Where is Wegtzin?

Now that we know who David Buller’s parents were (Benjamin and Helena) and when the family moved to Volhynia (1817, just before David was born), it is time to clarify, to the extent that we are able, precisely where in Volhynia the family settled.

To state the matter as simply as possible (before we muddy the waters more than a little), Benjamin and Helena moved from somewhere in Prussia (we do not yet know where) to the eastern portion of the Russian Empire of Tsar Alexander I (the grandson of Catherine the Great), specifically to the gubernia (province) of Volhynia, more precisely to the Rovno district of that gubernia, to land owned by the town of Wegtzin in the Rovno district.

Map of Volhynia with Rovno district highlighted.

This all seems fairly straightforward—except for one little problem: there is no town named Wegtzin in Rovno … or Volhynia … or anywhere else, for that matter. In fact, searching for the word “Wegtzin” via Google returns six hits: two are to the Rovno register, the very document we are trying to interpret, and the remaining four point to typographical errors that only coincidentally produced the reading “Wegtzin.” Clearly we need to take another tack to interpreting the Rovno register.

One approach would be to reexamine the original documents in hopes of discovering an error in the translator’s reading. Of course, that would be more practical if we had any more than a rudimentary ability to recognize cursive letters of the Cyrillic alphabet. Still, it never hurts to try, so let’s take a quick look at two occurrences of the town name in the Rovno register.

       

            











The town name appears to be written the same in both cases. There is some sort of looping capital letter at the beginning, followed by a letter with an ascender (i.e., a tall letter like our t, l, k, or b). One or two short letters follow that, then a distinctive letter with a descender (looks a bit like our g or q). The last two letters resemble our u and n, although that does not mean that they are the same as those letters.

Even with the help of a Wikipedia article on the Cyrillic alphabet (here) and another chart showing the shape of Cyrillic cursive letters (here), it is difficult to make out the letters of the town name. A good guess is that the first letter is a capital Ф (ef), which served as a w when Russians had to write a non-Russian word that contained the letter. Russian does not have a w like ours, so the Ф is often used to write a non-Russian name such as Wedel or whatever the Polish W– town name was (recall that the town was originally part of Poland, not Russia, and was still part of a Polish nobleman’s estate, which probably explains why it began with a w).

The second letter is upright and tall. It is not clear to me what the letter is, but we can say for certain that it is not an e, since a Russian e looks very much like ours. Already we have very good reason to question the reading Wegtzin; some other letter should be read where the translator has an e.

After several further letters indecipherable to my eyes we encounter a letter with a descender like our g or q. It could be a д (our d) or a з (our z). This is presumably where the translator derives the tz of his suggested Wegtzin. To avoid dragging this out any further, let us simply note that the last two letters could be –in, which is in keeping with the translator’s reading.

To be honest, we really know little more than we did when we started this orthographical exercise, except that we have strong reason to doubt the We– beginning to the town name. Clearly, we need another way forward. Fortunately, the translation of the Rovno register offers us additional names to check. The beginning of the register (families 1–10) offers the following comment.

These Mennonites left the Kingdom of Prussia in 1810. They settled in Rovno (Rivnenska) Region on grounds owned by the town of Wegtzin in the estate of the landowner Waclav Borejko (Watzav Warike) in 1811, upon conditions they have arranged with the landowner to whom they pay taxes (rent).

Since we cannot find information on Wegtzin, we will try the landowner instead: Waclav Borejko. Googling that name produces an interesting result: the Volhynia article in the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Scanning down the page we read the following:

Additional Dutch-Prussian Mennonites came to Volhynia in 1806–18 and possibly later. Although some of the details of the movements of these later groups are lacking, it is known that some came from the Schwetz-Graudenz area on the Vistula River, and others from the Netzebruch near Driesen in Neumark, province of Brandenburg, Germany. The best known of these migrations was that of a group of 21 Mennonite families with the names of Beyer, Bose, Dirks, Voth, Nachtigall, Nickel, Pankratz, Richard, Sperling, Unruh, and Ziekle, who in 1811 entered into a contract with the nobleman Waclav Borejko, settling on his land and founding the vil­lage of Zofyovka located north of the town of Wysock on the Horyn River. (Schrag 1959)

The Horyn River just outside of Wysock, modern Vysots’k.

Did you catch the name of the nobleman on whose land the Mennonites settled? It is the same as in the Rovno register. Intriguingly, the nobleman’s land was located north of the town of Wysock. Is this the W– town name in the Rovno register, or should we look for another town in the same general location?

To be honest, I really do not know. My hunch is that the W– town in the Rovno register is, in fact, Wysock, but that is no more than a hunch awaiting someone expert in cursive Cyrillic to confirm or contradict it. We should note, however, that, just as surnames had no authorized, standard, or correct spelling at this time, many place names of this era show the same sort of variation in spelling. In other words, it is not as far-fetched as one might think to see the name Wysock in the register of Mennonites in Rovno.

Given the possibility, even the plausibility, of Wysock being the town name in the register, we will spend at least one more post exploring the area further, in hopes of walking in the footsteps of Benjamin and Helena and David Buller.

Source

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