Before Volhynia, there were Neumark and Schwetz

The last two posts—about farm life in the early 1900s and irrigation in Henderson—allowed us all a moment to let the heavy layer of information of two earlier posts—“Still at Waldheim” (here) and “Before Waldheim, there was Volhynia” (here)—settle somewhat before we stir up things by digging down into the next historical stratum. But first, a brief recap of where and why we are headed this way.

As we have rehearsed a number of times, our family came to Henderson township of York County from the Molotschna Mennonite colony in New Russia (modern-day Ukraine). Peter D and family lived in the village of Kleefeld most of that time, but his father and mother (David and Helena Zielke Buller) and siblings lived in another village 22 miles away: Waldheim. We know that to be true because contemporary records (school registers) list David as father and several of his children as students of the Waldheim school during the 1861–1862 and 1873–1874 years (see here and here).

What makes David’s residence at Waldheim significant is that, as late as 1848 (only thirteen year prior to the documented presence of David), Waldheim was populated exclusively by Mennonites who came from a particular region: Volhynia. In fact, the residents of Waldheim came from three specific locations in Volhynia (which was the topic of discussion in the mind-numbing post here).

We know all that from the Waldheim community report of 1848, which we have been exploring for several posts—and which we will continue to explore a little more below. Why go over this ground again? To make it clear that, if David was a resident of Waldheim in 1848 (which seems likely), he also had come from Volhynia, not directly from the Schwetz area (the Przechovka church), as the Buller Family Record implies and we have previously thought.

 But this does not mean that our search for Buller ancestors in the Schwetz area was a false lead. In fact, the 1848 Waldheim Gemeindebericht (community report) confirms our instincts on that front by reporting where the Volhynian Waldheim residents had originally lived:

Countryside in the former Newmark province of West Prussia, with
the village Błotnica, Poland, in the distance.

In general, their [now-]deceased ancestors migrated to the places mentioned in the years 1806–1818 from the Neumark province at Driesen and from the village Schwetz in West Prussia. 

That is, the generation before those who had moved from Volhynia to Waldheim (“their [now-]deceased ancestors”) had migrated to Volhynia mostly from two locations: the Neumark province at Driesen and the Schwetz (Przechovka church) area in West Prussia (hence the title of this post). To put this into full perspective, we may trace our reasoning back as follows:

• All 1848 Waldheim residents came to that village from Volhynia.
• Therefore, if thirty-one-year-old David lived in Waldheim in 1848, he also came from Volhynia.


• The ancestors of those who migrated from Volhynia to Waldheim originally came from the Neumark province at Driesen and the Schwetz area in West Prussia.
• Thus, if David came from Volhynia, his line of Bullers originally came from the Neumark province at Driesen or the Schwetz area in West Prussia.

We already know quite a bit about the Schwetz area and the Bullers listed in the Przechovka church book we have explored from time to time. But what about the Neumark province? Where is that, and what relevance does it have for Bullers or other Mennonite families?

All questions that we will answer in due course—after we first spend additional time learning about Volhynia. All we need to know for the moment is that our course is from the known to the unknown: from Waldheim (where we know David lived) back to Volhnyia (where we think David lived) and then from there back to Schwetz and the Neumark province (where David’s parents and grandparents may have lived). We will carefully excavate each layer of that historical deposit in hopes of understanding better the contexts in which our ancestors likely lived and perhaps even finding one or more of them along the way.