From George to Benjamin

Buller Time was asked a few days ago about the connection between one of the earliest Bullers we have identified and the more recent Bullers we have been discussing: Benjamin 1, Benjamin 2, David, and so on. One might pose the question visually as follows:

What is the relation between

and

?

If that is not perfectly clear, then perhaps words can help: What is the relation between George Buller of the Przechowka church and our earliest documentable ancestors Benjamin 1–Benjamin 2–David? This post will attempt to answer that question in a clear and orderly manner, although the answer will by no means be simple and direct.

1. We begin with George Buller, who was born sometime around 1650 (see top of the first chart above). The Przechowka church book does not provide George’s first name (so we originally referred to him as Unknown Buller), but the Hendrik Berents travel diary leaves no doubt: his first name was George (here).

According to the Przechowka church book and the Berents travel diary, George Buller was married to Dina Thoms. The church book also associates eight children with the family: Hans, George, Liscke, Peter, Sarcke, Efcke, Maricke, and Trudcke. What is interesting is that the church book also implies that only the seven listed after Hans, the oldest, were Dina’s children; Hans, it seems, had a different mother (see here).

This raises the question whether Dina Thoms was George’s first wife. We cannot say for certain, but the statement in the church book and other considerations suggest that she was not. What are those other considerations? The children listed in the church book were born, it appears in 1695 and after. While it is possible that George fathered his first child at age forty-five or thereabouts, it would have been unusual in that time and place. Dina’s seven children seem more likely George’s second family than his first family. This, of course, also explains why Hans, who was apparently older than the other children listed in the church book, was distinguished from them: he had a different mother, George’s previous wife.

2. If this basic premise is correct, that George had another family before the one we know about from the Przechowka church book, then we have a possible solution to an otherwise-baffling observation: the Przechowka church book offers a relatively complete list of Bullers in the church who descended from George, but it lists no one to whom we can trace the Benjamin 1–Benjamin 2–David line. Most of the Bullers in the broader family can be traced back to one of George’s three named sons, but our ancestors Benjamin 1–Benjamin 2–David cannot. There are only two ways to explain that fact: either we are not descended from George Buller, or we are related to George through a son other than Hans, George, or Peter. The second possibility may seem like grasping at straws, but it is not as outlandish as it first appears.

3. We know from contemporary records that, before moving to the Przechowka church area, George lived in a village named Schönsee approximately 10 miles to the east–northeast of the Przechowka church (see here, here, and here). Sometime between 1700 and 1705 George and (part of his) family moved from Schönsee to Przechowka. The crucial question for our purposes is not who moved with George but rather who did not move with George.

If, as seems reasonable, George began fathering children when he was around twenty, his oldest was born around 1770. Other children naturally followed. The oldest would have been at least thirty when George left Schönsee for Przechowka; a child born ten years later would have been twenty or more. These children probably had the same mother as Hans; for convenience, one can label them family 1. Children of family 1 who were of adult age would not be expected to move with their father and his family 2 (the children of Dina Thoms); only minor-aged children such as Hans would move with his father and stepmother. The adult children of family 1 would remain where they already lived and thus would not be listed in the Przechowka church book.

4. Several other considerations deserve mention. The village Schönsee actually had two Mennonite churches. One was associated with the Przechowka church and thus part of the Old Flemish branch. The other Schönsee church was of the Frisian group, which was not as conservative as Old Flemish congregations (see here). The Flemish and Frisian branches did not associate with one another, but there are records of individual Mennonites leaving one group to join the other. One wonders if this is what happened with George: Did he leave the Schönsee Frisian church upon or after his marriage to Dina Thoms?

The possibility is implied by a further observation: Dina Thoms’s family had a long-time association with the Przechowka church. One might reconstruct the scenario as follows: after George’s first wife died, he married Dina Thoms and, because of her strongly family ties to Przechowka, transferred his church association from the Frisian to the Old Flemish branch of the church; some time later George, Dina, and family moved from Schönsee to Przechowka, where they became firmly entrenched in the Przechowka church. George’s first family remained in Schönsee at the Frisian church there and thus are neither mentioned nor hinted at in the Przechowka church book.

5. Do Bullers appear in a Schönsee Frisian church book? Unfortunately, records from the period in question are lost or never existed. To my knowledge, the earliest Schönsee church records are from 1862, long after our ancestors would have left the area. Our only evidence, therefore, is the certainty that George lived in Schönsee before 1705 and the likelihood that he had children before those listed in the Przechowka church book.

6. One might question, given the sketchiness of the evidence, if we are even related to George. To be honest, we do not know even that much. However, it seems plausible that we are, given the fact that all the Mennonite Bullers originally from the Culm area (Przechowka and Schönsee), which almost certainly was the original home of the Benjamin 1–Benjamin 2–David line, seem to have descended from George. To put the matter differently, we know of no other Mennonite Bullers in the area from whom Benjamin 1–Benjamin 2–David might have descended; George is the only one.

***

So where does this leave us in terms of our original question: What is the relation between George Buller and our earliest documentable ancestors Benjamin 1–Benjamin 2–David?

• Because we know of no other Mennonite Buller from the Polish locale in which our ancestral line presumably lived, we probably descend from George Buller.
• Because the Benjamin 1–Benjamin 2–David line apparently does not descend from George’s three known sons from Przechowka (Hans, George Peter), we probably descend from another son of George.

If those two hypotheses are true, then we can say that there is no direct relation between the top chart headed by George and the bottom one stretching from Benjamin 1 to David. The top chart displays George’s family 2, the bottom one (our ancestors) the descendants of family 1. The crucial thing to keep in mind is that it seems most probable that George did not have a family, as in only one family; like many of that era and beyond, George probably had at least two wives (the first one having died) and thus two nuclear families.

If we are descended from George, then the line of descent is probably through a wife other than Dina Thoms and thus a son not listed in the Przechowka church book. The relations could be represented as follows:

George Buller (ca. 1650–ca. 1717)	—	wife 1 in Schönsee (not Dina Thoms)
|
????? Buller (ca. 1675–????)	—	?????
|
????? Buller (1700s?)	—	?????
|
????? Buller (1730s?)	—	?????
|
Benjamin Buller 1 1760s	—	?????
|
Benjamin Buller 2 (1789–????)	—	Helena  ????? (1793/9–????)
|
David B Buller (1818–1904)	—	Helena Zielke (1819–1855?)

This reconstruction has three unknown generations between George and Benjamin 1. Not only do we not know who these missing Bullers were, but we cannot even say with certainty that there were three generations or even that Benjamin 1 was directly descended from George. That seems the most probable explanation at present, but it may turn out slightly or even significantly incorrect. Only additional evidence will indicate what the true state of affairs actually is.