As mentioned at the end of the previous post, the first few pages of William Buller’s Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller deal with Heinrich’s grandfather Heinrich and his father Benjamin; the real focus, however, is on Heinrich and Agnetha. So it is that next six pages are devoted to Heinrich and the eight after that to Agnetha, followed by another fifty-plus pages on their early years together in Russia, their voyage across the Atlantic, and their final decades raising a family in South Dakota.
We will not reproduce, let alone comment on, the entire family story from the mid-nineteenth century through 1915, but we will stick with Heinrich and Agnetha’s story for as long as it relates to our main interest: the history of the Bullers and other Mennonites in nineteenth-century Russia. Thus, we continue with the early life of Heinrich Benjamin Buller.
[8] Father’s early boyhood was spent, as may be surmised, in great poverty and want. What made the struggle for existence still harder for him was the fact that he was of a frail constitution and subject therefore to all the sicknesses that visited the countryside. Thus his boyhood was indeed not as happy a one as fancy would like to picture for childhood years.
He was put to work at a very early period, at first as a guardian of little children, a task he disliked greatly, and as soon as barely possible, he helped in the fields. Unfortunately, his mother died when he was a mere child (between six and seven years old) and though his stepmother happened to be a fairly good and just woman, nevertheless, he often felt the loss of his mother.
When he was scarcely eight years old, the needs of the family were such that he had to leave the parental roof to work out. His wages were, of course, a mere pittance; still it could not be despised in such lowly circumstances, and if it were only the daily bread. [9] Living under hard conditions such as these, father’s education was naturally neglected. How intermittent he was able to attend school we may well guess from the fact that in three years of schooling he attended in all sixteen weeks! And this comprises all the education as such that he ever got. Can we, in contemplating this awful fact, ever thank our parents enough for the courage and enterprise that they had to bring us to this most blessed of all nations with its splendid school system, that the poorest can enjoy side by side with the rich? What a testimony it is to father’s persistent mind and hunger for knowledge that with the rudiments learned at school he educated himself and became well versed in reading and the writing of the German language and unusually proficient in the fundamentals of arithmetic.
Thus the years sped by. Though somewhat frail in body, he soon took his place with the other workers at the flail or with the reapers in the harvest fields. He was unusually adept with the scythe and made many a big man fight for his honors.
When father was about seventeen or eighteen years old, his father died suddenly, a victim of the terrible scourge of cholera, which in those days was still an uncontrolled disease. It was the time of harvest in the year 1853. Awful were the ravages of this dread disease throughout the whole country. At first it was localized among the Jews and Bulgarians living in overcrowded quarters in the large cities and towns, but soon the country districts were affected, too. As was well known, the disease often attached [attacked?] its unhappy victim with the awful suddenness, so that in very truth many a man might go to bed hale and hearty not to rise again in the morn. Thus, too, did it seize his father. He retired one night with expectations of doing great things in the harvest field the next day. But alas! The next day he was a corpse. Father, too, had a bad attack of the disease, but in some miraculous way escaped death.
Father, with the loss of both his father and mother, was now an orphan indeed and thrown entirely upon his own resources. He determined to learn some trade and, upon advice of his nearest friends, hired out soon after to a weaver for the sum of fourteen Rubles a year, out of which he had to pay seven and one-half Rubles as learner’s fee. This he paid by doing extra work. But no sooner had he served his time when the trade [10] became so flooded with workmen that the wages slumped to still lower level. Accordingly, he decided to enter a new trade and upon advice of an uncle chose the carpenter trade. He never became proficient at this business but learned only the rudiments of saw and plane and square. (Buller 1915, 9–10)
He was put to work at a very early period, at first as a guardian of little children, a task he disliked greatly, and as soon as barely possible, he helped in the fields. Unfortunately, his mother died when he was a mere child (between six and seven years old) and though his stepmother happened to be a fairly good and just woman, nevertheless, he often felt the loss of his mother.
When he was scarcely eight years old, the needs of the family were such that he had to leave the parental roof to work out. His wages were, of course, a mere pittance; still it could not be despised in such lowly circumstances, and if it were only the daily bread. [9] Living under hard conditions such as these, father’s education was naturally neglected. How intermittent he was able to attend school we may well guess from the fact that in three years of schooling he attended in all sixteen weeks! And this comprises all the education as such that he ever got. Can we, in contemplating this awful fact, ever thank our parents enough for the courage and enterprise that they had to bring us to this most blessed of all nations with its splendid school system, that the poorest can enjoy side by side with the rich? What a testimony it is to father’s persistent mind and hunger for knowledge that with the rudiments learned at school he educated himself and became well versed in reading and the writing of the German language and unusually proficient in the fundamentals of arithmetic.
Thus the years sped by. Though somewhat frail in body, he soon took his place with the other workers at the flail or with the reapers in the harvest fields. He was unusually adept with the scythe and made many a big man fight for his honors.
When father was about seventeen or eighteen years old, his father died suddenly, a victim of the terrible scourge of cholera, which in those days was still an uncontrolled disease. It was the time of harvest in the year 1853. Awful were the ravages of this dread disease throughout the whole country. At first it was localized among the Jews and Bulgarians living in overcrowded quarters in the large cities and towns, but soon the country districts were affected, too. As was well known, the disease often attached [attacked?] its unhappy victim with the awful suddenness, so that in very truth many a man might go to bed hale and hearty not to rise again in the morn. Thus, too, did it seize his father. He retired one night with expectations of doing great things in the harvest field the next day. But alas! The next day he was a corpse. Father, too, had a bad attack of the disease, but in some miraculous way escaped death.
Father, with the loss of both his father and mother, was now an orphan indeed and thrown entirely upon his own resources. He determined to learn some trade and, upon advice of his nearest friends, hired out soon after to a weaver for the sum of fourteen Rubles a year, out of which he had to pay seven and one-half Rubles as learner’s fee. This he paid by doing extra work. But no sooner had he served his time when the trade [10] became so flooded with workmen that the wages slumped to still lower level. Accordingly, he decided to enter a new trade and upon advice of an uncle chose the carpenter trade. He never became proficient at this business but learned only the rudiments of saw and plane and square. (Buller 1915, 9–10)
We end this first installment of Heinrich’s story with a few comments about specific details.
1. According to GRANDMA, Heinrich’s mother, Agatha Goertz Buller (28412), passed away on 18 March 1843, when he was nearly nine. His memory of being six or seven is slightly in error, which also presumably shifts his age later for the topic of the next comment.
2. The mention of Heinrich leaving home to “work out” is consistent with what we have observed elsewhere (e.g., here). However, Heinrich’s situation reveals that this was not always just a custom but was often a matter of economic necessity. One imagines that, in cases of economic distress, sending a child to be a servant in another family’s home served two purposes: it freed the poor family from having to feed the servant child, and it generated a small income that helped support the rest of the family.
3. Heinrich’s father Benjamin died, according to GRANDMA, on 11 August 1855, so Heinrich was twenty-one at the time, not seventeen or eighteen, as he recalled.
4. Heinrich’s father died of cholera, which was a frequent cause of death in the nineteenth century. There were at least six cholera pandemics (epidemics that spread across regions or even continents) between 1817 and 1923. The second cholera pandemic is typically dated 1846–1860, so that is the one that claimed Benjamin’s life (here). Roughly a million people in Russia alone died during the second pandemic, which gives us a sense of how devastating it could be to a population.
Cholera is an infection of the small intestine that produces, most typically, diarrhea so severe that it leads to significant dehydration and electrolyte imbalance. Apparently symptoms can appear as soon as several hours after exposure. A frequent source of cholera exposure is contaminated water. When there is no treatment, as in nineteenth-century Russia (Poland), have of those with severe cases will die. Even today, some 3–5 million people contract cholera each year, and 28,800 died from it in 2015.
5. Linen weaving was a common trade among Mennonites (see the number of linen weavers here), so it is not surprising to learn that Heinrich tried his hand at that. Although it is difficult to know what 14 rubles a year could have purchased, the fact that he had to pay half that amount just to learn the trade gives us a sense of the dire straits in which he found himself.
This is a good place to interrupt Heinrich’s story, since in the paragraphs that follow he will find his way to someplace familiar. We will pick up the thread there in the following post.
Work Cited
Buller, William B. 1915. Life Story of Heinrich Buller and His Wife Agnetha Duerksen Buller. Parker, SD: privately printed.
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