South Dakota Bullers 8

In recent posts we have had occasion to examine (to the extent that we are able) a Polish civil record for the marriage of Benjamin Heinrich Buller and Agatha Goertz and another record for the birth of their second son Heinrich. This post will explore in even greater detail a third civil record that both confirms the account in Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller and supplements it with information not previously known. We begin with the relevant paragraph from the family history.

Here also in the process of time, he married one Agnes Goertz by name, and on the 21st of July 1834, their second son was born to them, whom they called Heinrich. This son was our father. All the other children by this wife died in their infancy it appears—a sister by the name of Julia being the only child father can recall, and she died when only four years old. (Buller 1915, 8)

We noted in the previous post that Heinrich was Benjamin and Agatha’s second son, their first having apparently died in infancy. We do not know the name of that first son, since Heinrich recalled only the name of a sister Julia.

However, thanks again to resources provided by Glenn Penner, we are able to fill in another gap. If you recall, earlier we noticed a second child listed after Heinrich in the GRANDMA entry for this family: Wilhelm.

The Deutsch Wymsyle church lists below do not record this son, so how can GRANDMA be certain that he existed?

The answer, once again, relies on the evidence of a Polish civil record, in this case a record of death. 

The handwriting in this record is much easier for amateurs to read, especially since the key names are helpfully underlined. In line 3 of the body we see Benjamin Buller, and this time it is written just as we would spell it. Five lines below we read Wilhelm Buller, and two lines farther down we see again Benjamin followed by Angetha Gortzaw and Buller at the end of the line. Note also Wilhelm Buller repeated three lines below that. 

If you look carefully you can make out several other names: Piotr Buller in line 5 and two lines up from the bottom, Benjamin Buller in the third line up, and Peter Buller in the very last line. One might wonder why the same name is spelled Piotr twice and Peter once. Note that the last instance is in a different hand; in fact, the last one is Peter Buller’s own signature.

Those general observations are easy enough to make, but there is more: Glenn Penner had this record and several others translated, so we can read it in full for ourselves (see number 15 here).

It happened in the Mennonites’ commune in the village of Wymyśle Niemieckie on 16 May 1840 at 8am. Personally came Benjamin Buller, komornik [farmer who does not have his own house], 33 years old, residing in the village of Brześzin and Piotr Buller, komornik, 25 years old, residing in the village of Wymyśle Niemieckie and stated that on 15 May of the current year at 8am died a male child named Wilhelm Buller, 1 year old, residing in a village of Brześzin, commune of Sannik. Son of Benjamin Buller and Agnetha nee Gertz, a married couple of Buller, komornik in the same village. This child left behind his parents who were mentioned above. After being convinced about [the] death of Wilhelm Buller this document was read to those present and witnesses. The first witness Benjamin Buller is a father of this child and stated that he does not know how to write. The second witness Piotr Buller signed this document.

Preacher P. Ratzlaw

Note also two notes in the right margin: the notation “Nr 5, Brześzin,” which is the village where Benjamin and Agnetha lived; and a statement that Wilhelm died on 15 May 1840.

Based on Heinrich’s recollection, we might add a daughter Julia to the two sons; there were likely still other children, since the couple’s first son was born in 1833, Heinrich was born in 1834, Wilhelm was born in 1839, and Agnetha did not pass away until 1843, at the age of thirty-four. Just how many children the the couple buried cannot be known, but one suspects that it may have been a substantial number.

So ends the Benjamin Buller portion of the family story. We will pick up with his son Heinrich’s life in the following post and stay with him for some time. I can say at the outset that Heinrich lived quite an interesting and eventful life. His life story is worth reading, in my view.

***

Note: I discovered after writing most of this post that I had covered much of the same material over two years ago (see here). Thankfully, nothing here disagrees with what I wrote earlier. 

Work Cited

Buller, William B. 1915. Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. Parker, SD: privately printed.

South Dakota Bullers 7

In the last post we briefly reviewed Benjamin Heinrich Buller’s life as a day laborer and examined the Polish civil record of his marriage to Agatha (or Agnes) Goertz. This post picks up the thread of the story with the couple now married. I repeat the second paragraph of the Benjamin section to set the scene.

Here also in the process of time, he married one Agnes Goertz by name, and on the 21st of July 1834, their second son was born to them, whom they called Heinrich. This son was our father. All the other children by this wife died in their infancy it appears—a sister by the name of Julia being the only child father can recall, and she died when only four years old. (Buller 1915, 8)

1. According to William, the author of Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller, Heinrich was born 21 July 1834; according to the Deutsch Wymsyle church records the date was 25 July 1834 (see here). At present, we cannot say which of the two is correct, although the scan below presumably contains the answer, since it is the official record of Heinrich’s birth (or so I am told).

Like most governmental documents, these birth records follow a set pattern. Another example from 1840 offers a good sense of the typical elements.

It happened in the Mennonites’ commune in the village of Wymyśle Niemieckie on 17 June 1840 at 6am. Personally came Benjamin Foth, [komornik–farmer who did not have his house or just a poor farmer], residing in a village of Wymyśle Niemieckie, belonging to commune in Czermno, 33 years old in the presence of witnesses Piotr Buller, komornik, 25 years old and Karol Konke, komornik, 24 years old, both residing in the village of Wymyśle Niemieckie and presented to us a female baby who was born in his house #11 on 11 June of the current  year at 7am from his wife Ewa nee Ratzlaw, 25 years old. This child in the presence of witnesses was named Maryanna. This document was read to those present and it was signed by father and witnesses Buller and Konke. Benjamin Foth, Peter Buller, [Kardel Kondke], Preacher Piotr Ratzlaw. (A side note stated that a child was born on 11 June 1840; Glenn Penner had this and other records translated and posted online here).

Based on my tenuous understanding of these records, I suggest that we can identify the name of the father, Beniamin Bulla (Benjamin Buller), in lines 3 and 4 and the name of the child born, Henryk (= Heinrich), six lines up from the bottom. I cannot identify the mother’s name, although it is tempting to read Gorz one line up from Henryk. I cannot tell who served as witnesses, and I have no idea what dates might appear in the document. 

With so many unknowns, we should exercise caution, but the weight of evidence favors this being the birth record of Heinrich Benjamin Buller. After all, according to GRANDMA there was no other Heinrich Buller born in 1834 than the one who is the subject of this series, the one who lived in the same area as where these records were filed. Therefore, until additional evidence indicates otherwise, we will assume that this is Heinrich Benjamin’s birth record.

2. One additional detail is worth noting: William refers to Heinrich as Benjamin and Agatha’s second son. Given what is reported in the second half of the paragraph, it seems safe to conclude that their first son died in infancy. This is actually a good place to end this post, since the one that follows will introduce one more civil record that relates to the topic just mentioned.

Work Cited

Buller, William B. 1915. Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. Parker, SD: privately printed.

South Dakota Bullers 6

With this post we continue the Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller, moving from Heinrich’s grandfather Heinrich to his father Benjamin. The account is brief and to the point.

I must therefore revert once more to Benjamin, the eldest of those children. As already noted, he lived and spent his day as a laborer on the farms adjoining this little village, helping with scythe and threshing flail the farmers round about as they needed help. Wages were low and the food provided poor and scant in quantity. Yet, he made a living.

Here also in the process of time, he married one Agnes Goertz by name, and on the 21st of July 1834, their second son was born to them, whom they called Heinrich. This son was our father. All the other children by this wife died in their infancy it appears—a sister by the name of Julia being the only child father can recall, and she died when only four years old. (Buller 1915, 8)

1. Just like his father Heinrich, Benjamin scratched out a living as a day laborer. In this instance we are afforded a glance at what that involved, at least as regards harvest time: Benjamin helped with the scythe in cutting the grain stalks and with the flail when it was time to thresh the harvested grain (see the image here). As William indicates, the pay for this level of physical labor was low, although it kept the family fed and alive.

2. We can supplement the report of Benjamin’s marriage to Agnes Goertz by adding that the wedding took place on 3 August 1832 (whether Julian or Gregorian I do not know). Benjamin was nearly twenty-six at that time; Agnes was three years his junior. Remarkably, we have a scan of the official record of the union (thanks to Glenn Penner for providing this). 

The bottom of the page is cut off, but the important parts are still visible and highlighted in red. One does not need to read Polish (I do not) to see that the first name Benjamin begins on one line and ends on the next, followed by his last name. The spelling of the names is not what we expect, but we can see two more instances of Buller two and three lines up from the Ben- line; the name three lines up is clearly Piotr Buler (I am uncertain about the function of the a-looking character at the end of each name). The name of Benjamin’s bride appears five lines below: Agnieska (?) Gortz.

Note also the marginal numbers indicated by the red arrows. The one opposite Benjamin’s name has an 11 with a line underneath, then a 22 over an 1806. The 1806 leads me to think that this is the year of Benjamin’s birth, so we can interpret the rest to indicate a month (November) and a day (22): 22 November 1806. The calendar being used then was the Julian, not the Gregorian that we use today, so we need to convert the date to Gregorian: 4 December 1806. Interestingly, this causes us to reconsider William Buller’s earlier statement that Benjamin was born in December. The reconstructed Deutsch Wymsyle church lists have Benjamin’s birth date as 12 November 1806, but that is probably an error; it should read 22 November 1806 = 4 December 1806, which means that William’s earlier comment about Benjamin being born in December (Gregorian) is likely correct.

Agnetha’s birth numbers are given in a different order, with a 22 over the line and a 9 below and 1809 below that: 22 September 1809, or 4 October 1809 Gregorian. The Deutsch Wymsyle church records give a date of 29 September 1809. Without a birth record to adjudicate matters, we cannot say which of the dates given are correct—although the ones from the Polish (Russian) civil records are the most likely candidates.

This is not the only civil record available for this family of Bullers, so we will pick up the story with the second paragraph of the Benjamin account in the following post.

South Dakota Bullers 5

This series has a simple goal: to learn as much as possible about the family of Heinrich Benjamin and Aganetha Dirks (or Agnetha Duerksen) Buller, whose immigration to the U.S. led them to settle near Parker, South Dakota. Thus far we have identified the two central figures, Heinrich and Aganetha, and located them within the Deutsch Wymsyle church, being part of the Brenkenhoffswalde group from Neumark that moved to that church during the first decades of the nineteenth century.

The family story compiled by William B. Buller, Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller, will continue to guide our exploration. We last read a paragraph about Heinrich’s grandfather, also named Heinrich; I repeat that paragraph here, for context, then proceed with the rest of the account about Heinrich Benjamin’s grandfather Heinrich.

His name was Heinrich Buller, and Father [i.e., Heinrich Benjamin Buller] was named in honor of him. He was born about 1783, in a little village (dorf) called Brinkervaus-wald (?) near Dresden, Prussia. He was a poor man and made his living as a day-laborer. His wife was a certain Lena Unruh. They had six children, named in order as follows: Benjamin, Heinrich, Andrew, Tobias, John, and Anna. Of these, the oldest, Benjamin, was Father’s father.

Benjamin was born in the month of December, 1816 [sic], in Prussia, and when his father Heinrich Buller moved from Prussia to Poland, attended him on that journey, settling the village “Duetsch Wymysle”—Kreis Gostin, Post Combin, Warschau Government, Poland. Here to this day there resides a descendant of this Heinrich Buller, being the first cousin of father’s. He is a son of father’s uncle John and also bears the name of Heinrich Buller. From him, even now, an occasional letter drifts over to Father in which mention is sometimes made of places, circumstances, and events that still linger in Father’s memory just as youthful fancy planted them years ago in the morning of his life, and recalled now over the span of a full four score years.

Here, then, after migration from Prussia, the first (?) Heinrich Buller labored until his death in 1848, and here his sons, like him, were following the lowly walks of life, forced to be content with the simple laborer’s need and the hard fate that ever has been the lot of the poor from time immemorial. Here, no doubt, some, if not all, of them died and lie buried, and their sons in turn took up their labors and moved away searching ever for a better land of promise. What one of that number did, and whither the restless spirit of youth led him, we are soon to follow in these pages. (Buller 1915, 7)

For comments on the first paragraph, see the previous post (here).

1. The second paragraph begins with two errors. First, Benjamin Buller was born in 1806, not 1816. I suspect that this is a typographical slip, not an error of understanding, since William knew that his father was born in 1834, which would not easily accommodate an 1816 date of birth for Benjamin. Second, Benjamin was born in the month of November, not December (see the church record and GRANDMA screen here). His date of birth was actually 12 November 1806; whether this is given according to the older Julian calendar or the Gregorian calendar is unclear to me, but either way the birth month was in November. Noting these errors serves as a good reminder not to accept family oral histories at face value. Even the best of memories will fade and grow fuzzy, and even the most careful scribe will introduce errors; all facts should be tested against contemporary documents and any other type of available evidence.

2. We do not know exactly when Heinrich and family migrated from Prussia (i.e., Brenkenhoffswalde in Neumark) to Poland, but it may be that they did so when other Bullers and Unruhs relocated to the Deutsch Wymsyle area sometime between 1817 and 1819 (see here). We cannot say that for certain, but sometime in the 1810s is the most probable time frame. According to Erich Ratzlaff (1971, 35), no families migrated from Neumark to Deutsch Wymsyle in the 1800s, while four did in the 1810s and another three in the 1820s, before the largest body (seven families) came in the 1830s (which was the same migration under Wilhelm Lange that led to the establishment of Gnadenfeld in Molotschna; see also here). Finally, presumably Prussia and Poland are used in William’s account with a generic geographical sense, not as political labels, since the Kingdom of Poland had ceased to exist well before this time.

3. The precise location of Deutsch Wymsyle in “Kreis Gostin, Post Combin, Warschau Government, Poland” is impressive but not entirely correct in all its details. The designation Kreis Gostin (District Gostin) reflects a Prussian organization; that precise term was used only between 1793 and 1807 and was replaced by the derivative Der Gostinische Kreis. The term Post appears to be a mistake, and the spelling Combin is an apparent error for Gombin, or, more correctly, Gąbin. Warschau is obviously Warsaw, the seat of the regional government. In the end, one cannot really fault Heinrich’s memory for missing a few details some sixty years after leaving the area.

4. According to the account, Heinrich Buller the grandfather died in 1848; if he was born around 1783, as his grandson claimed, he would have been roughly sixty-five. Heinrich is not mentioned in the Deutsch Wymsyle church records, but this is probably due to the records’ sparse coverage of the earliest members of the church. Ratzlaff writes, “The old church book [the one destroyed in the fire], which I saw in the house of my father, the elder Leonhard Ratzlaff, was not run from the beginning of the church” (Ratzlaff 1971, 34: Das alte Gemeindebuch, das auch ich im Hause meines Vaters, des Ältesten Leonhard Ratzlaff eingesehen habe, war nicht von Beginn der Gemeinde geführt worden). As we also noted earlier (here), of the 195 persons with birth years listed in the reconstructed book, only eleven were born before 1790. Thus it is not surprising that Heinrich the elder does not appear.

Heinrich’s son Benjamin, of course, is listed (see the extract here). It is also possible that Benjamin’s younger brother Heinrich is listed (scan below; see also here).

According to the account given above, Benjamin was Heinrich and Lena’s oldest child, followed by a son named Heinrich. Since Benjamin was born in 1806, the Heinrich Buller born 17 October 1808 in Brenkenhoffswalde could very well be that second son. Of course, without additional documentation this must remain a reasonable but unverified hypothesis.

Heinrich also mentions another relative who moved from Neumark to Deutsch Wymsyle: “Here to this day [1915] there resides a descendant of this Heinrich Buller, being the first cousin of father’s. He is a son of father’s uncle John and also bears the name of Heinrich Buller.” Clearly, then, John (or Johann), the youngest son of Heinrich and Lena, also settled in the Deutsch Wymsyle area with the rest of the family. Oddly, however, although John stayed long enough to have a son who remained in the community until at least 1915, he does not appear in the church name lists.

The account given above also implies that these three were not the only sons of Heinrich and Lena who moved from Brenkenhoffswalde to Deutsch Wymsyle:

Here, then, after migration from Prussia, … Heinrich Buller labored until his death in 1848, and here his sons, like him, were following the lowly walks of life, forced to be content with the simple laborer’s need and the hard fate that ever has been the lot of the poor from time immemorial. Here, no doubt, some, if not all, of them died and lie buried, and their sons in turn took up their labors and moved away searching ever for a better land of promise. 

The most natural reading of this text is that Heinrich and, presumably, all of his sons migrated from Brenkenhoffswalde to Deutsch Wymsyle and that either all of them died and were buried there or that some died there while others, perhaps (Heinrich does not claim to know), moved away in search of a better life, as he knows the next generation (their sons) certainly did.

Having said all we are able about the Heinrich Benjamin’s grandfather Heinrich, we are ready to turn to his own father, which we will do in the following post.

Works Cited

Buller, William B. 1915. Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. Parker, SD: privately printed.

Ratzlaff, Erich L. 1971. Im Weichselbogen: Mennonitensiedlungen in Zentralpolen. Winnipeg: Christian Press.

South Dakota Bullers 4

This series seeks to reconstruct and reproduce the life story of Heinrich Benjamin Buller (GM 28413) and Aganetha Dirks Buller (GM 103991), the progenitors of a family of Bullers who settled in the Parker, South Dakota, area in the mid-1870s. The previous post ended with Heinrich’s only memory of his great-grandfather; this post picks up the story with his grandfather Heinrich Buller.

His name was Heinrich Buller, and Father [i.e., Heinrich Benjamin Buller] was named in honor of him. He was born about 1783, in a little village (dorf) called Brinkervaus-wald (?) near Dresden, Prussia. He was a poor man and made his living as a day-laborer. His wife was a certain Lena Unruh. They had six children, named in order as follows: Benjamin, Heinrich, Andrew, Tobias, John, and Anna. Of these, the oldest, Benjamin, was Father’s father. (Buller 1915, 7)

The opening paragraph contains a wealth of information that requires clarification and warrants close attention.

1. We begin with a clarification: the village that William guesses to be Brinkervaus-wald is obviously the Neumark village named Brenkenhoffswalde. This is consistent with what we learned earlier about the place of birth for Heinrich Benjamin’s father. William locates the village near Dresden, Prussia; in fact, Dresden was roughly 150 miles to the southwest. I suspect that this is a misunderstanding for the town Driesen (modern Drezdenko), which was located less than 5 miles to the east of the Neumark villages.

2. Drawing upon the information given here, we can reconstruct the sequence of three generations: Heinrich > Benjamin > Heinrich Benjamin. As William notes, his father Heinrich was named after Heinrich’s grandfather; naming a son after his grandfather was a common practice at that time. 

More important is the naming of the grandfather, since it provides information not previously known. Note carefully the GRANDMA entry for Heinrich’s father: Benjamin.

No father or mother is listed for Benjamin. Assuming that Heinrich Buller’s memory is correct (I know no reason to doubt it), we can now identify Benjamin’s father. Is it possible that we might do more, perhaps even find a link back to George Buller and Dina Thoms?

3. According to Heinrich Benjamin, his grandfather Heinrich was a poor man who made his living as a day laborer. This is an important observation, since it tells us where not to look for Heinrich. Earlier we surveyed a number of Praestations-Tabellen, or “land tax lists … [of] tenants on royal domain lands” (Goertz 2001, 47), for the Neumark villages Brenkenhoffswalde and Franztal (see here and the following posts). There we listed a number of Bullers who leased plots of land for which they were liable to pay taxes. Heinrich Benjamin’s grandfather was a day laborer; he held no land lease and thus would not appear on the Praestations-Tabellen. This makes it virtually impossible for us to trace his lineage, since we have no way of locating him on one of the land plots and deducing his parentage by tracing the names of the leaseholder back through time.

We can locate Heinrich the grandfather in another manner of speaking. As a day laborer, he no doubt lived in the area of town set apart for those who did not own land (which may have been a third of the population at that time). In Brenkenhoffswalde, the so-called renters area was located to the east of the village farm plots, that is, on the far right side of the map below.

4. Although the name of the elder Heinrich’s father must remain unknown to us for the time being, it may be possible to suggest (!) from which line of Bullers he derived. The Buller chart below will help us to see the possibility.

As we have often observed, George Buller and Dina Thoms had three sons, so there are three primary lines of Bullers in our larger family. To start on the right, Peter had only one known son, and he went to Volhynia in 1803. A second son of Dina and George was named after his father; this George had two sons, both of whom lived and died in the Przechovka area. 

A third son of George and Dina, named Hans, had three sons: Hans, George, and Heinrich. Our family, of course, is of the Heinrich line of Hans’s descendants (red font). To my knowledge, all the Bullers of Neumark stem from one of the other two lines, those of Hans (341) and George (342). Thus one might propose a working hypothesis that Heinrich the grandfather of Heinrich Benjamin was a descendant of either Hans or George. Peter (351) and his descendants were the most prominent Buller family in Brenkenhoffswalde. Perhaps Heinrich was a younger son in this family who ended up a day laborer because no plots were available for lease when he was ready to start a family. In the end, we must admit that we do not know—and probably never will know—the name of Heinrich’s father.

5. The name of Heinrich’s wife is also provided: Lena Unruh. There were several Unruh families in Brenkenhoffswalde; presumably Lena belonged to one of them.

6. The children born to Lena and Heinrich are named in order of birth: Benjamin, Heinrich, Andrew, Tobias, John, and Anna. It is tempting to suggest that their first son was named after his paternal grandfather, in which case we would know the name of Heinrich’s father. In the end, however, that is no more than a reasonable possibility that has no positive evidence in its favor.

A good deal of information was packed into the first paragraph about Heinrich the grandfather, and two more paragraphs remain. We will pick up the story there in the following post.

Work Cited

Buller, William B. 1915. Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. Parker, SD: privately printed.

South Dakota Bullers 3

The first two posts in this series laid the foundation for our investigation of a family of South Dakota Bullers. We learned the names of the family’s matriarch and patriarch—Aganetha Dirks and Heinrich Benjamin Buller—then focused on the latter (we will learn more about Aganetha later on), especially with regard to his place of birth (Piaski at Gąbin, in Plock County, Poland), his church affiliation (Deutsch Wymsyle), and his parentage (his father was Benjamin).

With those foundational facts in place, we are ready to turn to the family story related in William B. Buller’s Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. I use the word story carefully to reflect both the title and the nature of the book. This is not history proper but rather the reminiscences of Heinrich Buller, a man who had lived a full life of more than four score years when he told his life’s story. His son William narrates how these memories came to be written down.

It was a cold and cheerless day in midwinter in the year 1915 that I was sitting by the side of my father, each in a cozy, comfortable armchair, drawn close to the fire. Snow fell fast, and a little wind surged and moaned as it swept through the bare trees. Altogether it was dreary, forbidding weather, but to us sitting by that cheery fire, these things tended only to increase the feeling of security and comfort.

We had been discussing at some length the great European War in which his sympathies (and mine as well) were strongly pro-German. On previous occasions, very similar to this one, long hours had been spent in discussing religion, our interest in Montana, and a number of other subjects. But on this particular day, father had been relating a certain incident in his life, which reminded me of my long-cherished determination to have him recount in full the story of his life. Hence, as we were sitting there, I asked him to give me as full an account of his and mother’s life as he could recall. With notebook and pencil in hand, I, for several days, took down the facts that form the basis of this sketch. For many days after that I had to question him about this or that incident, some place that I was not sure about, or a date or a name. Personally, I have always been interested in our family history and often have wondered what kind of men and women our ancestors before our immediate parents must have been. Accordingly I asked father to state as much as he could remember about them, as many generations in the past as he could go. (Buller 1915, 6; throughout this series I will silently correct the occasional typo)

As we will learn in due course, Aganetha’s life before marrying Heinrich is recounted in great detail, but it is important to keep in mind that the telling is all Heinrich’s, since Aganetha had passed away six years earlier, on 5 January 1909. Indeed, Heinrich would soon join her in death, since he departed this life on 2 March 1916.

The European war that William references was World War I. Some readers might be surprised to read that Heinrich and William were pro-German, but this did not entail any disloyalty to U.S. interests, since the U.S. did not join the war for another two years, on 6 April 1917. At the time of Heinrich’s telling, in early 1915, the primary combatants consisted of the Triple Entente (France, Russia, and Britain) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy). Many Mennonites of that time thought of themselves as German, so it is not surprising that Heinrich and William’s sympathies lay with the Triple Alliance.

Following this brief explanation of the circumstances behind his writing of the family story, William proceeds with a single paragraph about his father Heinrich’s great-grandfather: 

Father remembers only one incident about his great-grandfather, and that must have happened when he was a very young boy. It was on the occasion of a visit with his father to the great-grandfather’s home that his youthful eyes espied a canary bird in his cage. It was hanging there in its place of honor, the sole article of luxury, no doubt, that the progenitor afforded—which said canary he begged his father to get for him. He was greatly grieved when they left the premises with [without?] the cherished bird. Of his grandfather, he has more distinct recollections, and it is therefore with him that I shall begin this record. (Buller 1915, 6–7)

Heinrich’s story begins with a frustratingly ambiguous story about his great-grandfather. Missing are a number of key facts: which great-grandfather this was (he potentially had four), the name of his great-grandfather, and where the visit took place. Did Heinrich recall his great-grandfather’s name but neglect to mention it, or does this omission signal that he had forgotten this key detail? We may never know, since Heinrich’s focus was on the canary that he wished to make his own.

Fortunately, Heinrich had “more distinct recollections” of his grandfather, which memories will help us to fill in some details of the Buller family history. We will pick up the story here in the following post.

Work Cited

Buller, William B. 1915. Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. Parker, SD: privately printed.

South Dakota Bullers 2

The previous post introduced a family of Bullers who settled near Parker, South Dakota, and whose history is narrated in a book titled Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller, which was authored by their son William B. Buller. The post identified Heinrich and Agnetha in GRANDMA, where we learned that Heinrich was born at Piaski bei Gombin, a village associated with the Deutsch Wymsyle Mennonite church.

In 2016 we devoted considerable time to learning about the Deutsch Wymsyle church, with particular emphasis on the Bullers within it. This raises the question, of course, whether we encountered or even discussed Heinrich Buller, who was born 25 July 1834 in a village whose residents attended that church. The short answer is that we encountered Heinrich as we surveyed his birth family but did not discuss him in particular.

A post titled “Bullers in Deutsch-Wymysle 8” (here) discussed two Buller families, one of which was headed by Benjamin Buller. The relevant entry from the Deutsch Wymsyle church book for that family is shown below (at the risk of becoming repetitive, I note again that this is a reconstruction of the church book, not the original, which was destroyed in a fire).

The entry for Benjamin lists two wives (Agatha Görtz, 119; Helene Görtz, 121) and four sons. The first son listed (120) is named Heinrich; he was born on 25 July 1834 in Piaski. This clearly is the Heinrich Buller we are investigating. 

Exploring the family further in GRANDMA, we find the same information, with one exception. Note that GRANDMA lists an additional son for Benjamin and his first wife, Agatha Goertz, a son not listed in the Deutsch Wymsyle church book. We shall return to this son, who was named Wilhelm, in a later post.

For the moment, we have gone as far as we can. We confirmed our identification of Heinrich Buller GM 28413/DW 120 as the person in view. We also confirmed his birth in Piaski bei Gąbin (Gombin), that is, the village Piaski in the district Gmina Gąbin, whose seat was the city Gąbin (see the note below).

We also learned that Heinrich’s father Benjamin was born in Brenkenhoffswalde. This was one of the Neumark villages listed in the previous post, which tells us that, although Heinrich’s family line was ultimately descended from George Buller and Dina Thoms of Przechovka, they were part of the group who came to Deutsch Wymsyle via the Neumark colony and not directly from Przechovka, as others in Deutsch Wymsyle had done.

Now that we have positively identified Heinrich Buller and learned something about his heritage, we are ready to turn to Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller, which will fill in a number of details about this family.

***

Note: The Wikipedia article on Piaski (here) gives a different location for the village than that shown in the Breyer map cited in the previous post. That article places Piaski closer to Gąbin, only 4 miles northeast of the district seat. Assuming that the article is correct (Google Maps agrees), Piaski was located even closer to the Deutsch Wymsyle church than indicated in the Breyer map. The satellite view below shows Gąbin in the lower left, Piaski in the upper right, and Deutsch Wymsyle (modern Nowe Wymyśle) less than a mile to the southeast. For a closeup look at the modern village, see here.

South Dakota Bullers 1

Some time back Buller Time was contacted by a Buller whose family had settled in South Dakota when they relocated to North America The person who contacted me offered a brief sketch about his line of the Buller family and then made reference to a family history that provided many of the details about that family: Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller, by their son William B. Buller.

Thanks to the power of a certain search engine, a copy of this privately published book was found in a local library in Gettysburg, South Dakota: the Potter County Library (see here). Even better, the librarian there was willing to take that copy to a local print shop to be duplicated and mailed to Buller Time. That print copy was then dutifully scanned so that we can present parts of if (or, perhaps, the entire book at some point) as we learn more about this branch of the Buller family tree.

The investigation began with a simple email that stated, in part, “I am the descendant of the Parker, South Dakota, Bullers. I am curious if great-great-grandfather Heinrich Buller ties in with your research.” A subsequent email mentioned the South Dakota Bullers’ family history identified above and even included photos of the title page and the family members who were discussed within it.

Front row: John, Aganetha, Heinrich, David
Back row: Henry, Abraham, Peter, Cornelius, William
Not pictured: Mary, Lena, infant Aganetha

With the names of husband and wife entered into a pair search, GRANDMA provided the next lead. The couple in view was identified as Heinrich Benjamin Buller (GM 28413) and his wife Aganetha Dirks (GM 103991). What immediately caught my attention was Heinrich’s birth information: 25 July 1834, Piaski bei Gombin, Prussia. This town name sounded familiar, and a search of Buller Time confirmed that we had encountered it twice before (here and here), both times within the context of Deutsch Wymysle, a Mennonite church that served a number of villages located (mostly) on the south bank of the Vistula River, roughly 50 miles west-northwest of Warsaw. The map below shows the location of Deutsch Wymsyle with respect to Warsaw to the east and Swiecie (i.e., Schwetz, the site of the Przechovka church) to the west.

The next map shows where Piaski was located in relation to Deutsch Wymsyle. The map shows Plock in the upper left; Deutsch Wymsyle is marked by the arrow on the left, and roughly 24 miles east is Piaski, marked by the arrow on the right of the map. Note that Gąbin (Gombin) was located near Deutsch Wymsyle; the use of the qualifier “bei Gombin” (at Gombin) sets this Piaski apart from another, better-known Piaski farther east. With this information, we can confidently conclude that Heinrich Buller was born in the Piaski marked below and was almost certainly a member of the Deutsch Wymsyle church.

In our earlier series on Deutsch Wymsyle (see the first posts here and here and follow the sequence), we learned that some of the members of the Deutsch Wymsyle church came from the Przechovka area and that some came from the Neumark area much farther to the west. The Mennonites from the latter area, you may recall, lived in the villages of Neu Dessau, Brenkenhoffswalde, and Franztal. We devoted significant time to exploring the Mennonites—and Bullers—of Neumark as well (see here and the following posts).

Our earlier posts on Deutsch Wymsyle also devoted considerable time to the church record book (in fact, it was a reconstructed copy of the book, since the original had been lost in a fire), in particular the Bullers listed in the church book (see here and the following posts). This raises the question, of course, whether the Heinrich Buller who was born 25 July 1834 in Piaski bei Gombin is listed within the church book. The answer to that question will be provided in the following post.

Przechovka Emigration 14

The Przechovka Emigration series began with an observation and several questions. The observation concerned the impression given by the 1848 Alexanderwohl Gemeindebericht (community report) when it claims the following about the community’s origins:

this local community, which had existed as a church community in Prussia for over two hundred years, emigrated to Russia under the leadership of its church elder, Peter Wedel.

This statement is most frequently understood to be claiming that the entire Przechovka church, which had existed in West Prussia/Poland for two centuries, moved from Molotschna under Peter Wedel’s leadership and there founded the village Alexanderwohl.

This consensus understanding of the relation between the Przechovka church and Alexanderwohl, we noted further, might be called into question by the existence of a large number of Mennonites from the Przechovka area who apparently immigrated to Russia in 1819. This reality prompted a number of questions that the following posts sought to answer: Who were these Mennonites? When did they journey to Molotschna? Which of them, if any, belonged to the Przechovka church? Where did these emigrants settle once they arrived in Molotschna?

Each investigation started by seeking to identify who the named Mennonite, the head of household, was and who else was a part of his or her family and/or traveling group. This part of the investigation sought to answer the question of who these Mennonites were. Having completed our investigation of each family in the 1819 group, we are ready to take a step back and make some broader, more general observations.

1. As far as we can tell, thirty-one of the thirty-two families emigrated in 1819; only Martin Cornelsen (11) delayed a year and accompanied the 1820 party. Thus, our initial impression that these families by and large emigrated from the Przechovka area a year before the more famous group of 1820 was confirmed.

However, we also learned that things may not be as tidy as we first thought. At least seven of the thirty-one families who left Przechovka in 1819 stopped in Volhynia later that year. Four of these families apparently settled in Volhynia and did not travel on to Molotschna at all; three wintered in Volhynia and then journeyed on to Molotschna (eventually settling in Alexanderwohl) the following year.

Already we notice a difference between the 1819 and the 1820 emigrants. The 1848 Alexanderwohl community report clearly portrays the 1820 emigrants as a single group of travelers all starting at the same time, traveling together, and arriving at the same time at the same place. The 1819 group, to use the term loosely, lacked that close association: some traveled only to Volhynia, others to Volhynia and then to Molotschna, and still others all the way through to Molotschna. Further, we have no reason to think that all the 1819 emigrants traveled together; they may well have traveled in a number of small groups of families at slightly different times and paces.

2. At least twenty of the thirty-two named Mennonites can be positively identified in the Przechovka church book. Several others are almost certainly listed within the book; we simply do not know which entry is theirs, given the high incidence of repeated names. At least one, possibly two, heads of household have children in the church book, which indicates their belonging to the congregation, even if the head of household was originally from a different church (e.g., Peter Block originally from Montau).

The surnames of the 1819 group are also decidedly Przechovka names: Ratzlaff (8), Schmidt (5), Becker (4), Unrau (3), Wedel (3), Pankratz (2), and Frey, Köhn, Kornelsen, Nachtigal, and Richert (all 1). Only Abrahams and Block are not characteristic Przechovka names, but they also appear in the church book. Based on both streams of evidence, then, we can safely conclude that all thirty-two families were part of, or at least associated with, the Przechovka church.

I do not know how many families were part of the Przechovka church at this time, but it seems likely  that the loss of thirty-two families was rather significant. Because each visa lists the number of people in each family (or traveling party), we are able to quantify the loss to the church further: 158 people. The next question we should ask (we will answer it later) is how many people in the church remained after the 1819 group left. Certainly it seems less than accurate to refer to the members of the 1820 group as the “church community,” when in fact they were only those who remained after a sizable portion of the church community had already left. (Of course, we know of Przechovka church members who left even before 1819—including our own ancestor Benjamin Buller!)

3. Of the thirty-one families who emigrated in 1819, we know with a fair degree of confidence where twenty-one of them settled. Leaving to the side the four families who appear to have remained in Volhynia, two locations account for all twenty-one:

Alexanderwohl:	four families
Franztal:	seventeen families

We should note further that three of the four families who settled in Alexanderwohl spent the winter in Volhynia, which raises the possibility (nothing more) that they proceeded to their final destination as part of the 1820 group. This observation casts into sharper relief an obvious fact: Franztal was the destination of choice for most families in the 1819 group, and it was the first Molotschna village to experience a strong Przechovka influx.

For descendants of the Przechovka church, Franztal should be of as much interest as Alexanderwohl, the village that held the church book and claimed the church mantle. Questions that arise and beg for answers are many: When was the village founded? Where was it located? Who else, in addition to Przechovka members, lived there? Where did Franztal Mennonites worship? What was their relation with the Alexanderwohl church? Those questions and others that come to mind will keep us occupied for the immediate future. For now it is enough to know that the 1820 was not the first large body of Przechovka church members to leave West Prussia and settle in Molotschna. Rather, they were the last body to make the move after so many others had gone before.

Przechovka Emigration 13

With this post we will complete the task of identifying, as best as we can, the thirty-two Przechovka-area Mennonite families who emigrated from West Prussia/Poland in 1819. The following post(s) will then take a step back and develop broader conclusions from the details uncovered along the way.

29. Adam Ratzlaff was a Mennonite from Przechovka whose family included only his wife and his “step-daughter (daughter-in-law)” (Rempel 2007, 137). The two options are correctly given because the French phrase “belle fille” (see original below) refers both to a step-daughter and a daughter-in-law.

Rempel offers additional hints by cross-referencing this Adam Ratzlaff to two settlement reports; the latter of the two is the most instructive.

Adam Ratzlaff (Адам Рацлав), whose family consists of 1 male and 2 females. On their move to Russia they brought 200 rubles cash, horses valued at 50 rubles and possessions valued at 50 rubles. They arrived in Russia in 1819 and settled in Franztal, Molotschna. (Rempel 2007, 158)

According to the 1835 Molotschna census, two men named Adam Ratzlaff lived in Franztal: Adam Adam (age fifty-two) lived at Franztal 19, and Adam Peter (age fifty-three) lived at Franztal 27. Both entered Russia in 1819, which means we should look for another Adam Ratzlaff among our group of thirty-two. In fact, number 8 on our list (see here) was the first Adam Ratzlaff, and we located him at Wirtschaft 19. 

Assuming we were correct to do so, we can identify this Adam Ratzlaff as the resident of Wirtschaft 27. Only Adam and his wife Anna are listed as living at Franztal 27, which offers additional evidence that he is the one listed on this visa. It is important to note also that Benjamin Peter Ratzlaff is listed at Franztal 27 as well, along with the note that Benjamin moved to Rudnerweide in 1827. This is none other than number 14 on our list (see here). 

The presence of brother, presumably, Benjamin is important because it enables us to identify Adam further. Benjamin, in fact, had an older brother named Adam who would have been fifty-one in 1835, so close enough to the age given in the census. This Adam Peter Ratzlaff (the only other one known to us would have been eighty-five in 1835) was, I conclude, number 99 in the Przechovka church book (GM 47882; see the end of this post for a peculiarity with the GRANDMA entry for this person). Thus once again the pattern holds: an 1819 emigrant was a member of the Przechovka church and settled in Franztal. 

30. Peter Becker, a Mennonite from Przechovka, was accompanied on the journey by his wife and one daughter. Rempel cross-references to two settlement reports (2007, 141, 157), but only the first is correct (the second is a different Peter Becker). Nevertheless, the first report confirms that Peter Becker and family settled in Russia in 1819.

This is the third Peter Becker in our list. We were unable to identify the first one (number 1) but were able to locate the second one (number 19) at Franztal 17. According to the 1835 census, four Peter Beckers lived in Molotschna:

• Peter Jakob (b. ca. 1804): Franztal 24
• Peter Johann (b. ca. —): Rudnerweide 25
• Peter Peter (b. ca. 1791): Franztal 26
• Peter Peter (b. ca. 1766): Franztal 17

The first was obviously too young to be married and head of a household in 1819, and the last has already been identified as emigrant 19 (here). This leaves the two middle ones.

There is no need to drag this out: it seems clear that the third Peter Becker listed is this emigrant. In fact, this Peter Peter Becker (PCB 1331/GM 32122) is the son of the fourth Peter Becker listed above. His wife was Maria Wedel (GM 61718), and their daughter was Eva. Still once again the pattern of an 1819 emigration from the Przechovka church to Franztal holds.

31. Peter Abrahams was a Mennonite from Deutsch Konopath who had a wife, two sons, and one daughter. Abrahams is not a surname we typically associate with the Przechovka church, but there are four Abraham or Abrahams listed in the church book, including two named Peter Abraham (both born in 1813; a duplicate entry, according to GRANDMA), one named Maria Abrahams (born and died 1811) and one named Maria Abrahamen (born 1815). In fact, Maria Abrahams (PCB 1556) is identified as the daughter of P. Abrahams. One wonders if this might be the Peter Abrahams in view here.

Rempel also cross-references to two settlement reports (the first is incorrect, it appears), the second of which reads as follows:

Peter Abrahams (Петр Абрамс), whose family consists of 2 males and 3 females. On their move to Russia they brought 60 rubles cash, horses valued at 20 rubles and possessions valued at 100 rubles. They arrived in Russia in 1819 and settled in Franztal, Molotschna. (Rempel 2007, 157).

Although the totals of each gender do not match (it should be three males and two females), no other Peter Abrahams family seems possible, since another one had four males and five females, and the third Peter Abrahams had no family accompanying him.

According to the 1835 census, only two men named Peter Abrahams lived in Molotschna: Peter Johann (b. ca. 1769) lived at Alexanderthal 23; and Peter Kornelius (b. ca. 1779) lived at Franztal 10. The Peter Abrahams with the larger family is reported to have settled in Alexanderthal (Rempel 2007, 155), which further confirms that our Peter Abrahams was yet another 1819 emigrant who settled in Franztal. We cannot document that this Peter Abrahams (GM ) was associated with the Przechovka church, but it seems more likely than not that his family was.

32. The widow Ratzlaff (“la veuve Ratzlaff”) a Mennonite from Przechovka, had two daughters.

As we have discovered previously, identifying a widow whose first name is unknown presents special challenges. Once again, Rempel provides a cross-reference to a settlement report:

Widow Maria Ratzlaff (Мария Роцлав), whose family consists of 3 males and 3 females. On their move to Russia they brought 1000 rubles cash, horses valued at 90 rubles and possessions valued at 200 rubles. They arrived in Russia in 1819 and settled in Franztal, Molotschna. (Rempel 2007, 158)

The number of females agrees with the visa, but the number of males does not. As tempting as it is to identify widow Maria Ratzlaff as number 32 on our list, we should regard that as only a possibility awaiting further evidence confirming or contradicting that identification.

***

Once again three of the four families examined can be positively identified, and all three correspond to the pattern observed earlier: 1819 emigrants from the Przechovka church who settled in Franztal. 

***

Note: Notice anything unusual about this entry?

Look carefully at the date of baptism and the date of death. Obviously, something is wrong here. In truth, I think the explanation is relatively simple. As is evident in the first scan from the PCB below, the name Evke Ratzlaffen (XXIX) is entered between numbers 99 (Adam Ratzlaff) and 100 (Maricke Ratzlaffen). Note also that Adam was baptized, as indicated above, in 1803 (although the month is given incorrectly; it should be April).

The facing page, where second and third marriages and deaths are recorded, is less clear.

It appears that the dotted line connecting to the comment “drowned” and the date of death  (4 August 1796) begins at the 99, the number for Adam Ratzlaff. However, it must be meant for the person who appears between 99 and 100, Evke Ratzlaffen, number XXIX in the Przechovka church book. This is the best explanation of all the evidence, including the mention of Adam Peter Ratzlaff, brother of Benjamin Peter Ratzlaff, as still alive in 1835.

In short, Adam Peter Ratzlaff’s GRANDMA entry should be corrected to provide no date of death and even to locate him at Franztal. I should note that the same 1796 date is given for Evke Ratzlaff (GM 47714), which proves that this is not the first time that the date of death was linked to Evke. 

	Name	PCB/GM	Comment
1	Peter Becker	??	originally misidentified
2	Jacob Wedel	276/106688	based on association with Glugowko
3	Heinrich Unrau	1149/86839	settled at Alexanderwohl 14
4	Peter Wedel	??	perhaps PCB 262/GM 81631, a Przechovka elder
5	Heinrich Ratzlaff	141/47821	settled at Franztal 25
6	Anna Pankratz	140/43100	widow and sister to number 5 above
7	Jacob Becker	334/32008	Jacob passed away; his widow married Tobias Schmidt (number 28)
8	Adam Ratzlaff	192/4327	settled at Franztal 19
9	George Nachtigal	662/42260	settled at Franztal 3
10	Peter Unrau	1322/61701	settled at  Franztal 22
11	Martin Cornelsen	1250/33801	emigrated in 1820; settled at Alexanderwohl 1
12	Martin Köhn	??	probably from Przechovka
13	Maria Schmidt	??	probably from Przechovka
14	Benjamin Ratzlaff	1320/47884	settled first in Franztal
15	Peter Pankratz	??	destination unknown
16	Andreas Schmidt	1272/43155	settled at Alexanderwohl 14
17	Peter Frey	1351/35807	settled first in Franztal; moved to Alexanderwohl in 1821
18	Jacob Ratzlaff	??	Mennonite from Przechovka
19	Peter Becker	321/32099	settled at Franztal 17
20	Kornelius Richert	1251/48300	settled at Franztal 11
21	Peter Ratzlaff	111/47815	settled at Franztal 6
22	Daniel Unrau	??	identification uncertain; possibly 1000/106834
23	Jacob Schmidt	1302/32895	settled at Alexanderwohl 18
24	Heinrich Schmidt	1345/32966	settled at Alexanderwohl 5
25	Peter Wedel	??	identification unknown
26	Peter Block	Montau/32253	settled at Franztal 14
27	Benjamin Ratzlaff	??	remained in Volhynia
28	Tobias Schmidt	833/61594	settled at Franztal 8
29	Adam Ratzlaff	99/47882	settled at Franztal 27
30	Peter Becker	1331/32122	settled at Franztal 26
31	Peter Abrahams	NA/46631	settled at Franztal 10
32	widow Ratzlaff	??	possibly settled in Franztal

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.

Przechovka Emigration 12

Eight more families remain in our survey of thirty-two 1819 emigrants from the Przechovka area. After identifying as many of them as possible, we will draw whatever conclusions the facts permit.

25. Peter Wedel, a Mennonite from Glugowko, emigrated along with his wife and their five sons and two daughters. The Przechovka church book lists twenty-one males by this name; nine of them were deceased by 1819, and another six were too young to have a family this large at that time. This leaves us six possibilities for this Peter Wedel—assuming he was a member of that church and was listed in the church book.

Unfortunately, not one of these candidates clearly matches the circumstances given for Peter Wedel. In fact, we face the same problem that arose when we tried to identify the first Peter Wedel, who appeared as number 4 on our list (here). At that time I suggested that this Peter Wedel (number 25) might be PCB 284 (Peter Jacob Wedel; GM 106695), but it turns out that his first three children died at a young age, so he does not fit the visa profile. Further, I have since learned that he settled in Volhynia, not Molotschna, as indicated in the 1819 Ostrog, Volhynia, census (here), which lists Peter, his wife Maria, son Jacob, and daughters Maria and Helena. Clearly, PCB 284 was not the person listed on the 1819 visa.

Peter Wedel PCB 287/GM 106697 is another intriguing possibility, but we may not have a complete record of his children. GRANDMA lists one son born in 1809 and another in 1813 but no other children. This Peter Wedel also appears in an 1810 census of Mennonites living in the Schwetz region (here, in Dworzisko). He, his wife Catherine, and their one-year-old son Jacob were living with her parents. It is conceivable that they had four more sons and two daughters by 1819, children who are not listed in the Przechovka church book. However, there is no evidence pointing in that direction, so we are best off to admit that we do not know who this Peter Wedel was or what happened to him, since the only Peter Wedel mentioned in the 1835 Molotschna census emigrated in 1820 and so was not this person. We are at a dead end with this Peter Wedel, just as we were with number 4 on our list.

26. Peter Block was a Mennonite from Deutsch Konopath whose visa lists a wife, five sons, and three daughters. Rempel’s listing helps us to identify this individual, since he cross-references to two other entries (2007, 141, 157). The second settlement entry is the key:

Peter Block (Петр Блок), whose family consists of 6 males and 4 females. On their move to Russia they brought 126 rubles cash, horses valued at 50 rubles and possessions valued at 190 rubles. They arrived in Russia in 1819 and settled in Franztal, Molotschna.

The number of males and females in the family matches the visa, as does the year of settlement: 1819. Thus we have no reason to doubt the correlation between the visa and the settlement reports, especially since the second settlement report locates Peter Block and family at Franztal, where so many other of the 1819 emigrants settled. 

According to the 1835 census, only one Peter Block lived in Franztal, at Wirtschaft 14, Checking the census further, we learn that he emigrated in 1819. This must be the person in view here. Although he died in 1831, we now know his full name (Peter Peter Block) and the name of his sons (his daughters are not listed presumably because either they had died or they had married and were raising their own families). This enables us to identify him with certainty as GM 32253 and his wife Sara Jantzen (32254).

Peter Block is not listed in the Przechovka church book; his family was associated with the Montau Mennonite congregation, which was located roughly 17 miles northeast of the Przechovka church (here). As we have seen previously, Block was not a surname generally associated with Przechovka; in fact, only four Blocks are listed in the entire Przechovka church book. Importantly, however, two of them are Peter and Sara’s children. Note in the extract from the church book below that number 1574 is Jacob Block, born on 28 October 1812. The entry above (1573: Jacob Richert) has numbers in the columns immediately after the name; they list the number of the father and mother. For Jacob Block, however, the name of his father Peter Block is written in one column and that of his mother Sara Jantzen in the other. Because Peter and Sara were not entered in the church book and thus had no numbers, their names were written next to their children, who were entered in the book.

In other words, when the Peter Blocks moved from the Montau area to Przechovka (likely between 1801 and 1809, based on the children’s birth years), they became part of the Przechovka church. Thus although Block is not a typical Przechovka name, this family was associated with that church. Putting all the pieces together, the Peter Block family fits the most common pattern for our group: a family associated with the Przechovka church emigrated in 1819 and settled in Franztal, Molotschna colony.

27.  Benjamin Ratzlaff was a Mennonite from Przechovka with a wife, two daughters, and a son. We have already mentioned this family in our discussion of the Wysock, Volhynia, census (see family 1 here). We learn from that census (here) that Benjamin was thirty-eight in 1819, which puts his birth year around 1781. Unfortunately, although the Przechovka church book lists eight males with this name, not one of them fits the time frame of this Benjamin Ratzlaff.

Further, GRANDMA does not include a Benjamin Ratzlaff who fits the profile given in the visa and the Volhynia census list. Consequently, we can say little definitively about this individual beyond the facts of the visa and census list. He was a Mennonite from Przechovka so probably a member of that church (it is conceivable that daughter Eva is PCB 1665/GM 107026, but that is nothing more than a wild guess). Because we find him in Volhynia but never in Molotschna (the 1835 census does not list him), we can tentatively conclude that he probably remained in Volhynia; he thus deviates from the usual pattern of the 1819 emigrants journeying all the way to Molotschna.

28. Tobias Schmidt, another Mennonite from Przechovka, had a wife, one son, and five daughters. Our first order of business is to correct Rempel (2007, 137), who omits the son. The original record is clear, however; Tobias journeyed “avec sa femme 1 fils & 5 filles,” that is, “with his wife, one son, and five daughters.”

The Przechovka church book lists four Tobias Schmidts, but two died before 1819. Of the two remaining possibilities, one seems a likely candidate, although there is some uncertainty about the number of children he had in 1819: Tobias Peter Schmidt (PCB 833/GM 61594).

Clear evidence favoring this Tobias Schmidt as the man on the visa comes from the 1835 Molotschna census, which lists Tobias Peter Schmidt at Franztal 8, where he had settled in 1819. In addition, the census lists a daughter Eva with a birth year of circa 1815 who does not appear in GRANDMA (another daughter named Eva was born and died in 1814), which seems to solve the problem of the number of children in 1819 and adds further confirmation to this identification.

In spite of a few uncertain details, we can confidently identify this Tobias Schmidt as PCB 833/GM 61594. Like so many others, this Przechovka church member emigrated in 1819 and settled that same year in the Molotschna village of Franztal.

***

Of the four families covered in this post, one remains unknown (Peter Wedel), and one is known but remained in Volhynia (Benjamin Ratzlaff). The other two both followed the most common pattern of settling in Franztal. It will be interesting, when all is said and done, to determine which Molotschna village ended up with the largest number of former Przechovka residents: Alexanderwohl or Franztal.

	Name	PCB/GM	Comment
1	Peter Becker	??	originally misidentified
2	Jacob Wedel	276/106688	based on association with Glugowko
3	Heinrich Unrau	1149/86839	settled at Alexanderwohl 14
4	Peter Wedel	??	perhaps PCB 262/GM 81631, a Przechovka elder
5	Heinrich Ratzlaff	141/47821	settled at Franztal 25
6	Anna Pankratz	140/43100	widow and sister to number 5 above
7	Jacob Becker	334/32008	Jacob passed away; his widow married Tobias Schmidt (number 28)
8	Adam Ratzlaff	192/4327	settled at Franztal 19
9	George Nachtigal	662/42260	settled at Franztal 3
10	Peter Unrau	1322/61701	settled at  Franztal 22
11	Martin Cornelsen	1250/33801	emigrated in 1820; settled at Alexanderwohl 1
12	Martin Köhn	??	probably from Przechovka
13	Maria Schmidt	??	probably from Przechovka
14	Benjamin Ratzlaff	1320/47884	settled first in Franztal
15	Peter Pankratz	??	destination unknown
16	Andreas Schmidt	1272/43155	settled at Alexanderwohl 14
17	Peter Frey	1351/35807	settled first in Franztal; moved to Alexanderwohl in 1821
18	Jacob Ratzlaff	??	Mennonite from Przechovka
19	Peter Becker	321/32099	settled at Franztal 17
20	Kornelius Richert	1251/48300	settled at Franztal 11
21	Peter Ratzlaff	111/47815	settled at Franztal 6
22	Daniel Unrau	??	identification uncertain; possibly 1000/106834
23	Jacob Schmidt	1302/32895	settled at Alexanderwohl 18
24	Heinrich Schmidt	1345/32966	settled at Alexanderwohl 5
25	Peter Wedel	??	identification unknown
26	Peter Block	Montau/32253	settled at Franztal 14
27	Benjamin Ratzlaff	??	remained in Volhynia
28	Tobias Schmidt	833/61594	settled at Franztal 8

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.