Benjamin Buller 10

A brief recap of the Benjamin Buller series before we move on to the next primary source. We began in the first post (here) with a summary of the people (our line back to Benjamin Buller) and the places (Poland, Molotschna, but primarily the place in between: Volhynia) that we will explore. The second, third, fourth, and fifth posts (here, here, here, and here) then turned to the first primary source at our disposal: an 1833 list of thirty-nine Mennonites who wished to move from Volhynia to Molotschna. There we not only found Benjamin Buller, the father of David Buller, but also learned when he had (probably) moved from Zofyovka to Ostrowka (1828) and how much his family had grown between 1820 and 1833 (from five to eleven).

After Benjamin Buller 6’s brief detour on the fact that David Buller and Helena Zielke must have married after both reached Molotschna (see here), the seventh post in the series (here) introduced another document recently made available: a list of settlers who arrived in Waldheim in 1839 who were to be assigned land the following year. Once again we identified a Benjamin Buller on the list, and the following posts (here and here) confirmed that, not only was this our ancestor, but that he was, in fact, one of Waldheim’s early landowners (no landless hicks are we!) and that his full name was Benjamin Benjamin Buller. The latter observation tells us that Benjamin’s father was likewise named Benjamin—and just like that, we extended our genealogy back another generation.

So here we are in post 10, ready to tackle another primary source. This document, like the previous one, was translated and made available by Steve Fast (here). The document itself is similar to the previous one, merely from a year later. It is titled “Mennonites Who Transferred from Volhynia to Waldheim and Were Assigned Land in 1840.”

As before, each person listed was to receive a Wirtschaft in Waldheim of 65 dessiatines (number 16 does not have an amount entered, presumably an oversight). Also as before, each person is located in the village, which is both interesting from a family perspective and informative from a historical one. to facilitate discussion, we reproduce below the essential information from Steve Fast’s translation of the list. (The numbers in the left column are of no significance other than numbering this list.)

	name	where counted and status
1	Andreas Peter Nachtigal	number 3 with the family of his father Peter Heinrich Nachtigal
2	Johann Johann Schmidt	number 1 with the family of his step-father Kornelius Johann Funk
3	Jacob Gregor Buller	number 3
4	Kornelius Kornelius Unruh	number 7 with the family of his father Kornelius David Unruh
5	Benjamin … Kornelius Unruh	number 7 with the family of his father Kornelius David Unruh
6	Samuel Martin Böse	number 21
7	Martin Martin Bayer? [Behr]	number 24
8	Heinrich Jacob Voth	number 37
9	Heinrich Peter Sperling	number 38 with the family of his father Peter Tobias Sperling
10	Andreas Andreas Schmidt	number 45
11	Benjamin Benjamin Buller	number 45 with the family of his father Benjamin Benjamin Buller
12	Peter David Schmidt	number 47
13	Jacob Heinrich Pankratz	number 52
14	Johann Kornelius Wedel	number 54? with the family of his brother Benjamin Kornelius Wedel
15	Heinrich Kornelius Wedel	number 54? with the family of his brother Benjamin Kornelius Wedel
16	David Georg Nachtigal	number 58
17	Jacob Jacob Richert	number 59

Once again we encounter a Benjamin Buller—actually, two of them. More on that later, but first we should note a new Buller: Jacob Gregor (number 3). We have not, to my knowledge, met anyone with that name before, and the name Gregor does not strike me as Mennonite. Not knowing what to make of that surprise appearance (maybe we will encounter him later and understand more), we will move on to the Benjamins.

This could become confusing, so follow along carefully. The 1839 record listed Benajamin Benjamin as residing at number 45. We concluded, rightly, that Benjamin Benjamin at number 45 was our own ancestor, father of David, grandfather of Peter D, great-grandfather of Peter P, and so on. Now, in a list from the following year, 1840, we see Benjamin Benjamin Buller listed again. If we were to stop right there we would wonder why Benjamin Benjamin Buller was listed as a settler in 1839 and again in 1840. How can one person be listed as a settler twice?

Obviously, one person cannot be listed twice—but two people with the same name can be listed two times, with one of them settling in Waldheim in 1839 and the other in 1840. In fact, this is what the right-hand column of the record indicates, when it states that Benjamin Benjamin Buller was located at Waldheim number 45 (again, not the Wirtschaft number) with the family of his father Benjamin Benjamin Buller. Huh?

Benjamin Benjamin Buller, according to the 1839 list, lived at Waldheim 45 (you can check it here for yourself); after careful examination, we concluded that this individual was, in fact, the father of David Buller. Now we read that a different Benjamin Benjamin Buller lived at Waldheim 45 with his father Benjamin Benjamin Buller. Who was that?

That is a question for another post, but I leave you with a hint: the first list of Benjamin and Helena Buller’s family known to us, from roughly two decades before: here. Let’s play a game of Where’s Benjamin? with the census listing in that post!


Work Cited

Mennonites Who Transferred from Volhynia to Waldheim and Were Assigned Land in 1840. Odessa State Archives Fond 6, Inventory 1 File 4889. Translated by Steve Fast. Available online here.