We now turn to the other facts of this woman’s life, many of which are unclear or unknown. Once again we begin with her official GM entry, followed by the GM entry for her birth family, which is a more accurate guide to her life events.
As we discovered, David’s second wife was a child of Jacob Ratzlaff and Lehncke Schmidten, both of whom came from the Przechowka church in the Schwetz area of Poland, whose church book we have examined on a number of occasions. We do not know which child was David’s wife, only that she was likely one of the first five born.
We include both GM entries so we can compare the information in the first with that in the second. Unlike our usual practice, we begin with the date of death, since it affects other central facts in the entry.
Death
The year and place of death in the top entry (1904, south Russia) are both incorrect, as proven by the 25 February 1907 letter that son Heinrich wrote to Die Mennonitische Rundschau (link 4 in the first post). Heinrich wrote “Mother is often sick this winter; she frequently has headaches,” so Heinrich’s mother (David’s second wife) clearly was still alive at that date.
In fact, Heinrich’s mother was still alive when the family moved several thousand miles east to the Kazakhstan (aka Siberia) region. The Buller Family Records states, “After David Buller died, Mrs. Buller together with son Heinrich and family, moved to Siberia, Russia, where both also died. Mrs. Buller reached an age of 98 years.”
According to a letter written to the Odessaer Zeitung newspaper in April 1908 (see here), the group of Waldheimers who made this journey left that very month for the Pavlodar area of Kazakhstan (see the post here). We have every reason to think that Mrs. Buller, son Heinrich, and his family were part of the group that emigrated at that time.
The GM information is thus incorrect in two important respects: Mrs. Ratzlaff Buller died sometime after 1908 (not 1904) in Kazakhstan (not south Russia). We should also note at this point that the mistaken date of death has led GM to suggest an incorrect year of birth, which we will now address, before summing up when Ratzlaff Buller died.
Birth
GM and the Buller Family Record agree that Mrs. Ratzlaff Buller lived to the age of ninety-eight (I suspect that GM is relying on the BFR on this matter). Because GM thought for some reason that Mrs. Ratzlaff Buller died in 1904, GM calculated that she was born ninety-eight years before that, about 1806.
This is highly unlikely for several reasons, not least the fact that her last datable birth was in 1864, when she would have been fifty-eight by GM’s reckoning. In fact, we must take the opposite tack in calculating Ratzlaff Buller’s dates. Because she was almost certainly a daughter of Jacob Ratzlaff and Lehncke Schmidten, we can deduce from the GM information for that family that she was born sometime between 1825 (the approximate birth year of Helena) and 1836 (the suggested birth year of Sara). In other words, GM’s year of birth is significantly mistaken—by two to three decades. Ratzlaff Buller was born sometime between 1825 and 1836. She was thus younger than David, not ten years older than he was.
Based on this information, we can calculate the range during which Ratzlaff Buller is likely to have died: 1923–1934.
Family, Spouse
Obviously, our interest in Ratzlaff Buller is because of her marriage to David Buller. Whether this was her first marriage is unknown. There is no mention of children other than those fathered by David, which might tilt us to think that he was her first husband.
If David was her first husband, the perhaps she was one of the younger Ratzlaff daughters. We might suppose that this Buller–Ratzlaff wedding took place around 1856 (if David’s first wife Helena Zielke died in 1855), which would mean that the five daughters listed were the following ages at that time:
- Helena: 30
- Maria: 26
- Anna: 24
- Catarina: 24
- Sara: 20
Of course, all this is nothing more than guesswork, so we dare not form any firm conclusions on the matter.
Family, Children
There is no need to repeat the earlier discussions of David’s children (see here). Suffice it to say that Ratzlaff Buller was the mother of at least two, and probably three, children. The GM entry should be corrected to reflect that. According to the Buller Family Record, Ratzlaff Buller had three children:
- Heinrich: about 1860
- Jacob: 1864
- Sarah: unknown
Sarah poses an interesting problem. The Buller Family Record lists her as the last-born child of David and his second wife but does not know her year of birth. GM gives her year of birth as 1850 but does not provide evidence for that. Because so much of what GM has correct originates with the BFR and because where GM does not follow the BFR it is frequently in error, it seems reasonable to trust the BFR slightly more in its assignment of Sarah to David Buller’s second wife.
But there is even more to notice. Why was the girl named Sarah? Might this be a hint at her mother’s name? We certainly cannot draw any firm conclusions, but it seems more than coincidental that one of the daughters to whom David was married was also named Sarah. One cannot ignore the fact that the two older brothers of these Ratzlaff daughters were named Heinrich and Jacob, just like the two sons of David and his second wife.
None of these observations proves anything, but together they are perhaps suggestive that David and Sarah Ratzlaff were married around 1856, when she was twenty, and that she bore three children to him and named her sons after members of her own family and her daughter after herself: Heinrich, Jacob, Sarah. (Of course, Heinrich was also a Buller name.)
Family, Parents and Siblings
As noted several times, David’s second wife was the daughter of Jacob Ratzlaff (47841) and Lehncke Schmidten (58542). Both originally were members of the Przechowka church in the Schwetz area of Poland, the same area along the Vistula River where, we believe, our direct ancestors lived. However, Jacob and Lehncke Ratzlaff, like many other Mennonites of the Schwetz area, eventually ended up in Molotschna. They and their family settled in the village of Friedensdorf, which was three villages to the west of Waldheim, a mere 5 miles away from David’s village.
GM Number
We generally do not suggest a change to a GM number, but in this case we can be fairly certain that David Buller’s second wife was one of the five oldest daughters of Jacob and Lehncke Ratzlaff. We do not know which daughter David married (though Sarah, 106031, seems an intriguing candidate), so we cannot say which number should be linked to David. What we do know is that the current GM number (326615) will need to be retired if ever we identify the name of David’s Ratzlaff wife.
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