Benjamin Buller 6

Back when we first discovered that David Buller’s parents were Benjamin and Helena, we noticed that Helena Zielke’s family lived in the same village as the Bullers: Zofyovka, a mile north of the town of Wysock (see here, middle and lower in the post). At the time I remember thinking that this explained why David Buller and Helena Zielke later married: they resided in the same village.

Of course, learning that David’s family moved to another location, to Ostrowka, in or around 1828 throws a wrench into that theory, since David and Helena were too young to be married at that time—or even later in 1833: when David was merely fifteen and Helena was fourteen. It seems clear, in light of all this, that David and Helena met again and married after both had moved to Waldheim, perhaps in 1838, when David was twenty and Helena ninetten.

The bigger mystery revolves around when Helena’s family moved to Waldheim in Molotschna, as well as where in Volhynia they lived before moving to Waldheim. Not one of the thirty-nine families recorded in the “List of Mennonites Wishing to Leave Volhynia and Settle with Their Brethren in the Tauridian Governorate, 1833” (here) is a Zielke.

There are six Wedel families, four Nachtigal, four Ratzlaff, three Dirks, three Schmidt, two Richert, two Sperling, two Unrau, two Voth, and one each of Becker, Balzer, Boese, Buller, Funk, Klaassen, Koehn, Kunkel, Pankratz, Teske, and Werbel—but no Zielke.

We will want to be on the lookout for Zielkes as we examine the newly available documents in the posts to come. For now, all we can conclude is that David Buller and Helena Zielke married once both were in Waldheim. What route Helena and her family took to get there is currently unknown.