Polish/Prussian Bullers: Jeziorka 3

Thus far (here and here) we have discussed the founding of Jeziorka in 1727 by thirteen Mennonite families who leased the land associated with the newly established village from Frau Hedwig von Steffens-Wybczyriski. The initial leases were for forty years and could be renewed, if the two sides agreed on terms.

We have also discovered that Bullers lived in Jeziorka nearly from its beginning and through most of the eighteenth century. Hans Buller (Przechovka church book 341) and his wife raised six children there in the 1730s and later. After that, George Buller (PCB 375) and his family lived there and were even listed in the 1772 Prussian land register and the 1776 census of Mennonites.

A portion of Jeziorki (Jeziorka) today, looking to the northwest.

One might wonder, however, why neither Hans 341 nor any of his sons is listed in either the 1772 or the 1776 lists. There is an explanation for that. Peter J. Klassen provides the context:

Tensions … arose with the local landlord, a Polish noble who demanded that Mennonite settlers on his lands perform the same scutage services provided by Polish settlers. For Mennonites, who had come as free persons and not as serfs, this seemed a novel and extraordinary request. A number … began to look for better opportunities elsewhere. In 1764, delegates from Jeziorka went to Berlin to explore settlement possibilities. Such a move would mean leaving Polish jurisdiction and moving to lands ruled by Frederick II. One of the king’s officials, Franz Balthasar Schonberg von Brenkenhoff, was charged with bringing new settlers to the Netze (Noted) River region, near Driesen in Brandenburg.… When he invited Mennonites to settle there, they accepted. In 1764, twenty-eight Mennonite families received settlement rights, with specified privileges. They were granted religious freedom, exemption from military service and the swearing of oaths, and each received forty morgen of land. Later they also received permission to establish and maintain their own schools. In the spring of 1765, thirty-five families arrived at their new home; the twenty-eight from Jeziorka had been joined by others from Przechowka and Schönsee. Several treks eventually brought some 166 Mennonites to the area. (Klassen 2009, 86–87)

Without going into too much detail, note that, near the end of the lease term the Jeziorka landlord decided to change the terms, presumably on the renewal of leases. Some Mennonites leasing the land did not want to accept those terms, so they explored other options. Eventually, at the invitation of Franz Balthasar Schonberg von Brenkenhoff, a representative of the Prussian king Frederick II, a group of families from the area moved roughly 120 miles southwest to the Netzebruch, a “boggy wetland along the lower course of the Netze/Noteć river” (Hege 1957). The red line in the map below shows the relation and distance between the Schwetz area and the Netzebruch.

As Klassen states, the thirty-five families moved in 1765, which would seem to have been two years before the end of the initial forty-year lease. Several explanations seem possible: the leases began in 1725 rather than 1727; the two parties agreed on some sort of early termination terms; the original lease holders sold the remaining years on the lease to other Mennonites, who would then be in a good position to renew the leases. Which of these explanations is correct (if any) is unknown.

The fact that George 375 appears on the 1772 and 1776 censuses proves that he was not one of those who left. The observation that neither Hans 341 nor none of his sons appears on the censuses might imply that they were among the group that left. However, that cannot be known, since at present we do not have evidence that they lived in the villages of the Netzebruch. Perhaps Hans 341’s family leased other land in the Schwetz/Przechovka area.

We do know that some Bullers made the trek southwest, since the 1767 lists of families from the two main villages in the Netze area give us their names. According to table 4 in Adalbert Goertz’s “From Jeziorka, Prussia to Russia in 1804” webpage (see here), Peter Buller and his wife plus their four children (two sons and two daughters) lived in the village of Brenckenhoffswalde, while George and his wife and their one son and one daughter lived in Frantzthal. We cannot know with absolute certainty who this Peter and this George were, but based on our survey of Georges from Przechovka in the previous post, I would put my money on brothers George 350 and Peter 351 in the scan from the church book below.

Their departure from the Schwetz area might explain why such scant information is included for them: the church book was composed at least twenty years later, and little more than their names and their father’s name was known. I say “little more” because the church book contains one more hint.

The standard entry in the church book lists a person’s name, parentage, date and location of birth, date of baptism, and information related to the person’s marriage: when, who, and where. The last column (the where) has entries for George and Peter.

If you are viewing this on a computer rather than a phone or tablet, you should be able to see that the top entry reads FrThal; the second is less clear, but it appears to begin with a B and end with Wald. In other words, George was married in FrThal = Frantzthal in the Netze area, and Peter his brother was married in B??Wald = Brenckenhoffswalde in the same locale.

These are the two Bullers who show up on Adalbert Goertz’s list of names, which reminds us once again that our larger, extended family constantly grew and spread even before our more immediate forebears settled in Molotschna.

This Jeziorka trilogy of posts probably does not relate to any of our direct ancestors (although we cannot say that for certain), but it does give us a window into the lives of our larger family through most of the eighteenth century. We will return to other Bullers in the Przechovka area in the near future, since there are many more of our family to identify and get to know. Before we do that, however, we have an important loose end to tie up. Stay tuned!

Sources

Hege, Christian. 1957. Netzebruch (Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available here.

Klassen, Peter J. 2009. Mennonites in Early Modern Poland and Prussia. Young Center Books in Anabaptist and Pietist Studies. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Zijpp, Nanne van der, and Richard D. Thiessen. 2014. Jeziorka (Kuyavian-Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available here.