Church books and other records

Reading A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880 (see further here), has not only provided the grist for a number of blog posts in the days and weeks to come; Epp’s observations and record keeping have also been instructive in interesting and significant ways.

For example, the reader of Epp’s entries cannot help but notice the high incidence of child mortality, as revealed in the following selection of all-too-common entries (all taken from Dyck 1991):

9 May 1861
We were present today at a triple funeral in the home of our neighbour Gerhard Wiebe. His wife had reached the age of 46 years, 9 months, and 10 days, been married for 29 years, and given birth to 15 children, of whom 7 sons and 6 daughters are alive. She was grandmother to 9 children, of whom 3 died. We also buried Aron Neusteter’s infant daughter Elisabeth, who was one year, two months, and six days old, and Franz Isaac’s infant daughter Miriam, who was two weeks younger than the Neusteter child, all three bodies in a single grave, and I gave the funeral sermon.

18 January 1862
Thursday. 1 gave the sermon at the funeral for Mrs Cornelius Giesbrecht of Kamianka, who died of a miscarriage. She was 33 years and 26 days old, had been married 13 years, 2 months, and 12 weeks and given birth to 9 children, 3 sons and 6 daughters, of whom 2 sons and a daughter are still living.

12 October 1862
Friday. Diedrich Thiessen’s wife Katarina (née Nikkel) was buried in Novopodolsk, having died in childbirth after delivering a stillborn child.… Thirty-six years old, she had been married 16 years and given birth to 8 children. Three had died and three sons and two daughters are still alive. Her stillborn child was placed in a small coffin next to hers and buried in the same grave. I delivered the funeral sermon.

9 April 1865
We received a funeral letter from Rosengart announcing the passing of Maria Elias, who died Easter Tuesday at the age of 57 years, 7 months, and 26 days. She had been married 34 years, 2 months, and 2 days and given birth to 15 children, of whom 4 sons and 4 daughters are living. She had become grandmother to 15 children, of whom 10 are alive.

12 and 15 May 1873
Around nine this morning Abraham Letkemann of Neuosterwick informed us of the death of my dear wife’s sister, Elisabeth Teichröw. After an illness of two weeks, the angel of death took her from her world of suffering. … [My sister-in-law] had given birth to four children, of whom two sons are still living. She became grandmother to four children, of whom one died and three are still living.

25 June 1875

Katharina Kasper, née Siemens, was buried today. She was 63 years old, had been married for 31 years and 2 days and given birth to 6 children, 2 sons and 4 daughters. One son and two daughters are still living. I gave the funeral sermon in the home of the Peter Blocks.

Granted, not all these children (and grandchildren) died in childhood, but a fair number of them did. In fact, David Epp and his wife were no strangers to the same sort of tragedy—and not just once:

5 March 1873
Our little boy Johann is very ill today with an inflamed throat, which has turned into a cold.

6 March 1873
Our darling’s illness is becoming grave, and we fear the worst. Wilt thou take him from us, Lord Jesus? Thou knowest how my heart would bleed. He is our jewel. Yet I know that thou wilt do what is to the child’s benefit, and to ours. Let thy will, and not mine, be done.

Late at night. The ways of the Lord are not our ways, and his thoughts are not our thoughts. Our darling son Johann has died, and his early death is unspeakably painful. Yet it is thy will, O God, and so let the pain of our separation be a blessing for us. He died at 5:30 p.m., after an illness of only two days. At least he did not have to choke to death, as I had feared he might. I had prayed about this to the Lord, and his death was a gentle falling asleep. Lord, we entrust his soul to thee. Our beloved son reached the age of 4 years, 3 months, 7 days, and 23 minutes. His life on earth was brief, but God will give him a better life in heaven.

29 September 1873
On a visit to our children the Andreses, my wife and I found them in deep mourning for their son Jacob, who had died this morning after an illness of six days. It was the same illness that killed our beloved son Johann.

10 November 1876
Wednesday. On the way home from the market, Judith complained of a headache and became ill. She is often incoherent today. Be thou her physician, faithful Saviour.

Written later. At five this morning our dear sick child Judith became confused. Soon thereafter she started having epileptic convulsions and at 11: 30 this evening our dearly beloved daughter expired. Receive thou her tender spirit, Lord Jesus.

15 November 1876
Monday. The funeral day of our beloved daughter Judith. In the morning six degrees of frost and a cold east wind. Our dearly departed reached the age of 4 years, 11 months, and 18 days. My brother-in-law Gerhard Dyck delivered the funeral sermon, which touched all of our hearts.

It is difficult to imagine the fears that the Mennonite parents of that time carried around every day, the losses that almost all of them had to endure. Thomas Hobbes’s characterization of life as “brutish and short” certainly applies to nineteenth-century Russia.

We have seen some of the evidence of this shortness of life in the church books from Przechowka and Deutsch-Wymysle, but my impression (nothing more than that at this point) is that the church books do not give the full story. I do not remember seeing the high percentage of child mortality reflected in Epp’s diaries represented in the church books. Some children are recorded as dying, to be sure, but it does not seem that as many are recorded as dying as Epp’s diaries would lead us to expect.

Obviously, when entries of generations of the past were entered, such as George and Dina Buller in the Przechowka church (they were entered in the book more than half a century after they had lived), those who died in infancy were long-forgotten and thus not listed. However, one wonders if those living contemporary with the church book who died extremely young were always recorded in that book. I imagine it varied not only from church to church but also from recorder to recorder. Some books and scribes no doubt scrupulously recorded every birth, baptism, marriage, and death; others probably adopted a more haphazard approach to record keeping.

I really do not know whether we can draw any broad conclusions about the record-keeping practices of the Mennonites of centuries past. Perhaps one of the Mennonite researchers who periodically stop by Buller Time would like to weigh in. If nothing else, this post can serve as a good reminder of the need to consider multiple types of resources (e.g., Epp’s diaries and church books) as we seek to put the pieces of our family history together: there are no doubt many members of our larger family who died young and thus were never recorded in any church book.


Source Cited

Dyck, Harvey L., ed. and trans. 1991. A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

David B. Quiring, 1931–2016

News was received today of the unexpected and tragic passing of David B. Quiring, son of Dietrich C. and Katharina Buller Quiring. According to York County authorities, David was mowing near a ditch and got too close to the edge, leading the tractor to roll and trap him underneath (reported here).

According to the Buller Family Record, David was born 9 October 1931 to Dietrich and Katharina, the latter of whom was Grandpa Chris’s older sister (see further here). David was thus a nephew of Grandpa and Grandma and cousin to Matilda, †Esther, Daniel, Darlene, Carl, Wayne, Ruth, and Alma.

David married Lavina Regier on 12 November 1952. Together they had two sons: Galen (1954) and Randall (1960). Our prayers are with the entire family

Metz Mortuary has posted a full obituary along with information about the graveside services at the Buller (Mennonite) Cemetery and a following memorial service at Bethesda Mennonite Church in Henderson (see here).

Primary sources

One of the commitments of Buller Time blog is to rely on primary sources whenever it is possible to do so. Ideally, we prefer to see with our own eyes the records of church books, government censuses, ship manifests, passports, antique photographs, and the like. When these are unavailable, we content ourselves with transcriptions or translations of those records, trusting the scholars and researchers of Mennonite history and genealogy for access to this important information.

Occasionally we have access to a primary source in a modern form, as in A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880 (Dyck 1991). The University of Toronto Press published Harvey L. Dyck’s introduction to and translation of Jacob Epp’s diary in hardcover in 1991, but recently they have reissued it in paperback and even e-book form (see further below).

Why should we be interested in Jacob Epp’s diary? Not because he mentions any Bullers—I checked, and he does not. Not even because it discusses in any depth areas where our family lived. Jacob Epp lived in and around the Chortitza (or Khortitsa or Chortiza) colony, also known as the Old Colony, which was roughly 60 miles north–northwest of the Molotschna colony.

The Chortitza colony was located in the area of the upper star, the Molotschna colony around the area of the lower star. 

Jacob Epp’s diary is of interest to us primarily because it reflects in sometimes-beautiful and often-brutish detail what life was like in a Mennonite settlement very much like that in which our ancestors lived during the last three decades of their life before emigrating to the U.S. Couple that with Harvey L. Dyck’s informed, insightful, introduction to the diary, as well as his helpful notes to the translation, and one is given a fascinating and informative window into the world of nineteenth-century Russian Mennonite life.

That is not to say that Epp’s diaries have nothing to do with our family. In fact, Grandma Malinda’s own great-grandfather Isaac Peters (see here) appears in Epp’s entry for 24 January 1873. During a visit by Jacob Epp to the Molotschna colony, he attended a meeting concerning possible emigration to the U.S. Epp writes:

This morning, Jacob Hiebert harnessed his horses and took me through Gnadenfeld to Pordenau, where the conference and Brotherhood Meeting took place in the church. It was conducted by Elder Isaac Peters. The subject was the prospective emigration and the question of sending a deputation to America. About 2000 R. had been allocated for this purpose and a further 1000 was collected. (Dyck 1991, Kindle 6493–96)

A little more than a year and a half later, Elder Peters is mentioned once again, in the entry for 18 October 1874:

Emigration fever among our Mennonites both in the Khortitsa District and on the Molochna continues to be very strong, and only God knows what the end result of this will be. Elder Isaac Peters, whose preaching is said to have included abuse of the government, has received formal notice from the imperial authorities that he must leave Russia within a short period of time. Farms are selling for next to nothing. Those earlier priced from 5000 to 6000 R. are now selling for 2000 R. or, at most, 3000 R. Other possessions are similarly cheap.

Even apart from the family connection, this sort of immediate, primary contact with the people and events of that time and place far surpasses both in value and enjoyment even the best of secondary, or second-hand, historical accounts.

I highly recommend this work for all Buller Time blog readers. It is available in paperback or EPUB (suitable for a variety of e-readers, including i-Books) format at the University of Toronto Press site here (lowest e-book price). An e-version is also available from Google Play here, from Amazon for Kindle here. Tolle lege!


Source Cited

Dyck, Harvey L., ed. and trans. 1991. A Mennonite in Russia: The Diaries of Jacob D. Epp, 1851–1880. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Baptismal ages

One of the Deutsch-Wymsyle posts (here) noted that the daughters of Tobias and Petronella Penner Buller—Emilie, Anna, Elisabeth, Helene, and Julianna—had their dates of baptism entered in the church records. Based on that data we could calculate that the oldest, Emilie, was baptized at age twenty-two; the others were baptized at a much younger age, either fourteen or fifteen.

Glenn Penner writes to offer additional background on the baptismal ages of Mennonites and how it varied among several prominent branches of the Mennonite church. He explains, “The baptismal age for *Flemish Mennonites was around 18–20 years, with very few being baptized over 21 or under 17. For the Frisian Mennonites, the range was 14–16 years, with very few older than 17 [and] none (that I recall) under 12.” The Old Flemish—which is the the branch with which the Przechowka church and the Deutsch-Wymysle church were aligned—“are a different story. Their baptismal ages are all over the place—ranging from 16 to 22.”

Viewed in this light, the disparity in ages between Emilie (22) and her four sisters (14–15) seems not unusual in the least. Deutsch-Wymysle, as an Old Flemish congregation (I assume it was Groningen Old Flemish, since many of its members came from Przechowka), was characterized by a wide range of ages at baptism ages.


***

* The Flemish Mennonites were not the same as the Old Flemish, and there were several branches of Old Flemish as well: the Groningen Old Flemish (e.g., Przechowka) and the Danzig Old Flemish. The Old Flemish and Flemish separated in the late sixteenth century, as Christian Neff and Nanne van der Zijpp explain:

Twenty years after the Flemish-Frisian schism a new division arose in the main Flemish body. In Franeker, Friesland, the elder of the Flemish congregation, Thomas Bintgens, bought a house; because Thomas's purchase seems not to have been above reproach a quarrel arose in 1586 and the Franeker Flemish congregation was divided into two groups, that of Bintgens, soon called Huiskoopers (Housebuyers), and a group led by the deacon Jacob Keest, called Contra-Huiskoopers. Attempts were made by the Flemish congregations of Amsterdam, Haarlem, and Hoorn to reconcile the two groups, but in vain, and soon the whole Flemish body was divided in two parties: Huiskoopers, Thomas Byntgens-volk, or as they were mostly called, Oude Vlamingen (Old Flemish), while the others were called Contra-Huiskoopers, Jacob-Keest-volk, Zackte (mild) Vlamingen, or simply Vlamingen (Flemish).

It seems somewhat ridiculous and even sad, that the buying of a house could divide the Mennonites, but this was only the outer motive. The point of the quarrel was rather a different conception of the church among the Flemish, whether the church should be conceived as strictly separated from the world, as a church without spot or wrinkle or not.… The (mild) Flemish were less conservative than the Old Flemish, and more moderate in banning and shunning. 

Source Cited

Neff, Christian and Nanne van der Zijpp. 1956. Flemish Mennonites. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1956. Available online here.

Still thinking about George

An earlier post (here) thought imaginatively about how we might piece together what we do know about George Buller, husband of Dina Thoms, into a plausible account that fills in the some of the gaps of what we do not know.

We noticed, for example, that George was likely around forty-five when he held the Schönsee land lease in 1695 (see also here). Based on this, as well as the fact that at least one of George’s children appears to have had a mother different from Dina, we hypothesized that George probably had been married and widowed before he married Dina. If so, he also presumably had other children whose names do not appear in the Przechowka church book because they did not move when George and Dina and family 2 did but rather stayed in Schönsee.

This would explain, to my mind, how our particular family might be descended from George (as I think we are) but have no direct connection to Przechowka or its church book (which accords well with the results of our genealogical searches thus far). To state the hypothesis succinctly: our family descended from George Buller of the Schwetz area, specifically from one of his older sons who were not part of the Przechowka church with which George, Dina, and their family were associated. It will be helpful to unpack this hypothesis a little further.

One might wonder why George’s son who was our ancestor was not part of the Przechowka church: Was he a lapsed Mennonite or some sort of reprobate, possibly even a … Lutheran?! Probably not. In fact, Schönsee at that time had two Mennonite churches. The Old Flemish church was technically a part of the Przechowka congregation, although it had its own preachers and meetings. Schönsee also had a Frisian Mennonite church at this time, which met in “die grosse Schule” (large school) (Nanne van der Zijpp and Richard D. Thiessen 2012).

These two groups within the broader Mennonite church typically did not associate with one another (the Old Flemish were quite conservative; the Frisians were not), but Mennonite researcher Manuel Janz alerts me to the fact sometimes people did go from one Mennonite branch to the other. In fact, he notes that in Przechowka the Cornels, the Dircks, Funcks, and Andreas Unrau’s first wife came “von die andere Kandt” (from the other side; see the underlined words below). By way of contrast, Thomas Funck, Trincke Isaac, and all the children of Hans Sparling went to the other side.

This raises several intriguing possibilities (all still in the realm of hypothesis, nothing more). George and his first family may have been part of the Schönsee Frisian church, but he became part of the Old Flemish Przechowka church around the time of his marriage to Dina, whose family roots were in that church. If so, then George’s first family probably stayed in the Schönsee Frisian church when he and Dina moved near Przechowka, which explains family 1’s absence from the Przechowka church book. The primary weakness with this hypothesis is that the church book does not identify George as one who came “von die andere Kandt” (as far as we can tell). That is not necessarily a decisive factor, but it should at least be taken into consideration.

The other possibility that comes to mind is that some sort of family unrest developed between the members of George’s first family, many of whom were adults, and his second family whom Dina bore. Perhaps George had been a member of the Old Flemish Przechowka church all along and his children of the first family were the ones who left that church to join the Schönsee Frisian church. This imagined scenario seems a little less likely than the first one, but either explanation is possible, as well as other explanations that have not yet come to mind.

One intriguing bit of evidence may tilt us in the direction of the first explanation: the record of land leases that we consulted earlier (here).

If one finds George Buller on the 1695 list, then moves horizontally to the 1705 list, one is able to identify the person who owned the lease that George had previously held: Jacob Tomasche. Again, Manuel Janz helps us understand the significance of this: the -sche ending on the name identifies the name as a female head of household, most likely a widow (Manuel points to several websites that demonstrate this, including Glenn Penner’s statement of the meaning of the ending here).

So, the person who held the lease to George Buller’s land in 1705 was the widow of Jacob Tomas, or Jacob Thoms. Given the flexible orthography of that time, we can safely equate Tomas with Thoms; beyond that we can reasonably assume that this person was one of the four relatives of Dina Thoms named Jacob listed in the Przechowka church book.

Given what we do know, it seems highly likely that one of the Thoms family assumed the lease after George decided that he was finished farming. To put the matter differently, none of George’s Buller sons took over that lease. George’s close ties with the Thoms family, evidenced by the fact that his lease was transferred to one of them, would be consistent with him transferring his loyalty from the Frisian church to Dina’s Old Flemish one, and so it may tilt us in the direction of the first possibility discussed above.

In the end, we know only a few facts and should be careful not to confuse our plausible explanations with what we can demonstrate based on evidence. That being said, the scenario outlined above would fill in a number of gaps and make reasonable sense of the facts that we do know, so we can consider it a reasonable possibility subject to modification as we learn more about our family’s origins.

****

To read more about the Old Flemish, see the GAMEO article here. For more on the Frisian branch of the church, see here. C. Henry Smith (1920) offers a helpful description of these and other parties in the Mennonite movement.

[The Old Flemish] were exceedingly strict disciplinarians and were similar in many respects to the Old Order Amish in America today. They made free use of the Ban and shunned all those excommunicated, carrying marital avoidance to extreme length. The practise of shunning …demanded that all intercourse, social and business relations as well as religious fellowship, be severed with one who was excommunicated, and among the stricter sects this was extended to the marital relations as well. The Old Flemish practised feetwashing, but only among elders when visiting from a distance. They wore hooks and eyes on their clothes, and shoestrings instead of buckles. They wore long beards and insisted upon peculiar cuts of clothing. Some practised immersion and were called “dompelaars”. Silent prayer was customary. They were quite literal in their interpretation of the Bible, some insisting on observing the Lord’s Supper in the evening.

At the liberal end were the Waterlanders, so-called because originally they came from the southern end of Holland, a region called Waterland. These were exceedingly sparing in their use of the Ban, insisted on no set Confession of Faith, and had few set rules regulating their belief and practise. …

Between these two extremes were the Frisians and Upper Germans. The former as the name implies were the churches of Friesland, who refused at first to fellowship with the Flemish immigrants. There were two wings of these also. The “Young” or “Loose” Frisians approached the Waterlanders in their religious policy. The Upper Germans had come into Netherlands as refugees from Upper Germany.

Sources Cited

Smith, C. Henry. 1920. The Mennonites: A Brief History of Their Origin and Later Development in Both Europe and America. Berne, IN: Mennonite Book Concern. Available for reading online or download here.

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

The trunk

The post on the Henderson Mennonite Heritage Park (here) ended with a photograph of an old trunk on display in the Immigrant House.

So, what is the story behind this trunk? Why is it of interest to Buller Time blog? The placard to the left (too small to read in the photo above) tells us all that we need to know. It reads:

TRUNK

BELONGED TO

GRANDPARENTS

PETER P & MARGARETHA EPP

WHO LAST USED IT ON

A TRIP BY BOAT

TO HAWAII IN 1940

PURCHASED FROM

AUNT SARA P & MARIA P

BULLER SALE

ON LOAN FROM

ABE & ALICE BULLER

So much can be gleaned from these few lines.

First, we now know that the trunk on display was (and still is!) a Buller trunk, last used by Grandpa Chris’s father and mother: Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller. The current contents of the trunk were not theirs, but the trunk itself was.

Second, those of us who did not previously know learn that Peter P and Margaretha took a cruise to Hawaii in 1940. Although one might think it odd for two older Mennonites to sail to the Hawaiian Islands (not yet a state), they no doubt went there to visit Peter’s younger brother Jacob, who served as a school principal on the island of Oahu (see further here).

Third, we also learn that at some point the trunk was passed on to Aunts Sara and Maria, whom we should all recognize by now as Grandpa’s sisters.

Fourth and last, Abe and Alice Buller (Abe is the son of Grandpa’s older brother Benjamin) are to be thanked for sharing this artifact of Buller history not only with us but with everyone who visits the Mennonite Heritage Park.

This is not the only piece of Buller history on display at the park, but the other one must wait until we can secure a picture of it.

Henderson’s Mennonite Heritage Park

Stepping out of the past (where we generally live) and into the present, I would like to recommend that anyone in the central Nebraska area take an afternoon to explore all the offerings and attractions of the Henderson Mennonite Heritage Park (aka Henderson Heritage and Tourism). The park is just a mile north of Henderson along Henderson Spur (Road B), so easily accessible from I-80, if you do not live in the Henderson area.

The park includes a number of buildings, many of which serve as museums displaying period pieces. The reproduction of the Immigrant House (far left building below) is to scale, which gives visitors a good sense of the living conditions for the first thirty-five Molotschna Mennonite families who emigrated to Henderson in 1874 (our family came five years later, in 1879). The Immigrant House is packed with various items of historical interest (more on a particular item below), so plan on spending some time discovering all the artifacts held there.

Although it does not appear in the photograph above (but see the aerial shot below), a Burlington & Missouri River railroad depot stands north of the Immigrant House. This building is a close replica of the old Henderson railroad depot that stood near Kroeker Grain and Lumber. The latest addition is a railroad car that was delivered just yesterday (see here)!

To the right (north) is the park’s Visitor Center/General Store, which contains not only interesting books and items to buy but also a valuable collection of “family books” documenting the names and dates of many Henderson Mennonites. I did not see a Buller or Franz Family Record there, but I did find a copy of Elsie H. Friesen’s In the Days of Our Youth: The Mennonite Heritage and Descendants of Johann and Cornelius Siebert. Johann, of course, was the father of Sarah Siebert Buller, who was married to Peter D. A quick glance through did not reveal any information not previously known to us, but the book does deserve a closer examination at some point in the future.

Just to the north of the Visitor Center is a one-room schoolhouse, complete with antique desks and other items typical of that period. The schoolhouse, District 73E, was originally located 2 miles west of Henderson. Further north is an impressive barn that bears witness to Mennonite ingenuity. The man who built the barn was often away from home, so he designed the barn so that all animals could be fed from the front, so that his wife would not be forced to go behind them, where she might be kicked.

Northeast of the barn is the Country Mennonite Church. Its wooden benches and separate entrances for women and men convey a real sense of the worship life of our ancestors. A two-story house to the west of the church is filled with antique artifacts appropriate to the early twentieth century. The last building in the park (for now) is a machine shed where one can see early tractors and assorted other farm implements—and a display of the early digging and drilling of wells by the Thieszens: John J., Daniel, and Abraham J. The irrigation display will be developed into an entire irrigation hall, once the park’s next building is constructed to the southwest (?) of the barn.

Suffice it to say that a visit to the Henderson Mennonite Heritage Park will not disappoint. The staff are friendly, knowledgeable, and excellent tour leaders. (Adeline Huebert led my tour, and along the way we discovered that Adeline and our family are related distantly through Isaac Peters.) The gift shop sells a number of books (I bought Lois Preheim’s A Pact: Three Men and a Spade, a history of deep-well irrigation in Henderson) and even t-shirts that read: The Road from Molotschna Ends in Henderson (I got a gray one).

I encourage you to visit the park if you can (1 May–30 September 30, Tuesday–Saturday 1–4 PM). You can also learn more about the park at their website here. Be sure to watch the 5-minute video on the home page (or here). You can also like the Mennonite Heritage Park on Facebook here.


Now about that particular item mentioned above … it’s late, so I leave you with a photograph and a promise of discussion in the next day or two.

Thinking about George

Although it is important to limit our conclusions to what we know to be true, that is, to what we can document from reliable sources, it is no crime to exercise imagination when looking at the questions raised by those same sources, to create and consider mental scenarios that cohere with what we know and fill in the blanks of what we do not know.

So it is that this post will engage in some imaginative thinking about George to see where this might lead in understanding our own family history. We start from the altogether likely premise that we are somehow descended from George. That assumption may be incorrect, but in good lawyerly fashion we will stipulate it for the time being to see where it leads.

1. We know from the landowner lists that George lived in Schönsee in 1695 (here). We also know that he lived in Schönsee when he signed a lease in 1700 (here).

2. We know that sometime after 1700 but before 1705 George moved from Schönsee (here). We also know that George eventually settled in Przechowka and lived with Dina Thoms in the schoolhouse.

3. We are told in the Przechowka church book that Dina’s husband (the church book does not know his name, but we know it to be George) lived to a “very old age” (here).

4. We learn from the Derks–Berents Mennonite lists that George was still alive in 1714–1716 but died before 1719.

5. Taking all this information together, we can reasonably conclude that George, who died at a very old age in 1716–1719, was probably born around 1650 (which would have made him seventy at his death).

6. If George was born around 1650, he would have been around forty-five when he was recorded as a Schönsee landowner in 1695.

7. If George began having children in his early twenties, which was typical for that day, then some of his children were already of adult age in 1695.

8. The Przechowka church book lists for George the names of eight children: Hans, George, Liscke, Peter, Sarcke, Efcke, Maricke, and Trudcke. It is not certain that all these were the children of George and Dina, since the book also states that “these” seven children were of George and Dina. The most likely explanation of this odd phrasing is that Hans had a different mother, presumably George’s first wife—or at least the wife before Dina.

9. If Hans had a mother other than Dina, then one wonders if there were other surviving children of that earlier marriage. The possibility seems altogether likely, since George presumably married and began raising a family by 1675, when he was about twenty-five.

10. If there were other children of an earlier marriage, and if they were of adult age, in all likelihood they remained in Schönsee when George and Dina moved to Przechowka. Hans went along, perhaps, because he was not yet an adult.

11. If George had children who did not move to Przechowka when he and Dina did, these children are understandably absent from the church book—which, after all, did not even know George’s name.

One cannot help but wonder, in light of what we know and what seems reasonable as outlined above, if George Buller had other (male) children than the three sons listed in the Przechowka church book. Is this a reasonable possibility that coheres with what we know?

The reason why this is important to our family should be obvious: if George had more sons than the three listed in the Przechowka church book and Buller chart (below), then there are other Buller lines descended from George but not recorded in the Przechowka church book. There are descendants of George who were not directly connected to the Przechowka church.

It has been striking during our explorations of Bullers of times past how clearly the lines between some families can be drawn directly back to George and one of his three known sons. But it is also arresting that there are other Buller families—ours among them—who seem to arise out of the mist, who seemingly are descended from George but who cannot be linked to him in any direct way. How do we account for these stray Buller families?

One hypothesis (and it is no more than that) is that George’s oldest children were born in, and then stayed in, Schönsee, that George had other sons whose descendants were Mennonite but not members of the Przechowka church. There are stray Bullers—that much we know. How we best explain their origin is the question remaining to be answered. We will return to this question in various ways from time to time. Perhaps we are not descended from George at all but rather from his half-witted brother (that’s a joke). For now, we have a hypothesis to consider and to adjust and revise as we learn more and fill in more blanks with any and all Bullers whom we are fortunate enough to encounter in the historical record.

George Buller after 1700

We have been tracing, over the course of the past week or so, appearances of George Buller, the husband of Dina Thoms, within civil historical records from the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. We first spotted George in Herbert Wiebe’s list of Schönsee residents/landowners in 1695 (see here).

We next located George on a 1700 agreement in which he and six other individuals from Schönsee signed a forty-year lease for property apparently located close to Schönsee but owned by the city of Culm (here). George’s fellow lessees included Michel Meister, Georg Boltz, Ferdinand Hube, David Fot, Andres Decker, and Peter Siewert. It is important to keep those names in mind as we look at the Weibe list for Schönsee again.

We already noted George in 1695, but now we turn our attention to 1705. Most obviously, George is now missing, gone from Schönsee; just as important, all the other lessees are still there: Michel Meister (9), George Boltz (4), Ferdinand Hube (3), David Vott (13), Andres Decker (10), and Peter Sievert (2). Clearly, George’s absence from the list indicates that he has moved from Schönsee. Of course, this raises the question of where he went.

To answer that question, we return to a primary source that enabled us to identify Unknown Buller as George in the first place, the travel diary of Hendrik Berents, which contains both Ale Derks’s 1714–1716 list and Berents’s later list of Mennonite families in the villages of the Schwetz area, including Schönsee. As before, we will consult Glenn Penner’s translation of the diary and lists available here (for earlier posts on the diary, see here and here).

We begin with the listing of Schönsee Mennonites at the bottom of page 11 and the top of page 12. The Ale Derks reproduced by Berents lists the following persons:

Hans Voet	Lijsabet Smit
Jurjen Vonk	Andries Raatslaf
Jacob [Dekker]	Andries Dekker
Jacob Bankrats	the old Grietie Pinkelers

As expected, George Buller does not appear in Schönsee, but it is worth noting that three Mennonites whom Derks listed are also on the 1715 Schönsee landowner list above:

• Hans Voth = Hans Voet
• George Funck = Jurjen Vonk
• Andreas Decker = Andries Dekker

Those listed by Derks who are not on the landowner list probably were not landowners/lease-holders. Thus one might guess that Jacob Dekker was a close relative of Andries who lived with him (so he was not listed as a landowner); Jacob Bankrats (Pankratz) may have been a craftsman who did not lease any land. Whatever the explanation, we can say that Derks’s list is reliable, given the degree to which it corresponds to the civil records.

But where’s George? Two-thirds down page 9 of Glenn Penner’s translation we encounter a listing for a particular resident of Schighofke (that is, Przechowka) at Sweets (Schwetz):

Jurjen Boeler+

Dijna Toomske, reside in the new school

It seems reasonably clear, based on the civil landowner records and testimony of the Derks list, that George and Dina began living in Schönsee sometime before 1695 (how long before we do not know) and stayed there through at least 1700 or 1701, after George signed the long-term lease. Within a few years after that, before 1705, George and Dina moved to Przechowka area, where they lived as late as 1714–1716. It is entirely possible, of course, that they lived somewhere else in between Schönsee and Przechowka; we have no way of knowing one way or another.

It is interesting to notice that George and Dina are said to have been living in the “new school.” Was George the school teacher for that Mennonite community? As always, certainly eludes us, but that is the simplest explanation of their residency. I am unaware of any other cases in which someone other than the teacher lived in the school (unless he or she lived with the teacher who lived in the school).

The mark after George’s name in the Derks list indicates that he had died by the time Berents made his visit to the same locations in 1719. Consequently, it is unlikely that we will find later evidence of George in civil records or other documents (e.g., diaries) from that time period. That being said, we are not yet finished with George. One important question remains to be considered--which will be the subject of an upcoming post.


Source Cited

Wiebe, Herbert. 1952. Das Siedlungswerk niederländischer Mennoniten im Weichseltal zwischen Fordon und Weissenberg bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas 3. Marburg: Johann Gottfried Herder-Institut.

George Buller in 1700

The Buller chart shown in the earlier post in this series (here) noted that George Buller husband of Dina Thoms lived in the village of Schönsee in 1695. As mentioned earlier, Schönsee was approximately 10 miles to the east–northeast of the Przechowka church, as shown in the map below.

Although we did not see George in the 1705 and 1715 lists in the prior post, he does appear again in records associated with Schönsee. Once again Herbert Wiebe provides the information (1952, 96), in this case the signing of a lease in the year 1700. Wiebe offers the main terms of the lease in German, but it seems more likely that the original was written in Polish. Whatever the language, the gist of the terms were as follows (boldface labels added for clarity):

lessor: Council of Culm

area being leased: 15 Hufen [= 620 acres] [The specific area is identified further as “to the Sandhooves,” but what that means is unclear.]

lessees: Michel Meister (mayor), Georg Buller and Georg Boltz (councilors), and the Nachbarn [neighbors] Ferdinand Hube, David Fot, Andres Decker, and Peter Siewert

term of the lease: 1700–1740

lease payment: 10,000 florin/gulden per year + 1,018 florin/gulden [It is unclear why two amounts are listed.]

secondary terms: the four craftsmen (presumably the same as the Nachbarn)—linen weaver, blacksmith, cooper, and tailor—are permitted to train apprentices but must deliver 3 pounds of wax as a craft money to their guild in Culm

place and date of agreement: Culm town hall, 2 May 1700

place of deposit: Polish certificate, Pergament 322, 34, liber actorum 322,141

A few observations, comments, and questions:

1. It is interesting to see that seven individuals—not all of them obviously Mennonite (e.g., Meister and Boltz)—leased this large plot (equivalent to a square mile) together. Did they plan to farm this land together as a single tract? Would they subdivide it so that each renter had his own smaller farm? Is it possible that they were leasing this land from the city of Culm in order to sublet it to others? Any of these options seems possible.

2. There seems to be a distinction between the first three men (mayor and two councilors) and the last four (craftsmen). One also wonders whether these craftsmen really planned to farm the land they were leasing. Might this imply that these seven leased the plot not as land for them to farm but rather as an investment, subletting the land to others at a profit? This is pure speculation, but it does seem curious to have seven men, four of whom are not farmers as their primary occupation, lease such a large, undifferentiated tract of land.

3. For our own family interests, what is most striking is the recognition that, although George Buller lived in Schönsee in 1695 (the earlier post here) and signed his name to a forty-year lease in 1700, by 1705 he no longer lived in Schönsee—as evidenced by the fact that his name does not appear on the 1705 or 1715 Schönsee lists likewise shown in the earlier post. George was in Schönsee in 1695 and 1700 but gone by the time 1705 rolled around.

Where did he go? Who went with him? How did his relocation affect his forty-year lease? All these questions merit some consideration—and a future post.

Another question also comes to mind: If George was a landowner/lessor in 1695 (as the first list here indicates), then he must have already had a lease in place at that time. When did he make that lease? Recall from the lease above that George was a councilor in the village of Schönsee. This would imply that he had achieved a certain stature by 1700. At the least, he probably had not moved to Schönsee within the previous few years. When might George have moved to Schönsee? We will return to this question as well after we consider one more piece of evidence about our earliest-known ancestor George Buller.

Source Cited

Wiebe, Herbert. 1952. Das Siedlungswerk niederländischer Mennoniten im Weichseltal zwischen Fordon und Weissenberg bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas 3. Marburg: Johann Gottfried Herder-Institut.

Bullers in Deutsch-Wymysle 11

Three Buller families from Deutsch-Wymysle remain to be covered. There is little new or surprising to be found in these last entries, but they are worth considering nonetheless.

The first family is that of Tobias (106) and Petronella Penner (132) Buller. We already met Tobias as a son of Peter 104 (here). The rest of the family is new to us.

Worthy of note in the record above are the following:

1. Blended families were a common occurrence in that era; the adult mortality rate was higher then than it is now, which led to a high incidence of second marriages and combined families. We see this above in the fact that Petronella’s son Julius Penner was fathered by her first husband (von I Mann) two years before she married Tobais. Julius kept his father’s surname but was included in Tobias’s family.

2. The oldest daughter, Wilhelmine, died before her first birthday; the next five daughters are already known to us: they are the five sisters who were not reported to have married when first mentioned but who all went to the U.S. (see here, below the last scan). The bottom of this list requires us to clarify the previous entry, since it states that Friedrich Rossol was Anna’s husband (the meaning of the final word [Rybit?] is unclear). Did the other daughters marry as well? We do not know. All we can state with certainty is that all five sisters ended up in the U.S., where they disappear from our sight.

3. This list also contains information that many entries lack: the dates of baptism for the five sisters are given after or next to their names. Interestingly, the oldest daughter was baptized at age twenty-two, but the others were baptized at a younger age, either fourteen or fifteen. I seem to recall that the latter age range was fairly common for Mennonites of the latter half of the nineteenth century.

4. Finally, the fact that Tobias’s six daughters (he had no sons) were born in five different villages indicates a certain amount of transience for the family. They did not have a single plot to farm from year to year to year.

***

Next up: Heinrich (116) and Agnethe Bartell (140) Buller. Heinrich was the son of Tobais 110 (see here); Agnethe is not listed elsewhere in the Deutsche-Wymysle book, although GRANDMA notes that Heinrich and Agnethe’s marriage is recorded in the Deutsch Kazun civil records, which is the area in which Agnethe was born (see GRANDMA 28432).

1. Heinrich, like many of his day, was married twice: first to Agnethe Bartel (who died in 1878 at age thirty-five), then to Helene Görtz (who is identifed as his II Frau). Heinrich’s children were ages two, four, and six when their mother passed away, so one can understand Heinrich’s need to find a wife to help care for his family. No children are listed for Heinrich and Helene.

2. Heinrich is listed as living at and farming the same plot as his father Tobias: Leonow 3 (note where all three children were born and compare with here). How that transpired is unclear, since Tobias died in 1841, when Heinrich was four; presumably someone outside of the family took over the plot at that time, although by 1872 is was back in Buller hands.

3. The only other information offered relates to daughter Wilhelmine. The first line at the bottom of the entry states that she was the wife of Andreas Bartel in (Deutsch) Zyck; the second line adds that her first husband was Heinrich Kliewer, with whom she had two children.

***

The twenty-second and final Buller family in the Deutsch-Wymysle records was headed by Heinrich (103) and Eva Kliewer (145) Buller. Heinrich was the illegitimate son of Anna Buller (here). We have already discussed some of the dynamics associated with illegitimate births in Mennonite society (see here); all that remains is to look briefly at his family.

1. The couple’s six children were born in at least four different locations, which implies once again a certain level of transience. Oldest child Peter’s birth at the same Deutsch Zyck plot where his mother was born probably indicates that the couple lived with her parents after marrying, a fairly common arrangement.

2. As with the two previous Buller families, girl children outnumbered the boys. All told, these three families had twelve girls and two boys, which is striking. I have no idea what to make of that.

3. Heinrich lived to be sixty-nine, but daughters Anna and Marie, who are listed last but are not the youngest, died at a young age (starben von klein)

***

Having worked our way carefully and slowly (some might think too slowly!) through the Deutsch-Wymysle records, what can we say that we have learned? A subject as broad as that will require both time to reflect and a separate post. Until then …

George Buller in 1695

I have been reflecting recently about the fact that in 1695 a George Buller lived in Schönsee, a village roughly 10 miles northeast of and across the Vistula River from the Przechowka church in Poland (or Prussia). What significance might this have for our own direct ancestors? We have found quite a number of Bullers in Neumark and Deutsch-Wymysle (to which we will return shortly), but thus far we have been unable to identify any who seem to be our own direct ancestors.

Thinking that 1695 George would be an interesting topic for a post, I searched the blog to find where I had written about it previously—only to discover that there is no such post. Oops! So, let us start from the beginning: according to Herbert Wiebe (1952, 81), records for the village of Schönsee list (a) George Buller (among other Mennonites) as a landowner in 1695. The scan below reproduces the page from Wiebe listing George.

A few comments: (1) the term Einsassen identifies George as a landowner as understood within the context of that time and place: he held a long-term lease to a particular plot of land that was owned by Polish nobility, the crown, or possibly the village or even the Church; (2) many of the names we see on that list are familiar from Przechowka and the other churches: Unrau, Voth, Köhn, Sperling (Siefert/Sievert also is intriguing); (3) the appearance of the same names across several years (e.g., Peter Siefert/Sievert, Ferdinand/us Hube, Hans Voth/Vott, Stephan/Steffen Funck, Andres/Andreas Decker) implies that this is a residency list or census, not a record of leases written in a given year (since leases were generally written for a forty-year period); (4) Wiebe cites his source, the Danzig Riechsarchiv, Schönsee Nachbarbuch (358, 845), so his information is presumably reliable.

Who was this George Buller? The simplest answer would be that he was the George married to Dina Thoms, the earliest ancestral couple of all the Bullers we know thus far. In fact, the Buller chart to which we have referred from time to time assumes that identification by listing “in Schönsee 1695” under George’s name (probably the reason I thought I had written about it).

Was Schönsee George the same person as George husband of Dina Thoms? We cannot be certain, but given the fact that Schönsee was relatively close to the Schwetz/Przechowka area (10 miles), and considering also the fact that the time frame matches (George and Dina were in this area in the late 1600s–early 1700s), the most logical conclusion would be to identify the two: 1695 Schönsee George was Przechowka George the husband of Dina Thoms.

If this is so, then we need to spend some time thinking through the possible implications of George living in Schönsee in 1695. Why might this be significant for our ancestors? We will return to that question in the near future, but first we must consider two further pieces of evidence about George Buller of Schönsee, husband of Dina—and before we do that (not wanting to stray too far) we will finish us the last Buller records from Deutsch-Wymysle. Stay tuned!

Source Cited

Wiebe, Herbert. 1952. Das Siedlungswerk niederländischer Mennoniten im Weichseltal zwischen Fordon und Weissenberg bis zum Ausgang des 18. Jahrhunderts. Wissenschaftliche Beiträge zur Geschichte und Landeskunde Ost-Mitteleuropas 3. Marburg: Johann Gottfried Herder-Institut.

Bullers in Deutsch-Wymysle 10

There is a clear division between the first five Buller families that we have covered thus far and the last four that remain: whereas the family heads of the first five had all been born in Brenkenhoffwald, the final four were second-generation members born in and around Deutsch-Wymsysle itself (correction: three of the four were born at Deutsch-Wymsysle). Further, each one of the four family heads has already been listed in the church records; not one moved to the church from somewhere else. The four family heads include Johann 101, Tobias 106, Heinrich 116, and Heinrich 103.

Before we turn our attention to Johann 101, it is worth taking a moment to see which male Bullers who have already been listed do not reappear as heads of second-generation families. (We will try to trace the female Bullers in a future post.)

• Andreas 100 passed away in 1855 at age thirty-five.
• Wilhelm 102 was the first illegitimate son of Anna 99; we have no further information about him.
• Peter 107 married in 1839 and died at age forty-two in 1856.
• Heinrich 108 passed away in 1871 at the age of fifty-four.
• Karl 112 moved to Volhynia; we have no further information about him.
• Jakob 113 died before reaching adulthood, at the age of fifteen in 1845.
• Heinrich 120, GRANDMA reports, moved to the Crimea (the peninsula south of Molotschna), where he married Aganetha Dirks; Heinrich, Aganetha, and their children emigrated to the U.S. in 1875, settling in Turner County, South Dakota (roughly between Yankton and Sioux Falls).
• Benjamin 122 died as an infant.
• Kornelius 123 was born in 1848; we have no further information about him.
• Jakob 124 was born in 1851; we have no further information about him.
• The sons of Heinrich 125 (Peter 126a, Kornelius 126d, Wilhelm 126e, Johann 126g) all went to Russia with the rest of the family; we have no further information about them.

Of the fourteen male Bullers listed, six moved away from the region, which explains why no further descendants are listed for them; two died before reading adulthood, leading to the same result. This leaves six male Bullers who disappear from the records for reasons that are not known. Some may have died before having children, while others may have fathered only daughters, who are thus listed with their husbands’s families. Probably the greatest number moved away from Deutsch-Wymysle to some other Mennonite outpost (as did Karl 112, Heinrich 120, and Heinrich 125), with the result that the church records had no information to report.

Whatever the explanation, it is striking that, out of a potential eighteen male Bullers originally listed, only four reappear with their own families later in the book. It would be interesting to compare this with other family groups in Deutsch-Wymysle, to see if the same dynamics are at play with them.

With that background, we are ready to look briefly at Johann 101, son of Heinrich 97.

1. Three dates of death are listed, so we can calculate the length of life for Johann (sixty-three), his first son Peter (nineteen days), and his son Heinrich (seventy-nine). We will add these to our running calculations several posts from now.

2. The most interesting tidbit is found in the birth-village column for Johann’s wife Maria Krause: evangelisch. If you recall an earlier discussion, this indicates that Johann’s wife was Lutheran. The fact that she and their children are recorded in the Mennonite church book would imply that Maria became a Mennonite instead of Johann becoming Lutheran. Curious also is the notation that their youngest son Peter moved to Zyrardow, where there was no Mennonite congregation (see earlier here, toward the end). Does this signal a switch to the church of his mother and her family?

Three families to go—after which (but perhaps not immediately) we will return to our own ancestor David and his father Benjamin.