Tuesday, November 20, 2018

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 GÄ…bin (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.


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