previous post ended: by examining Peter Becker 32061 more closely. We begin with his GRANDMA entry.
Note first that Peter Becker married Anna (Ancke) Buller in 1811; we will return to her momentarily. Also significant is that the first two children do not have dates of birth listed, which often hints at a lack of information for the person listed. That is certainly true in this case, as the individual pages for the first two children provide no evidence about them and cite no sources justifying their listing with this family. Because there is no evidence at all for their existence, we may safely exclude them from consideration. This leaves the Peter and Anna Buller Becker family with one son (Benjamin) and two daughters (Anna and Helena)—exactly the family described in the visa that began this investigation (see here).
The note toward the bottom of the Peter Becker entry is most important of all:
P336 Probably settled in Wegtzin, Revinsk district, in 1820 (Fond 383 Opis 29 Dielo 1212, St. Petersburg Archives).
The P336 is Peter Becker’s number in the Przechovka church book. The more interesting part of the note is the mention of Wegtzin, Revinsk. This name sounded familiar, so I searched for the two words Wegtzin and Revinsk in Google, which returned three results—all of them located in Buller Time, specifically in a post published 9 December 2017 (here).
That post, which was part of the Searching for Benjamin’s Father series, identified and described the brothers and sisters of Benjamin Benjamin Buller, who was the father of David, the father of Peter D, the father of Peter P, and so on. The brothers and sisters of Benjamin Benjamin were, of course, the sons and daughters of Benjamin Heinrich and Maricke Cornelsen Buller. Benjamin was our ancestor who emigrated to Alexanderwohl in 1820 (see Wirtschaft 16 here).
Why, you may be wondering, did that post mention Wegtzin, Revinsk? The answer is simple: Anna Buller, the wife of the Peter Becker we are considering here, was a daughter of Benjamin Heinrich and Maricke Cornelsen Buller, thus the sister of Benjamin Benjamin Buller, the father of David and so on. That post reads:
Ancke, daughter two, was born 12 July 1779 and baptized sometime in 1795. She married Peter Becker (336) on 23 June 1811. According to the GM entry for Peter, they “probably settled in Wegtzin, Revinsk district, in 1820 (Fond 383 Opis 29 Dielo 1212, St. Petersburg Archives).” If that is correct, it would be an interesting lead, since Wegtzin (or Wysock) is the Volhynian location where Benjamin 2 [Benjamin Benjamin] and Helena and their family arrived in 1817. The fact that both Buller families ended up in the same village several years apart proves nothing, of course, but it is an intriguing, perhaps even suggestive coincidence.
A year later, we have come full circle back to Peter and Anna Buller Becker, except now as part of the Przechovka group who was emigrating from West Prussia/Poland in 1819. Is GRANDMA correct that they probably settled in Wegtzin = Wysock (see here), the same village where Benjamin Benjamin Buller had settled two years earlier?
Thanks to a resource provided by a researcher on the Mennonite Genealogical Resources website, we can say that Peter and Anna definitely settled in Wegtzin in late 1819. The reason we cannot locate any evidence of this family in Molotschna is because they never went there (at least not prior to the 1835 census); they moved to Volhynia instead.
The documentation supporting this could not be clearer. In a file titled “Register of Mennonites in Rovno Region, Volhynia, 1819” (Russian State Historical Archives, Fond 383, Opis 29, Dielo 1212; see here), translated by Sergei Chaiderman, we find the
first and last names of newly arrived Mennonites in the town of Wegtzin. These Mennonites left the Kingdom of Prussia in the year 1819 and in the same year arrived in Wegtzin where they will spend the up-coming winter.
The sixth family listed includes
- Peter Becker, age 34
- his wife Anna, age 38
- son Benjamin, age 8
- daughters Anna, age 7
- Helena, age 4
This is obviously the family whose GRANDMA record is shown above. Even more important, this is the Peter Becker 1 in our 1819 list. In fact, translator Sergei Chaiderman cites the same reference that we have for this identification: Rempel 2007, 136 (plus each family member’s GM number). It may have taken us longer to get there (Chaiderman did his work over a decade ago), but it is nice to know that we arrived at the same result. We can now positively identify Peter Becker 1 in the 1819 list as PCB 336/GM 32061 and note that he journeyed to Wyscock, Volhynia, the same village as our ancestor Benjamin Benjamin Buller.
Our story does not end, however, with the identification of Peter Becker. Seven other families appear on the 1819 register of Mennonite families, all but one of whom also came from the Przechovka area. Again, Chaiderman has already made the identification:
1. The first family listed included Benjamin Ratzlaff (age 38), his wife Helena (26), son Heinrich (1), and daughters Anna (4) and Eva (3). We will meet this family as number 27 on our 1819 list.
2. Then follows Heinrich Unruh and his wife Anna (both 23). Chaiderman identifies this Volhynian couple as part of the Przechovka group (i.e., he cites the Rempel entry); we earlier identified them as Heinrich and Anna Schmidt Unrau, number 3 in the 1819 list (here) and settlers of Alexanderwohl 14. Which is correct? Did number 3 in our version of the Rempel list go to Volhynia (so Chaiderman) or to Molotschna (so Buller Time)?
Is it possible that both are correct, that Heinrich Unruh and family first went to Volhynia, then later moved south to Alexanderwohl? Given the ages listed on the 1819 Volhnynia register, Chaiderman seems to have identified the right couple; however, we can positively identify the same couple at Alexanderwohl 14 in the 1835 census. The most likely explanation, then, is that this couple first went to Volhynia, then moved to Molotschna, perhaps in 1820 or 1821, at roughly the same time or after the Wedel-led party founded the village of Alexanderwohl.
3. Family 3 on the list includes Andreas Schmidt (30), his wife Helena (25), and their sons Jacob (2) and Heinrich (1). Chaiderman identifies this Volhynian family as part of the Przechovka group (citing the entry on Rempel 2007, 137); earlier we identified the same family as number 16 on our 1819 list and located them in Alexanderwohl (Wirtschaft 20). Both Chaiderman’s and our identifications appear to be correct, so once again we seem to have a case of a family going to Volhynia in 1819, then moving to Alexanderwohl not long after.
4. The Chaiderman list has another Schmidt in the fourth position: Jacob Schmidt (24), his wife Anna (20), and their daughter Anna (1). Jacob and the Andreas Schmidt listed above were brothers. We have not yet covered this family, since they appear as number 23 on our 1819 emigration list. At this point we should not be surprised that the family eventually settled in Alexanderwohl 18.
5. Yet another Schmidt family appears next: Heinrich Schmidt (26), his wife Maria (24), and their son Heinrich (1). Heinrich was brother to Andreas and Jacob; Maria was a Buller, although not from our direct family line. We will return to this family in due course (they are number 24 on the 1819 list), where we will find them settling in Alexanderwohl 5.
6. Peter Becker and family are listed sixth.
7. With the seventh name we finally encounter someone not from Przechovka (as far as we know): George Tzeevka (38), his wife Frezina (24), son Ivan (2), and daughters Maria (7) and Elisa (5). We know nothing further about this family.
8. Eighth and last are Maria Schmidt, a widow (35), her daughter Anna, and a name that Chaiderman cannot positively identify but suggests is Peter? Pankratz? (18). Maria Schmidt is presumably the number 13 emigrant on our 1819 list (see here). The name of her daughter Anna does not help us to identify this person. One wonders if the Peter Pankratz possibly listed was not Maria’s son, as the visa has it, but rather a driver. One further thought: Peter Pankratz GM 86937 was born in 1800, so he would have been close to the age given for this individual. Peter Pankratz 86937 later turns up at Waldheim, which would not be surprising for someone who previously lived in Volhynia. Of course, the identification of that Peter Pankratz with the person listed is nothing more than an interesting notion.
We started with Peter Becker but quickly encountered a number of his 1819 emigrant partners. Now that we have all the known evidence before us, we are ready to reflect on what we learn from it. That will be the task of the next post—after which we will return to our progression through the list of the thirty-two 1819 emigrants from the Przechovka area.
Work Cited
Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.
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