Benjamin Buller 19

Now that we have surveyed the 1850 census in general (here), it is time to dig into the details—and this document certainly is rich in details for our family. We will look first at the male columns, then at the female ones.

By way of recap, the first column is the family number on the census of this village, the second gives the individual’s name, the third states his age or status in the prior census, the fourth indicates if an individual has died, and the fifth records the individual’s age in 1850, the time of the current census. The numbers placed in brackets are Glenn Penner’s addition of GRANDMA numbers, when they can be identified.

So, what do we learn from the entry of family 22?

1. The family is headed by Benjamin Buller (Benjamin 2 in our system), who was forty-five in the prior census and sixty-one in 1850. We will discuss the issue of the sixteen-year difference in ages separately. The important thing to note here is that Benjamin’s age of sixty-one in 1850 corresponds to our previous hypothesis that he was born in 1789 or thereabouts (here).

2. Listed next is Benjamin’s oldest son in Heinrichsdorf: our ancestor David. He was not the oldest son in the family—which was Benjamin 3, who had remained in Waldheim—merely the oldest son living in Heinrichsdorf. David was fifteen in 1834 and thirty-one in 1850, which would place his birth around 1819. In fact, we know that David was born in early 1818 (here).

3. Immediately below David we find David’s son Peter—as in Peter D who would latter marry Sarah Siebert. Peter D, as noted, was born after the prior census and was age six in 1850. This would imply a birth year of 1844; the Buller Family Record, however, gives a birth date of 11 January 1845 (so he was just a few months shy of his sixth birthday when the census was taken).

4. The number 2 next to the following name corresponds to the number 1 with David’s name; that is, it signifies that Heinrich is another son of Benjamin. We first learned about Heinrich several posts back (here), when he was listed among those of Benjamin’s family who wished to leave Waldheim and return to Volhynia. Now we know that he was eleven in the prior census and twenty-seven in 1850, so presumably born around 1823 and thus four years David’s junior.

5. The last entry contains brand new information: the identity and age of another son of Benjamin’s and thus another brother to David. Peter B Buller was one year old in the previous census and still a teen of seventeen in 1850. Born around 1833, he was ten years younger than his next brother. This does not necessarily mean that no sons were born between Heinrich and Peter, only that there were no sons living in 1850 between them. The appearance of another Peter in the family seems noteworthy, in that it shows that this was a common family name.

In this short entry we find three generations of Bullers, one of them someone we have never before encountered. We now know that Benjamin 2 had at least four sons (Benjamin 3, David, Heinrich, and Peter) and that at least three of our direct ancestors (Benjamin 2, David, Peter D) lived in Volhynia, in the village of Heinrichsdorf, at least for a while. This seems a good place to stop for the moment. The next post will explore the names and ages in the female columns of the census, before we take time to explore this new territory further.