Who decided to spell our name Buller?

Not every question can be answered, but that does not mean that such questions should not be asked anyway. For example, it is highly unlikely that we will ever know precisely when the spelling of our family name was changed from Bühler to Buller, let alone why and by whom that decision was made, but asking the question does prompt other interesting questions that lead us to think in new directions, such as the following.

• Were Heinrich and the several generations after him literate?

As we have seen, Mennonite life in nineteenth-century Russia stressed a basic education, but that was a relatively recent phenomenon. During the late seventeenth and the eighteenth centuries education was limited primarily to the urban well-to-do. It would not be at all surprising, then, if neither Heinrich nor Unknown nor Unknown’s sons were able to write their own names (the definition of literacy for people of this period). The females in the family were even less likely to be literate, since education was extended to them after it became more common among males.

What is the significance of this for the question of the day? If Unknown was illiterate, he was probably not the one who decided to spell the family name Buller.

• Did the pronunciation of our last name change, or did it remain relatively stable while spelling conventions changed?

Since we are unable to go back in time and hear Heinrich and Unknown say our name, we really cannot answer this question. Odds are, however, that it was a little of both. At the very least, we know two things: (1) our name was originally spelled Bühler but later came to be spelled Buller; (2) even after it was spelled Buller, the u in our name was rendered differently, sometimes with no mark over it and sometimes with what might be an apex over it (see further here).

Come to think of it, this prompts yet another question, this one for the aunts and uncles: Did your grandfather Peter P pronounce our name as we do (rhyming with Fuller), or did his pronunciation have more of an oo or ü sound to it? That is, has the pronunciation of our name changed further since we settled in the U.S.?

• If Unknown or the generations around him were illiterate and thus not responsible for the change from Bühler to Buller, who was?

The compilers of the Przekhovka church register would have to be among the chief suspects, although those who created the records from which they drew (assuming that is what happened) are also likely. Perhaps our ancestors purchased houses or land in the community and those who drew up the bills of sale and deeds decided how best to represent what they heard in writing.

We will probably never who is responsible for changing the spelling of our family’s name from Bühler to Buller, but at least asking the question has allowed us to think about our family in some news ways and to understand better their lives in the Vistula River delta during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. We so have a lot to learn about the Prussian/Polish period—should be fun!

Unknown Buller 3

In our series on the questions surrounding Unknown Buller (Grandma 32675), we have tackled the question of when he lived (ca. 1653–sometime in the early 1700s; see here) and what it means that the family name first appeared in conjunction with him (probably that there were no records before him or that the name was first spelled Buller rather than Bühler with him; see here).

This post turns to another enigmatic statement in the Przechovka, Prussia, church register, namely, that “all the Bullers are descendants of this family.” What might this statement mean? As with the earlier question, several possibilities come to mind.

1. All Bullers (as opposed to Bühlers?) descended from this family.


2. All Bullers and Bühlers originated with this single family.


3. All Bullers in the Przechovka church descended from this family.

Before we sort through the various possibilities, it is important to note precisely what is said and what is not said. The statement is that “all the Bullers are descendants of this family,” not that “all the Bullers are descendants of this man,” that is, Unknown Buller.

This opens the possibility that the church register reflects knowledge of one or more generations before Unknown, perhaps stretching back to Heinrich (born ca. 1580).

Of course, that is not the only possible interpretation. The compilers of the register may simply be focusing first on the family, then on Unknown as the head of the family. The full register statement, which switches decisively from the family to the individual after the second sentence, allows for this possibility:

This is the first time that this family name appears. All the Bullers are descendants of this family. His given name and original residence are not known. He died at a very old age. The only information about his marital status is a notation found with No. 930B and No. 339. This indicates that he was married to Jacob Thomsen’s daughter, Dina, and that she survived him.

Regardless of what we make of the reference to the family as opposed to the person Unknown Buller, the suggested explanations are worth examining.

1. If the meaning of the Buller comment in the church register is that the spelling Buller began with Unknown (see here), then presumably that would apply to this statement as well: all those who use the spelling Buller (rather than Bühler) descend from this family (which was headed by Unknown). As far as we can tell at this point, the statement would be true. The spelling Bühler was used at least by Heinrich, and Unknown is the first attested use of the spelling Buller.

2. If the point of the comment is that all Bullers and Bühlers derive from this family, then we would have to say that the compilers of the register were mistaken, since the Bern archives have a reference to a Bühler in 1525 (see here), which would predate Unknown by 125 years and Heinrich by at least 55 years. Tying that individual to “this family” seems a bit too far to stretch.

3. The statement may be far more limited in scope than the first two possibilities assume, claiming only that all the Bullers in the Przechovka church, who are about to be listed, derive from this one family (which was headed by Unknown). If this is the intended meaning, then all that the compilers are saying is that during the time of Unknown there were not multiple Buller families in the church; there was only one family of Bullers in the church, and every Buller in the church descended from that family and their heads: Unknown and his wife Dina Thoms Buller.

In the end, we cannot know which of these explanations is correct (if any of them), but the third does seem the most plausible. The compilers of the Przechovka church register were about to list a number of Bullers—more than fifty of them—and to make matters as clear as possible they began by noting that all of those Bullers were from a single family, the descendants of a single couple.

Of course, this raises another question: Why would the compilers feel a need to do this? If there were no other Buller families in the church, why make a point of noting it? Only one answer makes sense: there had been other Buller families in the church previously.

Ready to step out into speculation? … We know that Heinrich Bühler and his family were the first of our family to settle in the Przechovka area (see here). Odds are that he had a number of children, just like all other Mennonite families. Furthermore, his children also had children, so that the Przechovka church likely had multiple Buller families associated with it. What happened to them? Why are they not listed alongside Unknown and Dina? Did they abandon the church? move back to Switzerland? perhaps move somewhere else … maybe to Volhynia?

If you recall, an earlier post noted that groups of Mennonites relocated from Prussia to Volhynia beginning in the last decade of the 1700s, roughly the same time that the Przechovka church register was compiled (see here and here; see also Schrag 1959). We also discovered that Buller was among the most common family names of Karolswalde, the earliest Volynian Mennonite village (Crous 1857).

Putting all these pieces together, it is not difficult to imagine what happened and why the compilers of the church register stated that “all the Bullers are descendants of this family.” In all likelihood, there were multiple Buller families in the Przechovka during most of the 1700s. However, during the last decade of the century, all but one of them moved from the Przechovka area to Volhynia. Only Unknown and Dina and their children remained in the Przechovka church. Since the compilers and their readers knew that there had been multiple Buller families in the church, the compilers added a comment to make it abundantly clear that all the Bullers in the church register descended from this one family. The statement was not a grandiose claim that all Bullers of every time and every place descended from Unknown and Dina; it merely intended to clarify that the Bullers about to be listed all descended from the one family that had stayed in Przechovka rather than moving to Volhynia.

Three tough questions down, one easier one to go … before we explore the life of Heinrich in more detail.

Sources

Crous, Ernst. 1957. Karolswalde (Rivne Oblast, Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online.

Schrag, Martin H. 1959. Volhynia (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online.

Unknown Buller 2a

As a follow-up to the Unknown Buller 2 post, which explored the meaning of the Przechovka church register statement “this is the first time that this family name appears,” it occurs to me that there is one further possible explanation.

The clue is found in a passing statement about Unknown’s forefather Heinrich (Penner 1978, 245; more about the content of this statement later):

In 1602 ist Heinrich Buehler, ein Taeufer aus Bruetisell in der Graftschaft Kyburg in der Schweiz (Kanton Zuerich), mit Frau und Kindern nach Maehren verzogen.

Is it possible that all that the church register is saying is that this is the first time that the family name appears spelled Buller, that previously the name had been spelled Buehler/Bühler but that beginning with Unknown it was spelled Buller?

Certainty will continue to elude us, but this explanation seems at least possible, especially given the evidence that the spelling Buller was standard by the time of the Przechovka church records.

Source

Penner, Horst. 1978. Die ost- und westpreußischen Mennoniten in ihrem religiösen und sozialen Leben, in ihren kulturellen und wirtschaftlichen Leistungen. Teil 1: 1526 bis 1772. Weierhof: Mennonitischer Geschichtsverein.

Heinrich Buller

Before we continue with the Unknown Buller series of posts, it is worthwhile to note several points of interest about the earliest Buller included in the Grandma database: Heinrich.

Searching online for “Heinrich Buller” and “Bruetisellen” returns about a dozen meaningful sites. Most of them repeat the same information as the Grandma entry, the ultimate source of which is unspecified anywhere.

1. Heinrich’s date of death is sometimes given as “about” 1615; Grandma, however, merely states that his death was “after” 1615. Grandma, it appears, is being careful not to say more than we know: the actual date of Heinrich’s death is unknown, but it must have been after 1615, which is apparently when Heinrich and family moved to the Przechovka church area.

However, this ambiguity obscures one of the difficulties with the claim that Heinrich and Unknown were father and son. Specifically, one genealogy resource lists Unknown as Heinrich’s son and gives Unknown’s year of birth as 1635 (see here). Granting that 1635 is indeed “after” 1615, so that there is no direct contradiction between the two claims, this scenario seems unlikely for several reasons: (a) If Unknown was actually born in 1635, his father Heinrich would have been fifty-five at the time. Fathering a child at this age is, of course, entirely possible, but it would have been unusual within that historical context. (b) If Unknown was indeed born in 1635, his last child Trudcke (see here) would have been born when he was sixty-seven (in 1702). Again, possible but not likely.

The most reasonable explanation of the dates and other information that we have is that Heinrich and Unknown were not father and son, that one or two generations lay between them. So, for example, one might posit a scenario in which Heinrich was actually Unknown’s great-grandfather. The dates and relations would look something like this:

• Heinrich, born 1580 and married 1598, had a son (X Buller) around 1605 >
• X Buller, born around 1605 and married around 1625, had a son (Y Buller) around 1635 >
• Y Buller, born around 1635 and married around 1655, had a son (Unknown) around 1655 >
• Unknown, born around 1655 and married around 1680, fathered children until 1702

Such a reconstruction would solve a host of complications, such as Heinrich’s date of death about or after 1615, the apparent evidence that some Buller was born in 1635, and the certainty that Unknown fathered a daughter as late as 1702. This is entirely speculative, of course, but it is likely closer to the truth than the idea that Unknown was Heinrich’s son.

2. All the sources agree that Heinrich was born in Switzerland. This fits well with earlier indications that the Buller family originated in Switzerland, not the Netherlands.

One should recall, for example, that name Buller was attested in the Bern, Switzerland, archives for the year 1684 and that the variant Bühler was recorded as early as 1525 (see here for the post). In addition, Adalbert Goertz concludes that Buller, among other names, has a “Silesian-Bavarian-Swiss flavor” (1976, 240; see further here).

What is noteworthy in this case is that we are told the exact Swiss village in which Heinrich lived before he left his homeland: Brüttisellen. At some point in the past that village was combined with another to form Wangen-Brüttisellen, which today has a population of nearly eight thousand. The village is a mere 6 miles to the northeast of Zurich. This certainly will be something to investigate further in future posts.

Wangen-Brüttisellen today.

3. The sources also agree on the place of Heinrich’s death: Deutsch Konopat in the Schwetz district of Prussia. An earlier post mentioned a village by the name of Klein Konopat (see here). What is in view here is the larger composite village, which was made up of Klein Konopat and Groß Konopat, that is, Lesser Konopat and Greater Konopat.

We will discuss both villages in greater detail in the near future. For now it suffices to note that the Mennonite residents of both Greater and Lesser Konopat were members of the Przechovka church whose register we have examined a number of times and that they gathered in this area of Prussia in order to escape religious persecution in their homelands.

Although many questions remain unanswered, we have already learned a great deal. Assuming that Heinrich Buller is in our ancestral line (a safe assumption, I think), we know that our family comes from Switzerland, not the Netherlands, as is commonly thought. In addition, our family can trace its involvement in the Anabaptist/Mennonite movement nearly to the very beginning, to at least the first generation after Menno Simons (if not earlier). Although not all the lines are filled in (the connection between David Buller and his forebears in the Przechovka church continues to elude us), we can trace out roots back over four centuries, to the birth of Heinrich in a Swiss village named Brüttisellen.

Source

Goertz, Adalbert. 1976. The Marriage Records of Montau in Prussia for 1661–1704. MQR 50:240–50.

5,000

Sometime during the night the Buller Time blog received its 5,000th page visit. In the world of blogs, this really is tiny potatoes. Still, it is not too shabby for a simple family blog dedicated to a bunch of hicks originally from Switzerland who ended up, by way of villages in Prussia and Molotschna, on a farm outside of Lushton, Nebraska.

Since the first post on 15 June of last year, 136 have followed (not counting this one). On average, then, one could say that each of the 137 posts was visited at least 36 times. Actually, however, since some visitors probably read several posts at a time, the average is no doubt higher. Who would have ever thought that there would be so much interest in our family’s story! Thanks to all those Bullers past and present who have made it possible, but especially to …

Unknown Buller 2

We have begun to examine some of the questions raised by the information provided for Unknown Buller in the Przechovka, Prussia, church register (see here for the summary in the church register). Thus far we have determined that this individual was born around 1653 to 1658, roughly a century after Menno Simons and other Anabaptists broke from the Catholic Church.

Today we want to reflect on the statement in the church register that “this is the first time this family name appears.” What could this possibly mean? Several possible explanations come to mind:

1. Unknown Buller was the first person to have been known by the last name Buller.


2. Unknown Buller was the first of his family to join this (or any?) Mennonite church.


3. Unknown Buller is the first Buller known to the compiler of the Przechovka church register

Ultimately we may not know with certainty which of these is correct—or even if any of them are. We can, however, use them as launching points to explore unknown territory about our family.

The first possibility, that Unknown Buller was the first to bear the last name Buller, is clearly false, as his entry in the Grandma database makes clear. Look closely again at all of the information given for him.

Remarkably, Grandma records the name of Unknown Buller’s father: Heinrich. Unknown Buller was not our eponymous ancestor (the person who gave us our last name); the origin of “Buller” must go at least one generation before him (if not more).

[Side note: The identification of Heinrich Buller as Unknown’s father raises a further complication. If Grandma is correct that he was born about 1580, and if we are reasonably correct that Unknown Buller was born in the early 1650s, then Heinrich would have been seventy to seventy-five when he fathered Unknown—a possible but unlikely scenario. One wonders if a generation between Heinrich and Unknown has been skipped. Stay tuned.]

The second possible meaning of the statement in the church register, that Unknown Buller was the first in his family to join the Przechovka church, is not demonstrably false, but it is implausible. If we assume that Unknown and Heinrich were related in some way, then the Grandma entry for Heinrich provides us the evidence to doubt that explanation.

Notice where Heinrich was born and where he died. His life began in Brütisellen, Switzerland, and ended in Deutsch Konopat, Schwetz, Prussia. Deutsch Konopat was one of the Mennonite villages whose residents were members of the Przechovka church. In all likelihood, then, both Heinrich and Unknown were associated with this church.

Not only is it unlikely that Unknown was the first member of the Przechovka church; it is also highly improbable that the Przechovka church was the first Mennonite assembly with Bullers in it. Again, Heinrich’s record provides the clue.

What would have led Heinrich to leave the land of his birth, Switzerland, to move to Prussia, and to settle in a Mennonite village? The most likely explanation is that Heinrich was part of the larger body of Mennonites who fled persecution in Switzerland for the safer region of Prussia. If so, then at least Heinrich, if not the generation preceding him, were already Mennonite.

In the end, either the late-1700s compiler of the Przechovka church register was mistaken in thinking that Unknown was the first person to bear the last name Buller, or by the words “this is the first time this family name appears” he meant only that Unknown was the first Buller listed in whatever records he used in compiling the register.

The latter seems the most reasonable explanation, since Heinrich apparently was Mennonite and was associated with the Przechovka church. Presumably Heinrich Buller could or should have been listed in the sources used by the compiler of the church register, but for some unknown reason he was not. One question answered, another question raised.

Unknown Buller 1

Recently we discovered that the Buller-with-no-first-name—originally dubbed Old Buller but now referred to as Unknown Buller—is listed in the Grandma database, where we also read a translation and summary of the information provided about him in the Przechovka church register (see here).

This raised a series of questions that we will attempt to answer in turn. The first question is: What were the approximate life dates of Unknown Buller? Our evidence ultimately comes from the church register but is nicely summarized in the Grandma database.

The two scans below show portions of the church register Buller section: first Unknown Buller (listed as *** Buller, number 339), then his younger children.

The dates at the bottom of the first photo are of limited help, since they are associated with Unknown Buller’s grandsons, not him. The second extract provides a few more clues, since it lists a Trudcke Bullers, who was the daughter of numbers 339 and 930B (the 330B should have been corrected, like the first three in the series). In other words, Trudcke was the daughter of Unknown Buller and Dina Thoms.

Looking more closely, we see that her date of birth was 15 June 1702 and that she was married on 6 November 1722 to number 793 (= Michael Schmidt). Based on this bare piece of evidence, we know that Unknown Buller had at least one child in the early years of the eighteenth century. Grandma fills in additional details.

According to Grandma, Trudcke was Unknown and Dina’s eighth and last child. Child four (Peter) was born about 1684, and the three children after him were spaced a little more than three years apart. If Unknown and Dina’s first three children were spaced two years apart, then the first child would have been born sometime around 1678. Assuming that Unknown was twenty to twenty-five when he started a family, he must have been born circa 1653 to 1658.

To put Unknown Buller in historical perspective, he lived roughly thirty-five years after the Pilgrims sailed on the Mayflower to the New World (there was no U.S. yet) and about a century after Menno Simons broke from the Catholic Church and joined the Anabaptists. In fact, Unknown was closer in time to Menno Simons and the other Reformers (Luther, Calvin) than he was to our ancestor David Buller.

Subsequent posts will explore several other aspects of Unknown Buller’s life, but at least now we have a time and a place (Prussia) to begin.

From Kleefeld with Love

It has become apparent over the past weeks that the Buller Time blog is not just for Bullers any more. Recently, for example, someone interested in the Plett family visited the blog and left a comment on the Thinking about Kleefeld 2 post (for the post + comment at the bottom, see here).

That interesting comment reminds me not only to emphasize that everyone (Bullers and non-Bullers alike) is invited to read and comment here, but also to mention the book I am currently reading: From Kleefeld with Love (Harder 2003). The body of the book presents a collection of letters “written by Mennonite women during the onset of Soviet Russia’s most turbulent years, 1925 to 1933.”

The book title derives from the fact that one of the correspondents lived in the Molotschna village of Kleefeld. Over the course of the first third of the twentieth century this woman wrote to and received letters from relatives who had moved from Kleefeld to Manitoba, Canada.

Before reproducing the letters, the book offers background about the village (e.g., it was here I learned that the village name is pronounced clay-feld), the members of the Harder family who lived and left there, and the deterioration of Molotschna life during these years of the Soviet regime.

For the sake of our Plett commenter, I should add that the book also mentions an Elizabeth Plett, who married into the Harder family in the early 1800s (p. 43), and describes the ordination of an unnamed Plett from Nikolaidorf, whose uncle (likewise unnamed) was an elder from Hierschau (51–52).

I hope to return to the substance of this book (what all our lives may have been like if Peter D and Sarah had not left Molotschna for the U.S.) at some point in the future, but for now I simply commend the book itself to all Buller Time readers. You can purchase it online from Pandora Press here.

Source

Harder, John A., ed. and trans. 2003. From Kleefeld with Love. Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press.

Old Buller or Original Buller?

My brother Dan alerted me this morning that he had located in the Grandma database the Buller-with-no-first-name whom I earlier dubbed Old Buller (see here).

As is evident, Grandma does not know his first name either, but the database provides a summary (or loose translation) of (parts of) the statement accompanying the Buller entry in the Przechovka church register.

Buller entry in the Przechovka church register, with summary/translation below

This is the first time that this family name appears. All the Bullers are descendants of this family. His given name and original residence are not known. He died at a very old age. The only information about his marital status is a notation found with No. 930B and No. 339. This indicates that he was married to Jacob Thomsen’s daughter, Dina, and that she survived him. Jacob Thoms, No. 930, lived at Dorposch. [This last sentence appears to have been inserted into the summary based on the information given at the 930 entry.]

The summary raises as many questions as it answers.

1. What were the approximate dates for this first-identified Buller (number 339)?

2. What is meant that “this is the first time this family name appears”?

3. What does it mean that “all the Bullers are descendants of this family”?

4. Where is Dorposch, the original home of the unknown Buller’s father-in-law?

5. Most important of all, now that we have the Grandma number for the unknown Buller (in fact, let’s call him Unknown Buller for now), can we trace the line from him to our own family head, David?

I suspect that the answer to question 5 is no, but that will not prevent us from at least exploring any possibilities. Before that, however, we should first seek to understand what the summary statement is and is not saying. A series of subsequent posts will do that by addressing the initial questions above—as well as any others that come to mind during the investigation.

Who was David and Helena’s firstborn?

As noted earlier (see here), the Grandma database and the Buller Family Record (BFR) disagree on the identify of David and Helena Zielke Buller’s first child and their first son.

According to the Buller Family Record, David and Helena first had a daughter named Helena, after which Peter D was born in 1845. Following Peter, in order, were Elisabeh, Benjamin, Maria, and David. Sometime after David Jr. was born, Helena died, and David Sr. remarried and had three more children: Heinrich, Jacob, and Sarah.

Buller Family Record page for David Buller and family

The Grandma database, on the other hand, moves Heinrich from first child of David and his second wife (whose name is unknown) to first child of David and his first wife, Helena.

Grandma database screen for David Buller and family

In addition, whereas the Buller Family Record lists Sarah as David’s youngest child, one of three children born to David and his second wife, the Grandma database places her after Elisabeth as a child of Helena.

So, in spite of general agreement on the order and dates of birth of the children, as well as other details related to the family history—both agree that Sarah married a man named Nickel, and both indicate that David’s second wife died in Siberia (Asiatic Russia, as Grandma puts it)—there are significant differences between the two sources:

• The BRF lists Helena as David and Helena’s first child; Grandma lists Heinrich.
• The BRF identifies Peter D as the oldest son in the family; again, Grandma lists Heinrich.
• The BRF states that Sarah was born into the second marriage; Grandma, the first.

Without contemporary documents pointing one way or another (time to look at the Alexanderwohl church register again?), we cannot say which resource is correct—even though one might prefer the more recent and the more well-documented one: Grandma (recall that Grandma had Peter D and Sarah’s ship name correct, when the BRF had it wrong).

Why does this matter? If we assume for the sake of argument that the Grandma database is correct, then our ancestor Peter D was not the oldest son in his family. Further, as the second-born, Peter D had no chance of inheriting Waldheim Wirtschaft 48 (a half-allotment), which David had received in 1869. It would pass to Heinrich instead.

This may further explain Peter D’s decision to move his family to the U.S., along with his in-laws Johann and Katharina Siebert. All avenues to securing his own land in Molotschna were closed; the U.S. was his only land of opportunity.

*****

Even if Peter D had been the oldest and had remained in Molotschna, he would not have inherited Waldheim 48 from his father David. In fact, Peter D passed away in 1897 at the age of fifty-two (why so young?); David died seven years later at the the age of eighty-six.

Molotschna church life

One result of there being a limited number of church buildings in Molotschna (only eleven villages out of sixty-five had a church; see here) was that church attendance was apparently not as “regular” as one might have expected of a colony full of Mennonites.

A future post will explore the size and the layouts of several churches in order to estimate how many worshipers could have been accommodated at any given time. At the risk of giving away the end of the story, that analysis will reveal that not all the members of a given church (e.g., Alexanderwohl) could have been regular attenders, for the simple reason that the buildings were not large enough.

For now, we return to Mary Regier’s account (see here for her earlier discussion of the dung bricks) to learn another reason why church attendance less than regular. If you recall, Mary and her family moved to Alexanderkrone when she was ten (1869), so her experience was probably shared by other residents of Alexanderkrone, including Peter P and Sarah, who lived there between 1869 and 1871. Mary writes:

Alexanderwohl church

Church affairs were not as well regulated as they generally are now. Today, it seems to me, people are almost overfed. Many a Sunday we did not go to church at all, for the simple reason that it was too far to go. At times there were services in the school house, or in the school house of a neighboring village. In that case we went. Occasionally father read to us a sermon out of “Hofacker,”* as we ourselves did later on. Sunday schools were not prevalent yet, and they were not necessary. We learned the Bible and the Testament better than is now the case.  (Regier 1941, 88)

Mary’s language deserves special attention: her family did not attend church “many a Sunday” but did attend local worship services “at times” and “occasionally” listened to a sermon read in the home. Clearly, Mary’s family were devout worshipers but not regular church attenders—this was probably the case for many, probably most, other Alexanderkrone residents, as well as any Mennonite family living in a village with no church building.

All that to say: when we ask about which church(es) our Molotschna ancestors were associated with, we need to keep in mind that the question is one of association and not necessarily attendance every Sunday.

Note
* “Hofacker” refers to a collection of sermons first given by a popular preacher named Karl Friedrich Hofacker (1789–1828). Mennonite preachers generally read their Sunday sermons, which were often written by by others. Thus a father reading a Hofacker sermon to his family was a fair substitute for attending a formal church service.

Source

Regier, C. C. 1941.  Childhood Reminiscences of a Russian Mennonite Immigrant Mother 1859–1880. MQR 15:83–94.

Grandpa and his siblings

Over the past few weeks we have been introduced to Grandpa’s siblings one by one; today we see them all together. The occasion was a solemn one: the funeral for their father, Peter P Buller.

The service was held 18 July 1964 at the Bethesda Mennonite Church in Henderson, Nebraska. The photograph below was taken after the service in the fellowship hall. Starting in the back and moving from left to right we see Henry, Peter, Chris, and Klaas; in the front are Anna, Maria, Elizabeth, Sara, Katharina, and Benjamin. (As noted earlier, the first Peter and Margaretha both died before 1964.)

The composite below arranges the individual photos from the earlier posts around the photo above, to make the connections between the siblings in their (generally) younger days and their 1964 selves a bit clearer. For a larger version of the photo, see here.

Help for the journey

Our Russian ancestors who emigrated to North America in the last quarter of the nineteenth century were by no means the first Mennonites to call the New World home. In fact, the first Mennonites settled in the Pennsylvania area in 1683. Over the next two centuries Mennonites moved west with the rest of the country, so that by 1870 there were significant Mennonite populations in Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, and states farther west.

These U.S. Mennonites were no idle bystanders when their European sisters and brothers expressed a desire to move to North America. In fact, individual Mennonites and church bodies not only collected funds to defray the costs of relocating but also negotiated travel arrangements to smooth and simplify the long journey.

For example, in early 1874 Bernhard Warkentin (see earlier here), working on behalf of the Board of Guardians (an organization formed to aid European Mennonite immigrants), made arrangements with the Inman Steamship Line and the Erie Railroad Company to transport Mennonite immigrants from Hamburg, Germany, to locations in the western United States. The cost to travel by steam ship and rail from Hamburg to Omaha, for example, was $41.00. Traveling all the way to Atchison, Kansas, cost an additional dollar (see Schnell 1950, 212–13).

In spite of an invitation to participate in the work of the Board of Guardians, Mennonite churches in Pennsylvania made their own arrangements to assist their Russian co-religionists: transportation via the Red Star Line (see here) and the Pennsylvania Railroad. Schnell explains further the reasons behind the Pennsylvania churches’ decision:

The main obstacle to the forming of a combined committee appears to have been the desire of the Pennsylvania brethren to deal with the Red Star Line, which was largely owned by Quakers who had always been friendly to the Mennonites. Soon after the organization of the Executive Aid Committee [of the Pennsylvania churches], a contract was signed with this line whose ships sailed between Antwerp and Philadelphia. This contract afforded several advantages which had not been achieved in the Inman Line contract. The rates agreed on allowed a considerable reduction from those in the Inman contract. The Red Star Company agreed to furnish transportation from Antwerp to the desired destination in Western America for from $35 to $37 per emigrant, depending on the distance traversed and allowed reduction for the children and baggage equivalent to that of the Inman contract. The land transportation was furnished by the Pennsylvania Railroad, whose agent, Francis Funk, a brother of John Funk, provided them a special guarantee of good treatment. Furthermore, the Red Star Line ships docked at Philadelphia, and thereby enhanced the opportunity of the Pennsylvania residents to minister to the needs of the travelers before sending them West. (Schnell 1950, 215)

After several years the benefits of the Red Star Line arrangement over the Inman one became evident to all, and the Board of Guardians transferred their business to the Red Star Line as well.

Why does this matter to Bullers? It fills in a few more details about Peter D and family’s journey to America. We already knew that our forebears crossed the sea on a Red Star Line steam ship, the SS Switzerland. Now we know why that shipping company was preferred: it was operated by members of another “peace church,” the Quakers, and it offered a better fare (by $5–$7 per person) than the Inman line. We also know that they may well have been greeted and cared for by fellow Mennonites when they docked in Philadelphia.

Source

Schnell, Kempes. 1950. John F. Funk, 1835–1930, and the Mennonite Migration of 1873–1875. MQR 24:199–229.

Grandpa’s siblings 10

We have already met Peter and Margaretha’s sixth son and twelfth and last child: Henry P (see here). Henry was born on 20 December 1915 and moved with his parents to Upland, California, in August 1936 (see here for photographs of the family in California). Since Henry graduated with a bachelor’s degree from Bethel College in North Newton, Kansas, in 1941, his time in California was probably limited.

As noted earlier, Henry performed Mennonite Central Committee relief work in France in the early 1940s.* It was there that he met Beatrice Rosenthal, a young Jewish woman whose family had fled Germany in the 1930s to escape the rising anti-Semitism. After the Germans overran France, Henry, Bea, and 175 other Americans were imprisoned for a year in a hotel in Baden-Baden, Germany. After their release in 1944, Henry and Bea moved to Newton, where both taught in area schools.

After earning a graduate degree in psychology and counseling (University of Kansas), Henry served on the faculty of Lamar University in Beaumont, Texas (1961–1982).

Henry P Buller striking a professorial pose in 1967.

Henry and Bea had one son, René Aldo, who was born in France and adopted by the couple. Sadly, René predeceased both of his parents, as he was killed while serving as a Combat Medic in Quang Tri Province, South Vietnam, on 27 March 1969, only seventeen days after starting his tour.

Henry passed away at the age of seventy-seven, on 15 May 1993. Although René is buried in the Buller–Siebert/Mennonite Cemetery, apparently Henry and Bea are buried elsewhere, presumably in the Beaumont area.

Note

*  The MCC work was probably Henry’s alternative service, a government-approved means by which those who object to participation in warfare or the military are permitted to serve in a noncombatant role.

Warm homes … Molotschna style

No matter how expensive our winter heating costs might be, most of us would not trade places with our ancestors in nineteenth-century Molotschna. Consider, for example, the reminiscences of Mary Wall Regier, who was born in 1859 in Altonau, then moved to Alexanderkrone at age nine or ten. (This is the same village where Peter D and Sarah lived for several years, so Mary would have been twelve when Peter P was two. She probably knew our family.) She recorded her memories of life in Molotschna in 1930, when she was seventy, and her son C. C. Regier translated and published her record in 1941.

Today’s topic is the central stove, which was used not only to cook but also to heat the house:

The house was so arranged that the kitchen was toward the center. Here the stove was situated which heated also the big brick chimney. The chimney was so large that it formed a part of the walls of the living rooms. By firing the stove in the kitchen the bricks of the chimney were heated, and they in turn heated the rooms without soiling them. Most of the heating was done with straw. Only on special occasions did we use dried dung. To be able to use dung seemed very pleasant. The region was timberless, except for the woods that had been planted. For that reason we could not heat with wood. (Regier 1941, 88)

Mary Regier continues:

Now I must tell you how we obtained this dung fuel. During the winter the cow dung was put on a special place. A little horse dung could be mixed with it, but not much. This, I think, does not burn well, and it was needed for fertilizing the land. When it got warmer in spring the Russians came and prepared the dung. We had brick-forms which were used. The stuff had to be prepared first. With their feet they kneaded it, using a little chaff and water so that it would form a mass that would hold together when it dried. Then they put it on a table and kneaded it into the brick-forms with their hand, after which it was carried off to dry. When it had dried a little it was erected into little houses so it could dry thoroughly. Then we carried it into the barn, and were proud of all our fuel. Our wish was that we might have more of it. (Regier 1941, 89)

Next time you pay your utilities, it might be less painful to do so if you remember that at least you don’t have to wish that you had more dung.

Source

Regier, C. C. 1941.  Childhood Reminiscences of a Russian Mennonite Immigrant Mother 1859–1880. MQR 15:83–94.

Peter D?

Two entries in the Alexanderwohl church register bear closer scrutiny, since one of them may relate to our ancestor Peter D Buller.

As was discussed earlier here, this register records some of the important information—parents, date of birth, village of birth or residence, date of baptism, spouse, and date of death—for some of the members of the church. When all that information is provided, identifying the person precisely is relatively easy. When only partial information appears, the best we can do is suggest possibilities. So it is with the entries pictured below.

Numbers 672 and 675 are both named Peter Buller. One of them clearly is not Peter D, the other … well … maybe?

Peter 672 is the child of register numbers 402 and 403, who turn out to be David Buller and Elisabeth Wedel of Hierschau (p. 19 of the register). Looking to the right end of the line we see that in 1868 Peter 672 married number 650, Helena Bartel of Waldheim (p. 31). Although the names of the father and son match our ancestors (David and Peter), nothing else does, so we can conclude that this is not Peter D.

Peter 675 is accompanied by far less information. All we know is that this Peter was born or resided in Waldheim and was baptized (with Peter 672 and others) on 7 June 1866. There is a note written to the right of Peter 675, but it is thus far indecipherable, apart from the year 1866 (middle line of the photograph below) and perhaps the village name Margenau (one of the villages associated with this church) just to the left of the year.

So, is this Peter D? Possibly, but we do not have enough information to make the identification firm. This is a Peter Buller from Waldheim, where Peter D lived on 7 June 1866 (he married Sarah Siebert a little more than two months later, on 27 August). It was apparently customary for Mennonites to be baptized around the ages of nineteen to twenty-one, and the latter would correspond to Peter D, who was born in 1845 and thus would have been twenty-one in 1866. One might also imagine that Mennonites were generally baptized before they were married, although we do not know if that was the case.

In the end, without additional information we cannot know if this is the baptismal record of Peter D: all the pieces fit, but there may well have been other Peter Bullers living in Waldheim of roughly the same age. Perhaps as we continue to collect information and put puzzle pieces together we will be able to say. For now, it must remain an enticing possibility.

Grandpa’s siblings 9

Peter P and Margaretha’s sixth daughter and eleventh child was Anna, born 9 October 1913, when Margaretha was forty-three.

Anna remained single longer than was usual in the first half of the twentieth century, during which time she likely worked as a registered nurse (according to the Grandma database). Eventually, at the age of thirty-seven, she married John Davis Warde, on 7 April 1951.

Anna passed away at the age of eighty-three on 27 July 1997 (her husband predeceased her by five years). None of the usual sources indicate where Anna is buried. Her husband John is buried in an underground vault in the Holy Cross Catholic Cemetery in Colma, California (see here). Perhaps Anna is buried there as well.

Mennonite Life and old Buller

Those who want to read more extensively about matters Mennonite should bookmark the home page of the journal Mennonite Life (see here). Launched in 1946 “in the interest of the best in the religious, social, and economic phases of Mennonite culture,” Mennonite Life publishes informative articles on Mennonites around the world both from the past and the present day.

Most of the issues are available online at no charge, so be sure to click on the Past Issues button for recent issues and the Partly-Digitized Issues for older ones. All sorts of treasures are waiting to be discovered in both places, including an April 1955 article of particular interest to Bullers (see here and scroll down to page 76).

The article “Przechowka and Alexanderwohl—Beginnings of Alexanderwohl, Tabor, Hoffnungsau, and Other Churches” concerns two churches that we have encountered before: the Przechovka (or Przechowka) church in West Prussia, and the Alexanderwohl church in Molotschna, the churches with which, we believe, our direct and indirect Buller ancestors were associated before they came to the U.S. (see here and here).

Przechovka church book title page

Author J. A. Duerksen offers a fascinating introduction to the times, the village, the church, and even the church register. I encourage you to read the entire article for yourself. Still, one section is of particular interest: Duerksen’s listing of the church’s earliest families and what is said about each one of them in the church register.

So, for example, the entry about the Becker family records that they (along with other families) left the Lutheran church for the Przechovka Mennonite congregation. At least three families (Schellenberger, Schmidt, and Thomas) came to Przechovka from Moravia when persecution broke out there.

The Buller section does not offer a great deal of information, but at least now (thanks to Duerksen) we know more of what it says and, as a result, can pick out a few words in the hard-to-read text of the extract below.

According to Duerken, “All that is known about the first Buller is that his second wife was Dina Thomsen, a granddaughter of the Thomas family which fled from Moravia to the Przechkowka area. Buller lived to a very old age” (Duerken, 1955, 80). He bases those conclusions on the information provided by the section pictured below.

Thus we can see (apparently) “alte Buller” (old Buller) in the second line; the number 930 in the third line from the bottom (that number begins the Thoms/Thomas family entries in the register); the name “Thomsen” at the beginning of the second line up from the bottom; and the first name “Dina” as the last readable word in that same line.

No significant or surprising discoveries here, merely a note that our ancestor was married at least twice and that his second wife (our ancestor?) was originally from Moravia. Maybe at some point we will be able to fill in additional details, such as his first name, the name of his first wife, or where he lived before he settled in Przechovka. For now, all we can do is take note and remember.

Source

Duerksen, J. A. 1955. Przechowka and Alexanderwohl—Beginnings of Alexanderwohl, Tabor, Hoffnungsau, and Other Churches. Mennonite Life 10:76–82.

Waldheim, Molotschna

Now that we know that David Buller and some of his family lived in Waldheim at least between 1861 and his death in 1904, we should learn a little more about the village.

Begim-Tschokrak River. Photograph by Ken Ratzlaff. See here.

As already noted, Waldheim was established in 1836 on both banks of the Begim-Tschokrak River.
The land had previously been leased by Johann Cornies, Molotschna’s leading citizen, but he made it available for the new settlement and even gave the village its name. The original families who settled Waldhem had come from a wooded region in Volhynia, so Cornies combined the words for “forest” (Wald) and “home” (Heim) for the village name.

The original village was settled by forty families from the Volhynia region (see further here): eight in 1836, twelve in 1838, and twenty in 1840. If Loewen is correct that the first eight families included sixty-eight people (1992, 1, correcting Isaac 1908, 18), and if we can take that average family size of 8.5 people as generally representative, then after the first four years of its existence Waldheim had probably reached a population of approximately 340.

Main street on the north (landowners) half of the town.
Photograph by Ken Ratzlaff. See here.

This was a hint of things to come, as over time Waldheim grew to be the largest Mennonite village in Molotschna in terms of the number of farms and amount of farmland controlled. Rudy Friesen reports that in 1869 “there were 34 full farms, 12 half farms, and 56 small farms, with a total land area of 3,500 dissiatine [9,450 acres]” (Friesen 1996, 300).

Several decades later, around the turn of the century, Waldheim also became home to industry, as two farm equipment manufacturers and multiple steam mills and windmills were built. The factories not only provided jobs for the landless Mennonites within Waldheim but also attracted non-Mennonites in need of employment to the village.

According to William Schroeder and Helmut T. Huebert, Waldheim’s residents established their own separate church with their own elder (1996, 130). It is uncertain, however, when the first Waldheim church building was erected. Prior to that the group no doubt met in homes or possibly the school.

Nearly all Mennonites left or were removed from the village during the first half of the twentieth century, but the village still exists today, albeit with a different name: Vladovka 1 (the Mennonite village known as Hierschau, just to the east, is Vladovka 2).

Vladovka 1, the village known during the Mennonite period as Waldheim

Although we may never know with certainty, it is extremely probable that not only David Buller but also Peter D lived in the village pictured above. We know David was living there in 1861. At sixteen years of age, Peter D presumably still lived at home at that time and did not move to Kleefeld until he married Sarah Siebert in 1866.

In fact, it is quite possible that Peter D was born in Waldheim. The village was established in 1836 and continued to be populated by immigrant families from Volhynia through 1840 (forty families in all), including at least one Zielke family: David Buller’s in-laws. It would not be surprising if David Buller moved to Waldheim when he wed Helena Zielke sometime around 1840. If so, then Peter D was no doubt born in Waldheim on 11 January 1845.

Beyond that, one wonders with which church the David Buller family associated. Did they meet with the other Volhynia Mennonites in Waldheim (first in homes or the school, later in a church building), or was the Alexanderwohl church 7 miles west (still) their church of record?

Other questions that await an answer include:

• From which Zielke family did Helena come?
• What did David do for a living in Waldheim?
• Where was Wirtschaft 48 (David’s 1869 farm) located?
• Was David buried in Waldheim cemetery? If so, is the cemetery still intact?

In time, perhaps we can find additional clues that at least point us in the direction of the true history of our Bullers in Molotschna.


Sources

Friesen, Rudy P., with Sergey Shmakin. 1996. Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Winnepeg: Raduga.

Isaac, Franz. 1908. Die Molotschnaer Mennoniten: Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte derselben. Halbstadt: Braun.

Loewen, Solomon L. 1992. Waldheim Village in Molochna Colony. Journal of the American Historical Society of Germans from Russia 15:1–14.

Schroeder, William, and Helmut T. Huebert. 1996. Mennonite Historical Atlas. 2nd ed. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Grandpa’s siblings 8

The first post in this series (here) noted that Peter P and Margaretha’s first child, also named Peter, died eight days after being born. Twenty years later, on 25 May 1911, they welcomed another son named Peter into the family.

Unlike the first son, who had the middle initial P after his father, this fifth son and tenth child in the family had the middle initial E, after his mother’s maiden name: Epp.

Peter E married Elsie Louise Fast on 29 August 1935, and together they raised two daughters and three sons. The 1940 U.S. census reports that Peter, Elsie, and two children lived and farmed in the Henderson area at that time, but at some point Peter E and family moved to Omaha, Nebraska, where he worked in the nursery business (according to the Grandma database).

It was in Omaha that Peter passed away on 3 September 1979 and where he and Elsie (who outlived him by thirty years, passing away on 28 December 2009) are buried, in Mount Hope Cemetery.

Molotschna farm economics

As enjoyable as the personal elements of our family history may be—the photographs and stories of our ancestors recent and distant—sometimes there is no substitute for doing the math. For example, why was Peter D unable to buy a farm in Molotschna? Jeffrey Longhofer explains:

For many, buying land was not an option. The amount required to purchase the rights to a Wirtschaft reached unaffordable levels: 6,000 to 7,000 rubles in 1860. Farm workers, on the other hand, could expect to earn only 80 rubles per year; harvest hands earned no more than 20 kopecks for one day’s work. (Longhofer 1993, 396)

With the help of some historical background and a little math, we can fill in a number of details of our Molotschna family picture.

1877 Russian 1 ruble coin

1. As a part of the Russian Empire, the Molotschna colony used the standard Russian currencies: the ruble and kopek. Think of the two as analogous to the U.S. dollar and penny, since 1 ruble equals 100 kopeks.


2. In 1860, 1 Russian ruble was equal to about 80¢ U.S.


3. Given the historical rate of inflation, $1 U.S. in 1860 would be equivalent to approximately $28.90 today.


4. It follows, then, that 1 1860 Russian ruble would be worth approximately $23.12 today and that 1 kopek would be worth 1 percent of that: $2.31.

With those simple facts as a foundation, let’s translate Peter’s situation in 1860 Molotschna into our own terms.

1. According to Longhofer’s figures, we can calculate that the typical Molotschna farm worker earned roughly $1,849.60 a year in today’s dollars (80 rubles x $23.12).


2. Looking at things differently, a harvest worker earned approximately $46.20 a day. Someone working six days a week for fifty-two weeks a year would earn a total of $14,414 at this rate, so it is clear that Molotschna laborers were only occasionally employed, perhaps as little as 13 percent of the time. (This does not imply that they were indolent the rest of the time; they probably used that time to work in their own gardens, engage in cottage industry, and the like.)


3. If a Wirtschaft cost even 6,000 rubles, that would equal $138,720 in today’s terms, or a little more than $788 an acre.

Of course, one can see the dire straits of Peter and other landless Mennonites even without doing the currency conversion. For example, if an 1860 laborer in Molotschna had been able to save half of his annual income of 80 rubles (a pipe dream), it still would have taken him 150 years to accumulate the 6,000 rubles needed to buy his own Wirtschaft.

Doing the math helps us appreciate how daunting were the obstacles to financial security that Peter D and others like him faced in Molotschna. Trying to raise a family of eight (two adults, six children) on $1,850 a year was no doubt challenge enough. Trying to raise funds to buy a farm was downright impossible. It is no wonder that Peter D and many others left Molotschna colony for North America; it was the only sane financial decision to make.

Source

Longhofer, Jeffrey. 1993. Specifying the Commons: Mennonites, Intensive Agriculture, and Landlessness in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Ethnohistory 40:384–409.

Waldheim 48

Our earlier excavations in the Waldheim school records left little doubt about the identity of the David Buller listed there. This father of Benjamin and David (1861–1862) and Jacob (1873–1874) was our own ancestor, father of Peter D, grandfather of Peter P, great-grandfather of Chris. All well and good, but we still need to excavate a little more.

The 1873–1874 school register contains important information that not only sheds light on our family but also sets them squarely in a context we have discussed previously. I encourage you to look at the school register for yourself by opening this link in a new tab or window and then scrolling down to Waldheim.

Notice the numbers to the left of some of the names? Those numbers are important clues that can tell us a great deal about David’s life in Waldheim. We begin, appropriately, at the beginning, with the establishment of Waldheim. Rudy P. Friesen offers a succinct account of Waldheim’s origins:

The village of Waldheim was founded in 1836, along the Begim Tschokrak River by a group of Groningen Old Flemish Mennonites from Volhynia, and originally from Prussia. Eight families arrived the first year, 12 more in 1838, and another 20 in 1840. The village was laid out with two streets that were parallel to the river. The street on the north side of the river was for the 40 landowners and the street on the south side of the river was for … small farm owners. They were connected by three cross streets. (Friesen 1996, 300)

Several points bear emphasis: (1) the original village had forty Wirstschaften (farm allotments); (2) all the owners of one of the full allotments lived on the north side of the river; (3) those who did not own a Wirtschaft lived on the south side of the river. All this is relatively clear in Friesen’s map of Waldheim below (adapted for our purposes).

So what does this have to do with the numbers to the left of some of the names in the school register? Simple: the numbers correspond to the Wirtschaften in Waldheim; the fathers with numbers by their names are landowners.

Now look at David Buller’s name: it is preceded by the number 48. How can this be? If there were originally forty farmsteads, how can David Buller have Wirtschaft 48?

Keeping in mind which school year the record covers (1873–1874), think about what happened in Molotschna just a few years earlier, say, in 1869 (see here).

The only reasonable explanation is that David Buller was one of the fortunate few who received an 88-acre (32.5-dessiantine) tract from the mandated distribution of surplus land. Although the farm that he owned was only half the size of a full share and did not come into his possession until he was in his fifties, David did become a Waldheim landowner. Although our family’s destiny lay elsewhere, it’s nice to know that we did “belong” in Molotschna and that a part of Molotschna belonged to us, even if only for a short while.

Source

Friesen, Rudy P., with Sergey Shmakin. 1996. Into the Past: Buildings of the Mennonite Commonwealth. Winnepeg: Raduga.

Grandpa’s siblings 7

Grandpa was child number eight in his family, after Peter, Margaretha, Katharina, Benjamin, Sara, Klaas, and Elizabeth. The photograph of him below was taken in 1926, when Grandpa was twenty years old.

After Grandpa came Maria, who was born 21 May 1908. Like her sister Sara, Maria remained single her entire life. Maria was baptized on 24 May 1926, the same day that Grandpa was baptized. Like several of their brothers and sisters, both were baptized by Johann F. Epp of the Bethesda Church.

Maria P Buller in 1930, when she was twenty-two.

Maria appears in the 1940 census, where she and Sara are listed as servants living in the household of John and Charlotte Armstrong of Upland, California.

1940 Census. For the full page, see here.

With her sister Sara, Maria compiled both the Buller and Epp Family Records. Surprisingly, the Epp volume is listed on Amazon with Maria as the author. It is also cited in a 2012 publication entitled A Complement to Genealogies in the Library of Congress: A Bibliography (see here).

Maria passed away at the age of eighty-eight on 5 November 1996. At the time she lived at 631 Front Street in Henderson. She is buried, as are many of her siblings, in the Buller–Siebert/Mennonite Cemetery.

Grandpa’s clock

Thanks to Martha Myles, all of us are able to enjoy a current look at the wooden clock that Grandpa built and that was featured earlier here.

The clock is safe and sound with Matilda and is still working away nearly forty years after Grandpa built it. Thanks again to Martha for taking and sending the photos so we all can see one of the many evidences of Grandpa’s handiwork.


   


                                         

School records

The historical record does not consist merely of the deeds and decrees of the powerful, such as the Russian land commission’s 1869 mandate that the Molotschna villages distribute all of their surplus land. In fact, the documents of history include the most mundane of a community’s records, even to something as simple and boring as a list of students attending a village school.

Examining such records can reveal a great deal about the people who inhabited that time and space and give us a better sense of the rise and fall and courses of their lives. Consider, for example, the extant school records for Waldheim of Molotschna colony.

Waldheim is the red rectangle to the upper right.

Tim Janzen and others have collected various school records for Molotschna and made them available here. Waldheim is included in four of the collected records, for the years 1853–1855, 1861–1862, 1873–1874, and 1883–1884.

Waldheim was established in 1836, if you recall, by the group from Volhynia, which likely included our matriarch Helena Zielke. Thus the village had existed for seventeen years by the time of the first school record that we have. With that brief background, we are ready to examine the records from this thirty-year period.

What becomes immediately obvious is the growth of the school in a short time, from 56 students in 1853–1855 to 176 in 1861–1862. That period was the peak, as the school then contracted in size to 131 in 1873–1874 and further to 88 in 1883–1884. Did the period of immigration to North America during the 1870s account for some of the decline during that time?

Digging into the details reveals further nuances. Reading through the names for 1873–1874, one sees a number of blended families, where the kids have different last names from the father or from each other (father listed first):

• Benjamin Voth: Helena Ediger 11, Maria Voth 7
• Abraham Dueck: Kornelius Voth 11, Johann Voth 7, Susanna 6
• Franz Neumann: Abraham 11, Jacob Buller 11, Elisabeth Buller 10, Helena Neumann 6

Since divorce was not common among Mennonites of that time, there is really only one explanation: a higher mortality rate among adults than we experience today. The widowed parent of one or more children generally did not stay single for long; the bereaved found a new mate to help raise the children already born as well to build a new family together.

Continuing to read through the list, one encounters familiar names such as Wedel, Voth, Unrau (or Unruh), Pankratz, and Ratzlaff—many of the same names first encountered at the Przechovka, West Prussia, church, as well as many more.

For example, Jacob Zielke/Zuelke (both spellings are used) appears in 1861–1862 and 1873–1874 registers. As far as I can tell, however, he is no direct relation to Helena.

Then there are the Bullers, several in every list. In addition to the Buller children bereft of their father listed above, we encounter the following individuals:

• 1853–1855: David Buller, child’s name unknown 13 (no, not that David Buller)
• 1853–1855: David Buller, Abram 8 (no, not that David Buller)
• 1861–1862: Heinrich Buller, Susanna 10, Elisabeth 8
• 1861–1862: Peter Buller, Anna 6 (no, not that Peter Buller)
• 1861–1862: David Buller, Benjamin 9, David 6 … yes, that David Buller! 

Amazingly, this mundane school record gives us indisputable evidence that David and Helena Buller lived in Waldheim as early as 1861. Let’s walk through the evidence together.

The Grandma database allows one to search for pairs such as husband and wife or father and child. Searching for anyone named David Buller with a son named Benjamin returns three possibilities.

Since the school records are for the years 1861–1862, the only possible match is the first one, who just happens to be our David, father of Benjamin (born in 1851) and David (born in 1855)—and of Peter D, born in 1845 and thus past school age at this time.

Granted, Benjamin’s age is a year off (he would have been ten at the beginning of the school year, not nine), but the other correlations leave little doubt that this is our David Buller. The identification is further confirmed in the 1873–1874 school register, which lists a David Buller with a nine-year-old son named Jacob—which is the same son born to our David by his second wife (see above).

There is much more to explore in this Grandma entry (Can you spot the huge difference between the Buller Family Record listing of David’s family and this one?) as well as in the school records and with regard to Waldheim in general. For now it is enough to know exactly where David lived and died (see above) and presumably was buried in a cemetery abandoned long ago; for now it is enough to know exactly where Peter D lived before he moved to Kleefeld to be with Sarah and her family.