Whose son was Heinrich 1?

Almost a year ago we first raised the question: Who was David and Helena’s firstborn (see here)? Was it the Helena who married Jacob Mandtler (so the Buller Family Record) or the Heinrich who married someone named Aganetha (so the Grandma database).

Our recent discovery that Heinrich and Aganetha had a son named Heinrich who married Elisabeth Unruh may tip the scales slightly in favor of the former. The reasoning goes as follows.

1. Heinrich 2 was born 24 September 1883, which fits well with him being married early in 1906, at the age of twenty-two.

2. If Heinrich 1 was born “about” 1842 to David and Helena Zielke Buller, as the Grandma database claims, he would have fathered Heinrich 2 when he was forty-one. This is certainly possible, but we no of no other children in this family, and it would have been highly unusual for Heinrich 1 to father his first child that late in life.

3. If, however, Heinrich 1 was the son of David Buller’s second wife (whose name is no known), he was probably born sometime between 1857 and 1863 (the gap between Helena Zielke’s last child and wife 2’s other known child), which would mean that Heinrich 1 fathered Heinrich 2 when he was twenty to twenty-six, a far more common pattern in that day.

This is slender evidence, to be sure, but the math seems to favor Heinrich being the son of David’s second wife, whom he accompanied to Kazakhstan sometime after David passed away. In this case, the Buller Family Record seems to have more reliable information than the Grandma database.