Benjamin Buller 23

The previous post introduced the Buller pages (yes, there are multiple pages) in the Heinrichsdorf church book. There we examined the entries for Benjamin Buller and his son Heinrich. We ended with a question about what we saw—or rather, what we did not see. The hint was the 1850 Russian census, and especially the fact that the church book seems to follow it rather rigorously, even to the point of including the families in the same order as the census and assigning them the same numbers found in the census.

If the church book follows the census, then someone is missing between Benjamin and Heinrich, the son who was older than Heinrich, who was the oldest son of Benjamin and Helena to emigrate back to Heinrichsdorf: our ancestor David. As the older of the two sons, he should have been listed immediately after Benjamin, just as he was in the 1850 census. The fact that he is not is significant. The fact that David and family appear nowhere in the Heinrichsdorf church book speaks volumes.

We know that David, Helena, and their three children Helena, Peter D, and Elisabeth all came to and lived in Heinrichsdorf; the 1845 list of Mennonites wishing to return to Volhynia and the 1850 census both prove that beyond reasonable doubt. Now we know that, at the time of the creation of the church book, they were no longer in Heinrichsdorf.

Two questions arise: When did David and family leave Heinrichsdorf? Where did they go? The second of the two questions is easiest to answer. We know that David spent the latter years of his life in Waldheim, Molotschna colony, so one may safely assume (until evidence indicating otherwise comes to light) that he and his family left Heinrichsdorf and retraced their steps southeast 400 miles to Waldheim, where they had lived for most of the 1840s. The three parallel lines in the lower half of the map below represent the three moves that David made. The red one in the center represents his 1839 trip as an unmarried man accompanying his father and mother and siblings from Volhynia to Waldheim; the blue one on the bottom represents now-married David’s 1848 move from Waldheim to the soon-to-be-founded village of Heinrichsdorf; the purple line on top indicates his final move back to Waldheim in Molotschna colony, made sometime after 1850. But when?

The date on the cover of the church book pictured at the top of the post is our only clue. On the last line of the title section of the cover one can see the year 1858. This is presumably the date that the book was started. As we noted earlier (here), one of the introductory pages records an event from September 1861, so obviously the book was added to for a number of years. (Inspection of the book will no doubt reveal the latest date of birth, baptism, marriage, or death recorded, which will give us a better sense of the “life” of the book.)

If 1858 was the year that someone began compiling the book, and if the process of creating the book began by recording all those people in the 1850 census who were still in Heinrichsdorf, then it would be reasonable to conclude that David and family left sometime between 1850 (the year of the census, on which they appear) and 1858 (the year of the church book, in which they do not appear). Anything more definitive than this is impossible for us to say at this point.

There is, however, one more question that we should ask, even though we have no hope of answering it at this time: Was Helena Zielke Buller alive when David and family moved back to Waldheim? Of course, we do not know with certainty when Helena died. The Buller Family Records lists only “1855?” This likely reflects the fact that David and Helena’s last son was born 14 February 1855. One wonders if Helena died as a result of complications or illness associated with that childbirth.

Even more intriguing is when Helena passed away in relation to the family’s location. Did she die while they lived in Heinrichsdorf? If so, then David moved back to Molotschna as a single parent with six children, three of them under the age of seven. This is possible, but a more reasonable (at least to us) option would have been to stay in Heinrichsdorf near his parents and several siblings who could perhaps assist him in caring for the children until he remarried.

If Helena passed away after the family’s final move, then we might imagine that David and family moved sometime between 1850 and 1854. It seems reasonable to expect that David and family did not return to Waldheim alone, that a group of Heinrichdorfers moved back at the same time. Maybe by comparing the 1850 census with the 1858 church book, we will be able to identify all those who went back to Waldheim, and perhaps by doing so we will be able to narrow down the time frame of our family’s final move to Waldheim. For now, all we can do is wonder is how Helena’s death fit into the larger framework of our family history.