As explained earlier, information about male family members was recorded on a left-hand page; that for female family members appeared on the facing right-hand page. Husband and wife are roughly aligned across the pages, with children listed below parents: boys below their fathers and girls below their mothers. The composite scan below shows how the two pages were laid out side by side.
There is obviously a lot more writing on the female side of these Benjamin Buller pages, and it will require careful work to make sense of it all. It is easiest for us to begin at the bottom of the list and work our way up. The last name written in the name column (the wide one on the left) is Eva, and five additional names appear above hers; as we will see, all six names have the heading Töchter, or daughter. Above them is their mother, whose position across from Heinrich indicates that she is his wife, so the six girls are their daughters.
Above the line for Heinrich’s wife are two additional entries, and here is where it becomes terribly complicated.
We begin with the column headings. With no claim to having it correct, I read the heading of the first column as Weiblichen Nahmen, which one can translate as “female names.” The main problem with this reading is that the word for “names” typically has no h, being spelled Namen. However, because the content of the column supports this reading (the column records the names of the female family members), we will accept the reading until it is proven incorrect.
The other three columns are easier to read (especially when one knows what to expect in them). They record the dates of birth (Geboren), baptism (Getauft), and death (Gestorben). Before we move on, notice that the label Töchter is fairly clear in this extract. We see also that Heinrich’s first daughter was named Helena, just like Heinrich’s own mother.
All that is interesting, but we want to focus on the first three lines, since that is where we encounter some complications.
Line 1: The first word is not clear to me (additional time and effort—and expertise—are needed), but the second and third are obvious: Frau Helena. That is, this is the line for Benjamin’s wife Helena. We see in the next column that she was born (the word appears to be Gegeboren, but I do not think that can be correct) sometime in the year 1799.
This is the first complication. According to the Rovno register (here) and the 1850 Heinrichsdorf census (here), Helena was four to six years younger than her husband Benjamin. We know that he was born in 1789, so a birth year of 1799 for Helena seems mistaken.
Lines 2–3: We treat these entries together, since we really cannot understand either one in isolation. The first curiousity to notice is that the name on both lines is the same: Anna Unruh. The word at the beginning of line 2 is unclear at first glance; we may return to it later. The word at the beginning of line 3 is the same as at the beginning of line 1, so we will attempt to decipher both at some point. Obviously, the word before Anna Unruh in line 3 is Frau, which identifies this person as Heinrich’s wife (since he is across from this line on the left-hand page).
If line 3 identifies Anna Unruh as Heinrich’s wife, then who is the Anna Unruh in line 2? This is where the GRANDMA database becomes valuable. We see in the second column that Anna Unruh in line 3 was born on 7 February 1819 (written “1819 im [?] 7 Februar”). The Anna Unruh on line 2’s entry is not as clear with its date, but it seems reasonable to read her date of birth as 15 February 1785. (I find it interesting that the exact dates of birth are know for the two Unruhs but not for Benjamin or Helena Buller.)
A simple search of the GRANDMA database for an Anna Unruh born in 1819 returns an interesting result.
Anna Unruh 402143 was married to Heinrich Buller, so this is the right person. Notice her mother’s name: Anna Ratzlaff—who married Benjamin Unruh. Her married name was thus Anna Unruh. According to GRANDMA, Anna Ratzlaff Unruh was born 17 February 1784, which resembles in some respects our date of 15 February 1785. Unfortunately, GRANDMA does not record the source for its 1784 date of birth, so we cannot judge which one is more likely right.
Two additional pieces of information fill out the picture. First, according to GRANDMA, Benjamin Unruh died in 1833, which means that the person is line 2 is the widow Anna Unruh. It is tempting, in light of this information, to read the first word of line 2 as Witwe, or widow, but the spelling just does not seem right for that. The word remains undeciphered. Second, the 1850 census lists a Benjamin Unruh whose mother Anna lived with him and his family (family 9 on the census), an Anna Unruh whose age listed would place her date of birth in 1785.
How does this all fit together? Heinrich Buller was married to Anna Unruh Buller, daughter of Anna Ratzlaff Unruh. As a widow, Anna Ratzlaff Unruh lived with her children, first her son Benjamin and his family, then her daughter Anna Unruh Buller and her family. The fact that Anna Ratzlaff Unruh is listed with the Benjamin Buller larger family in the church book certainly implies that by 1858 she was living with them. For whatever reason, she no longer lived with her son Benjamin and his wife, nor did she live with her other son David and his wife or any of her other children and their families.
We may never know why Anna Ratzlaff Unruh chose to live with her daughter Anna and son-in-law Heinrich Buller. One thing we do learn from this mystery solved is that the compiler of the church book did not woodenly copy the material from the 1850 Russian census, even if it served as a source of information for him. Earlier Anna Ratzlaff Unruh had been listed with family 9; now she appears with family 22, which presumably was reflective of her current situation.
The next post will turn to Heinrich and Anna’s six daughters, after which we will cover yet another son of Benjamin and Helena. There is still a great deal of information to process and organize as we reconstruct our broader family story.
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