Benjamin Buller 1

So it is we begin a new adventure. Before we immerse ourselves in recently transcribed documents with direct relevance to our family, we should reorient ourselves to the Old World and reacquaint ourselves with certain people and particular places that will help us navigate well the new territory we are about to explore.

1. The people

The primary people of interest, of course, are the five known generations of our ancestors, from Chris and Malinda all the way back to Benjamin and Helena.

Chris Buller (1906–1982)	—	Malinda Franz (1906–1980
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Peter P Buller (1869–1964)	—	Margaretha Epp (1870–1951)
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Peter D Buller (1845–1897)	—	Sarah Siebert (1847–1922)
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David B Buller (1818–1904)	—	Helena Zielke ????–1855?
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Benjamin Buller (????–????)	—	Helena  ????? (????–????)
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????? Buller 1760s?
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????? Buller 1730s?
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????? Buller 1700s?
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George Buller	—	????? (not Dina Thoms)

For the time being, we cannot supply Helena Zielke’s year of birth or any dates for Benjamin and Helena (whose maiden name we not know know) Buller. That being said, we can safely assume that Benjamin was born sometime around 1790, since he had a son David in 1818.

If (!) we are descended from George Buller—and that is only a hypothesis at this point; we have no documentary evidence indicating that we are—then one might posit three generations between our known ancestor Benjamin and George Buller of Przechovka, with an average age at fathering a child of thirty. It seems unlikely that there is room for four generations, unless four successive generations of male Bullers fathered a male child in our line of ancestry in their early twenties.

Although it is helpful to keep all these generations in mind, our focus in the upcoming posts will be on three: (1) David and Helena; (2) Benjamin and Helena; and (3) and the generation before them.

2. The places

We will introduce no new places, merely revisit some of those with which we have become familiar in our journey thus far.

George Buller lived in the Culm area and eventually became a member of the Przechovka church (number 1 in the map below), but our earliest certainly known ancestor Benjamin first appears in the region of Volhynia (number 2), so that is where we will begin. We first encountered Benjamin and Helena two to three years after they emigrated to Volhynia (from where we do not know), in an 1819/1820 census (see here, here, here, and here, as well as other posts in that time frame).

We learned that Benjamin and Helena became tenants on the land of a Polish noble named Waclav Borejko in 1817, the year before their son David (our ancestor) was born. We also discovered that at some point at least a part of the family decided to leave Volhynia, since David turns up in the village of Waldheim in Molotschna colony (number 3; see here and other posts in that time frame).

Because the village was founded in 1836, we know that David moved there later than that, perhaps in the first wave of settlers, sixty-eight families in all, according to government records, by the end of 1940. We guessed on that basis that David and Helena’s son Peter D was born in Waldheim (his year of birth was 1845), although we do not know that for certain. Eventually Peter left Waldheim to marry Sarah Siebert and live with her family (matrilocality!); David remained in Waldheim until he passed on at age eighty-six in 1904.

Enough background: suffice it to say that we will focus on the generations of David and Helena, Benjamin and Helena, and the generation before them and that our story will unfold in two distinct locations: Volhynia (beginning in the village of Wysock but ending up in yet a different village) and Molotschna colony in the village of Waldheim.

As mentioned previously, Mennonite historians and researchers have recently transcribed a number of historical sources that will guide our journey: nine pertaining to the Volhynia–Waldheim connection, seven of which have direct relevance for our family. By “direct relevance” I mean that one or more of our ancestors appear in those primary sources.

This series is likely to become complicated, so buckle up and hold on. We will work slowly, systematically, and thoroughly through each Buller-relevant document in turn, beginning with the earliest (1833) and working our forward in time. I do not know how many posts this will take, but each one in the series will recall our earliest identifiable ancestor: Benjamin Buller. You will understand why a little more fully as time goes on.