The previous post, the first on Aganetha Dirks, wife of Heinrich Buller, set the context for her story by introducing the members of her birth family: her father Heinrich Dirks, her mother Anna Baier, and her full siblings Benjamin, Maria, and Cornelius. William Buller, our narrator, now turns to Aganetha’s early years. It is important to remember that his mother was deceased when the family history was being collected; his father is the one recounting the story.
And now I wish to make as faithful a picture as I can of mother’s childhood, youth, and young womanhood up to the time she married father. No information is at hand as to what kind of child she was. We are led to believe, however, that she was strong and healthy and docile. Her mother died when she was only three years old. Her father married again—this time a young spend-thrifty woman who made more debts than their income warranted. Soon after, therefore; her father’s fortunes began to dwindle. There were several children by this wife, namely, Heinrich, Wilhelm, and Peter. The brother also traveled to America and lived for a time near Marion Junction, South Dakota, but moved to the State of Washington about a dozen years ago. There he lived in great need for several years, but now is said to be pretty well off.
Mother had to work hard even when a very young girl. Her schooling was deficient and very limited. Yet she learned to read and write the German language and a little arithmetic. Like father, she had to educate herself mostly alone. As already stated, her father was big and strong. This propensity had won for him the nickname of “Ox” Duerksen, and many a time did he have a test of strength with other semi-giants for which that country was famous—chief of whom was a certain “Bear” Duerksen. Like [their] father, so were the sons—strong and powerful men. Cornelius especially was a terror of the country around and dearly loved a scrap. Many were the fights he had with the country “toughs” or with the “braves” of the Russian colonists. Indeed, even mother shared this family characteristic. It is said that in her prime she would not hesitate to shoulder alone a half “tschetwet” (three bushels) of wheat and walk off with it.
[16] Unfortunately, her father died when she was only nine years old. He died very suddenly, suffering the awfulest agony, so that his tongue split wide open. A few days after, a traveling Hungarian doctor, who always visited them on his rounds, stopped there. He was greatly shocked over the sad news and claimed he could so easily have saved him from death. This happened about 1851 or 1852. Shortly after his death, his widow, wishing to marry again, sold the estate, and owing to the unrest and deplorable state of Europe, just then occasioned by the Crimean Wars, disposed of it at a great sacrifice. The property therefore that he had accumulated brought almost nothing—a paltry 2,000 Rubles. When mother became of age, she inherited about 200 Rubles of this sum.
After the death of her father, a guardian was appointed over her, and this man was Daniel Unruh. Perhaps we may interrupt this narrative just long enough to state that Unruh was an influential man in the village. He owned several firesteads near Waldheim, which, several years after the above event, he sold in order to buy more land in the newer settlements of the Crimea. He bought near the village of Friedenstein, in the Crimea where, as we shall see, fate or providence brought father and mother together. For a number of years he lived and prospered there until about 1873, when he sold out all of his holdings in order to move to America. He was indeed a rich man, taking with a fortune of about 55,000 Rubles. He was a man of keen business perception and a good judge of land. Accordingly, he made an extensive search in America for the best placed to locate, especially for poor people. With this in mind, he visited Elkhart, Indiana, and looked over the Mennonite settlements there. Similarly, in Kansas, Iowa, and Mountain Lake, Minnesota. He was not entirely satisfied with either place. The land had to be bought, and while he could afford to buy still, he was not looking out for himself alone. He wanted to find a poor man’s refuge. Finally, his attentions were directed to the free public lands offered for settlement in the Territory of South Dakota. Accordingly, he went to investigate it and found it to be the place he was looking for. He therefore settled in that rich bottom land in the County of Turner township of Childstown. I mention this here so fully because it had a very determining influence on father and mother’s career, inducing them, too, to seek their fortunes in the “land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.”
1. GRANDMA does not know the exact date of death of Aganetha’s mother, listing only about 1846. This accords with the family memory, as does the relative age of Heinrich’s second wife. Her name was Katharina Wedel, and she was apparently only three years older than Heinrich’s oldest son. The names of the children of this union, Aganetha’s half-brothers, were indeed Heinrich, Wilhelm, and Peter. The brother who emigrated to the U.S. and ended up in Washington state was Peter.
2. The image of Aganetha’s brother Cornelius as an eager brawler does not fit the typical image of the Mennonites as “the quiet in the land,” but we have no reason to doubt its accuracy. Not everyone who lived in Molotschna was gentle, meek, and mild. Even Aganetha was reputed to be strong, being able to lift and carry 3 bushels of wheat, which would weigh roughly 180 pounds.
3. According to Heinrich’s memory, Aganetha’s father died when she was nine. This would put his year of death in 1852 at the latest. GRANDMA lists his year of death as 1853. However, both of these conflict with Waldheim voting documents, which list only one Heinrich Dirks in Waldheim, whose name appears as late as the 1857 voting record (see here). It is not clear why his name appears on that year’s voting record, since Heinrich Dirks’s widow remarried on 15 August 1853. It seems that the voting record may be in error.
4. Worth noting is that the next owner of Wirtschaft 3, as recorded on the 1862 voting record (same link as above), was named Heinrich Schmidt, who was, according to GRANDMA, the person whom Heinrich Dirks’s widow married after his death. One wonders, then, about the story that the widow sold the property at a great sacrifice. Presumably there was some relation between the disposal of the property and the marriage between the two. If I recall correctly, a surviving spouse inherited half of a married couple’s assets and was required to distribute the value of the other half to the children or to a trust held for them. If this is correct and applies in this instance, then it seems plausible to think that Heinrich Schmidt paid the 2,000 rubles to acquire half-ownership of the property (this money was set aside for the children) and married Aganetha’s widowed stepmother and thus acquired the other half of Wirtschaft 3. In either case, Aganetha inherited her share of roughly 200 rubles only when she reached a certain age.
5. The same voting record referenced above reveals that Daniel Unruh resided at Waldheim 15. He apparently acquired that Wirtschaft from his father-in-law, Cornelius Wedel, between 1847 and 1850. The connection between Daniel Unruh and Cornelius Wedel perhaps explains why Daniel Unruh became Aganetha’s guardian. According to an 1839 Waldheim settlement document (here), Heinrich Dirks first resided with his uncle Cornelius Wedel, which means that these Dirks and Wedel families were related. Thus Aganetha’s guardian was related to her by marriage, having married into the Wedel family.
We encountered the name Daniel Unruh previously, when we read two posts earlier that Heinrich Buller met several kind woman riding in a carriage who insisted on giving him a ride to Waldheim. One of those women was Daniel Unruh’s wife; another was his daughter. We also read, in the same context, of the village Friedenstein in the Crimea, which is where Daniel Unruh later moved and where Heinrich Buller and Aganetha Dirks became reacquainted. But that is jumping ahead in the story, so for now we will leave it at that.
Work Cited
Buller, William B. 1915. Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. Parker, SD: privately printed.
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