One of the nice features about Google advanced searches is the ability to search a single website for a given term. I use that feature regularly to find where Buller Time discussed something in the past, and recently I did the same with the Chortitza: Mennonitische Geschichte und Ahnenforschung website, searching for any occurrences of the name Buller. One result in particular caught my eye.
The caption reads:
Helene Schmidt (Tochter von Margarete H. Konrad) und Katharina Buller (Tochter von Katharina H. Konrad) mit der Oma Buller, Kleefeld – ca. 1937.
Helene Schmidt (daughter of Magarete H. Konrad) and Katharina Buller (daughter of Katharina H. Konrad) with Grandma Buller, Kleefeld, circa 1937.
Helene Schmidt (daughter of Magarete H. Konrad) and Katharina Buller (daughter of Katharina H. Konrad) with Grandma Buller, Kleefeld, circa 1937.
We should first clarify that the Kleefeld mentioned here is not the Molotschna village but is rather a village of the same name in the Slavgorod Mennonite Settlement in western Siberia. Nevertheless, it is always intriguing to find Bullers regardless of where they live.
The first order of business, of course, is to try to identify these three persons. This Grandma Buller (she married into the Buller family, was not born into it) had two granddaughters who are identified both by name and by mother’s name. This makes it easy to find the girls in GRANDMA.
Searching for a Katharina Konrad (the maiden name of the second girl’s mother) who was married to a Buller produces an immediate match: the little girl on the far right is Katharina Heinrich Buller, who was born sometime between 1935 and 1939 (GM: 1211844). The fact that GRANDMA does not list an exact birth year is a good indication that Katharina was still living when this information was entered. The birth date of her younger sister Erna, for example, is listed as 2 October 1942 because she passed away in 1997.
The GRANDMA information for Helene Schmidt confirms that we have the right family in view, since this girl was the daughter of Margarete Konrad and Gerhard Schmidt. The two mothers of the girls shown—Margarete and Katharina—were sisters, the daughters of Heinrich Jakob Konrad and Margareta Penner, both of whom were born in Rosenort, a village in Molotschna colony.
Needless to say, Katharina Buller is of most immediate interest to us. Her father was Heinrich Buller, her mother Katharina Konrad. Katharina the daughter married Emanuel Bairit and had three children with him. Interestingly, her husband died in Germany in 1996. Apparently the family moved from Russia to Germany sometime after the birth of the children.
But what about Katharina’s father Heinrich Buller? Unfortunately, we do not know the names of his parents, only that he was born (according to family records) 7 November 1905 and died 23 September 1974 in Zlatopol, Altai Krai, Russia, a small town roughly 40 miles south of the Kleefeld mentioned above. We can presume that the woman pictured above was Heinrich Buller’s mother, which made her Katharina Buller’s grandmother.
When I started this investigation, I hoped that we could identify the family line of which Katharina Buller was a part; unfortunately, for the time being we cannot go back earlier than Katharina’s father Heinrich. This is not the end of the quest, however, since there is more to learn about Bullers in this region. According to Cornelius Krahn (1959), Franz Buller of Zagradovka was one of the representatives who first surveyed the area prior to the establishment of the Slavgorod Mennonite settlement in 1907 and later served as minister and eventually elder. More recently, Igor Trutanow (2015) has written of Bullers who still live in the same area, in Konstantinovka, including a friend of his named Heinrich who had a sister Elisa and a mother Anna.
Beyond that, we should not forget that David Buller’s second wife and their son Heinrich moved to this same general area in 1908 (see here and here). In fact, the location where that group of Bullers settled, Miloradovka, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, was a mere 60–65 miles from the Kleefeld where the Bullers pictured above lived. In the satellite photograph below, Miloradovka is the yellow pin on the left, Kleefeld the red one on the right; Konstantinovka, the recent home of another Heinrich Buller, was roughly 5 miles to the west of Kleefeld.
It was interesting to learn at the outset of this post that several Buller families lived in western Siberia in the 1930s; it is remarkable to discover at the end that members of our own extended family of Bullers may still live in the area. This certainly merits further investigation.
Works Cited
Krahn, Cornelius. 1959. Slavgorod Mennonite Church (Slavgorod Mennonite Settlement, Siberia, Russia). GAMEO. Available online here.
Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.
The first order of business, of course, is to try to identify these three persons. This Grandma Buller (she married into the Buller family, was not born into it) had two granddaughters who are identified both by name and by mother’s name. This makes it easy to find the girls in GRANDMA.
Searching for a Katharina Konrad (the maiden name of the second girl’s mother) who was married to a Buller produces an immediate match: the little girl on the far right is Katharina Heinrich Buller, who was born sometime between 1935 and 1939 (GM: 1211844). The fact that GRANDMA does not list an exact birth year is a good indication that Katharina was still living when this information was entered. The birth date of her younger sister Erna, for example, is listed as 2 October 1942 because she passed away in 1997.
The GRANDMA information for Helene Schmidt confirms that we have the right family in view, since this girl was the daughter of Margarete Konrad and Gerhard Schmidt. The two mothers of the girls shown—Margarete and Katharina—were sisters, the daughters of Heinrich Jakob Konrad and Margareta Penner, both of whom were born in Rosenort, a village in Molotschna colony.
Needless to say, Katharina Buller is of most immediate interest to us. Her father was Heinrich Buller, her mother Katharina Konrad. Katharina the daughter married Emanuel Bairit and had three children with him. Interestingly, her husband died in Germany in 1996. Apparently the family moved from Russia to Germany sometime after the birth of the children.
But what about Katharina’s father Heinrich Buller? Unfortunately, we do not know the names of his parents, only that he was born (according to family records) 7 November 1905 and died 23 September 1974 in Zlatopol, Altai Krai, Russia, a small town roughly 40 miles south of the Kleefeld mentioned above. We can presume that the woman pictured above was Heinrich Buller’s mother, which made her Katharina Buller’s grandmother.
When I started this investigation, I hoped that we could identify the family line of which Katharina Buller was a part; unfortunately, for the time being we cannot go back earlier than Katharina’s father Heinrich. This is not the end of the quest, however, since there is more to learn about Bullers in this region. According to Cornelius Krahn (1959), Franz Buller of Zagradovka was one of the representatives who first surveyed the area prior to the establishment of the Slavgorod Mennonite settlement in 1907 and later served as minister and eventually elder. More recently, Igor Trutanow (2015) has written of Bullers who still live in the same area, in Konstantinovka, including a friend of his named Heinrich who had a sister Elisa and a mother Anna.
Beyond that, we should not forget that David Buller’s second wife and their son Heinrich moved to this same general area in 1908 (see here and here). In fact, the location where that group of Bullers settled, Miloradovka, Pavlodar, Kazakhstan, was a mere 60–65 miles from the Kleefeld where the Bullers pictured above lived. In the satellite photograph below, Miloradovka is the yellow pin on the left, Kleefeld the red one on the right; Konstantinovka, the recent home of another Heinrich Buller, was roughly 5 miles to the west of Kleefeld.
It was interesting to learn at the outset of this post that several Buller families lived in western Siberia in the 1930s; it is remarkable to discover at the end that members of our own extended family of Bullers may still live in the area. This certainly merits further investigation.
Works Cited
Krahn, Cornelius. 1959. Slavgorod Mennonite Church (Slavgorod Mennonite Settlement, Siberia, Russia). GAMEO. Available online here.
Trutanow, Igor. 2015. Konstantinovka—A Mennonite Village in the Soviet Empire: The Last Chapter of the History of the Mennonites in Russia. Toronto: Lulu.
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