A contemporary perspective

A recent search for more information about Michalin, a village in Volhynia, turned up an interesting letter to the editor from late 1823 that was published in a periodical named New Evangelical Magazine and Theological Review. The letter appears on pages 91–92 of the March 1824 issue. For the original publication, see here.

To put this into perspective, the letter was published when David Buller was a boy of six. The letter writer, John Mitchell, seems to know a little about Mennonites, but he had more questions than knowledge, so he asked a colleague to find out more from a young schoolmaster among the Mennonites of Molotschna colony.

The letter locates Mitchell in Astrachan (Astrakhan), a Russian city 500+ miles east of Molotschna. Mitchell was a missionary with the Edinburgh Missionary Society there (see the announcement here).

Mitchell’s letter to the New Evangelical Magazine editor reports his findings and, in the process, offers us an intriguing outside but contemporary perspective on Mennonites. A word of warning: the letter is not entirely accurate in every detail. It is generally correct, but we should read it critically and carefully as no more than one perspective, a second-hand one at that, on the Mennonites of the early nineteenth century.

To the Editor of the New Evan. Magazine.

Astrachan, Dec. 16, 1823.

MY DEAR SIR,

I ought long ago to have acknowledged the receipt of your very kind letter of the 9th of April, which came to hand in September, along with the parcel which you had the goodness to send me, containing a copy of your Magazine for last year, and up to April for the present year, together with a copy of your History of the Christian Church, in 2 vols. Having written to my brother a short time after these came to hand, I requested him to inform you of their having been received, and desired him to express to you my thankfulness for such a valuable present. I now beg leave to express my gratitude to you with my own hand, for your disinterested kindness; and although I have been long in getting an opportunity of doing this, I can assure you it is not the less sincere. Your Magazine I esteem very highly, not only for the general information it contains in regard to the present state of religion, both at home and abroad, but principally for the many valuable and well written papers introduced into it, on different subjects, which, together with the Reviews, render it one of the most valuable repositories of religious knowledge I have yet met with. Your History of the Christian Church I had read before with great satisfaction, and had set it down for one of the most concise and impartial treatises on Church History I had ever seen in print; but I little expected ever to have a copy of it in my own possession. Nor is it likely, secluded as we are in this distant corner, that I ever would have possessed it, had I not, through your generosity, been furnished with a copy of it.

Some passages in your History of the Waldenses drew my attention to the German Mennonites,* many of whom have of late years emigrated to this Empire, where they have got a large portion of land assigned to them by the Russian Government, and have the free exercise of their religion secured to them. Judging that a short account of these emigrants might be interesting to you, for more reasons than one, I made application, through the medium of one of my brethren at Karass, to a young man who is employed as a schoolmaster among them, for a short sketch of their history, and the following is the account transmitted by him. The numbers refer to the questions proposed* and which have been answered as they occurred, without any regard to order. They have not been answered so fully as I could have wished; but, imperfect as they are, they will tend to give you some faint idea of the situation of this interesting people. The letter was written in the German language, and the original has, some time ago, been sent to our Secretary in Edinburgh.

1st. The first establishment of the Mennonites in the Ukraine, which lies north of the Crimea, consisted of eleven villages, built in the year 1804, upon the rivers Moloshna and Kurisha. The quantity of land assigned them by the Russian Government in that country, amounts to 120,000 dessatines, (each dessatine is nearly equal to three acres.) In the years 1810, 11, 18, 20, 22 and 1823, the number of villages has increased to twenty-five,† in consequence of the arrival of new emigrants from Germany. With each of the villages are connected, upon an average, twenty farms, consisting of sixty-five dessatines of land each. The whole number of farms at present, amounts to 755. Of the 120,000 dessatines, 65,000 have been thus apportioned into villages and farms, and 55,000 remain for emigrants who may still join them. Besides those who have farms, there are about 300 families, who support themselves by commerce, by trades, and by day labour. Belonging to the community there is a sheep-fold, consisting of Spanish sheep, a cloth manufactory, a brewery, a distillery, and several corn mills.

2. Besides the Mennonites upon the Moloshna and Kurisha, there are fourteen villages in the district of Chortiz, lying about eighty versts to the north, these were built in the year 1783, by emigrants from west Prussia; there is also a village of them at Michelin near Machnovka, in the Government of Kiew—three villages near Ostrog, and one village near Dubno, in the Government of Volhynia, but my correspondent could not inform me of the year in which they were established, nor the number of families living in them. All that he could discover was, that nearly thirty-six years ago, about twenty Mennonite families emigrated from Pfatz, Alsace, and Zweibruck, and settled in the vicinity of Dubus.

3. All the Mennonites who live on the Moloshna, (excepting nine families, who came originally from Zweibrück on the west side of the Rhine,) as well as those in the Chortiz district, have emigrated from the west of Prussia, between the rivers Wechset and Nogat, and from the cities of Danzig, Elbing, Marienbürg, and Marienverder. The causes of their emigration were various. The poorer class, with a view of bettering their condition;—those from Prussia, because they were afraid of their former freedom, rights, and immunities, being encroached upon;—and those who left Pfatz and Alsace, about thirty-six years ago, in order to withdraw themselves and their sons from military service.

4. Almost every year a few families from Prussia join them. Every stranger received into their community must be baptized again. My correspondent does not say, whether they have received adult baptism or not, but I suppose he must mean the latter.

5. Every head of a family, is master of his property.

6. Every possessor of land pays a tax of fifteen kopeks per dessatine, which for a farm, amounts to nine rubles, seventy-five kopeks, and twenty-five kopeks for supporting the post. Head money is also paid, but the rate is not fixed. At one time it amounts to a ruble and sixty kopeks; and at another, only seventy-five kopeks. This tax is paid to the village overseers, who transmit it to the chief superintendant, by whom it is sent to the rent office.

7. Their civil affairs are managed by a district Superintendant, two Assessors, and two Writers. The Superintendant and Assessors are changed every three years, but the Writers hold their office for life.

8. They have special privileges, but different from those of the Moravians in Sarepta. They are under the guardianship of the office for Foreign Affairs, in the Government of Ekaterinaslav.

9. With regard to their religious tenets; they swear no oath—they abominate war— acknowledge the validity of Adult Baptism only, and of course reject that of Infants. They are divided into two sects; the Flämigier, and the Friesen. My correspondent promised to send me two of their Catechisms, to give me a better view of their faith, but they have not yet come to hand.

10. The ordinance of the Lord’s supper is administered twice or thrice a year, always in the forenoon. The Flämigier receive it sitting, the Friesen standing. The old Friesen, who formerly wore long beards, have also the ceremony of washing the feet after the dispensation of the ordinance.

11. Each congregation has an elder, four teachers, and two deacons, who are chosen from among themselves. The manner in which the election is gone about is as follows:—When the office of elder or teacher is vacant, the elders of the community, in a circular letter, require all the fathers of families to pray to the Lord, that he would shew them whom he hath chosen to fill the vacant office, at the same time, intimating when the election is to take place. On the day appointed, one of the elders addresses the meeting; and after the votes have been taken, he who has the majority is considered as duly elected. The district in which my correspondent resides, is divided into four parishes, viz. Petershagen, Orlof, Alexandervohl, and Rudnerveide. The two first parishes have the Brother Berend Fort for their elder; Alexandervohl, Brother Peter Wedel, and Rudnerveide, Brother Frang.

This is all the length my correspondent goes in his account of the Mennonites. I have heard from others, that among their neighbours, their character stands high for sobriety and industry; yet, I fear, there are many things among them that would require to be set in order. A Missionary from Britain, of their own sentiments on the subject of Baptism, might, I have little doubt, through the blessing of God upon his labours, be the means, not only of drawing their attention to the scriptural order of the ordinances of the Gospel, but likewise of stirring them up to active exertions for making known the Gospel to the Tartars, many of whom are resident in their neighbourhood. I have lately been informed, that an individual from amongst them was so much affected with the state of the Tartars, that he hired himself as a servant among them, for the purpose of learning their language, and thus qualifying himself for preaching the Gospel to these poor deluded followers of the Arabian Prophet. He had made considerable progress in the acquisition of the language, when some family affairs made it necessary for him to return, for a time, to his native city. He was expected to return last summer, and, I suppose, has long before now resumed his disinterested labours among that people. May his labours be rewarded by seeing many turned from the error of their ways. The Tartars in that quarter and in the Crimea, present a most interesting field for Missionary exertion; and I trust the time is at no great distance, when labourers shall be raised up to cultivate it.

I remain, my dear Sir,
Yours most affectionately,
JOHN MITCHELL.

* It may be useful to some of our readers to explain, that the Mennonites are descended from that branch of the WALDENSES, who, to escape from the persecution to which they were exposed in the valleys of Piedmont, fled, in the latter part of the twelfth century, into Flanders, and settled in the provinces of Holland and Zealand, where they maintained their principles, and led simple and exemplary lives. Mr. Adam, in his Religious World Displayed, Second Edition, 1823, Vol. II. p. 186, tells us, that “From the History of the old Dutch Waldenses of that period, and from the doctrines they then held, and during the following; centuries, a striking similarity is apparent between them, and the ancient and later Dutch Baptists. And though there is no particular reference to Baptism in any of the Confessions of Faith of the Waldenses, it is mentioned, on the authority of Hieronymus, Verdussun, Cligny, and other Roman Catholic Authors, that the Dutch Waldenses rejected the Baptism of children, and applied the ordinance to adults alone.—EDITOR.

† Here the account is somewhat obscure. It states the number thus, “In the years 1810, 11, 18, 20, till 1822, from new emigrations twenty-three villages have been built, and this year two more,” so it is not very evident whether the number of villages, in all, be twenty-five or thirty-six.

There is, to be sure, much that we might say about this letter, and we hope return to it for a thorough exposition of it in due course. The only purpose of this post is to recover and republish the letter so that it is accessible for anyone who wishes to examine it in more detail.

Where is Heinrichsdorf?

On the one hand, this could be Buller Time’s shortest post, a mere three words: no one knows. On the other hand, for better or for worse, Buller Time has never let ignorance stand in its way or prevent it from attempting to discover at least plausible answers to questions of family history. So, with full and honest recognition that our search for Heinrichsdorf may be futile, this post will look just the same. It never hurts to try, right?

1. The Mennonite consensus seems to be that Heinrichsdorf was located somewhere between the towns of Berdychiv (Berdichev) and Zhytomyr (Zhitomir) in the southeast corner of Volhynia. For example, William Schroeder and Helmut T. Huebert’s Mennonite Historical Atlas locates the village of Heinrichsdorf where the red dot is in the map below, that is, about a third of the way up on the road from Berdichev to Zhitomir (Schroeder and Huebert 1996, 57).

They write later of a number of Waldheim residents leaving Molotschna and “founding the village of Heinrichsdorf north of Berdichev” (Schroeder and Huebert 1996, 57).

Likewise, Martin H. Schrag explains that “the dissatisfied [Waldheim] members secured permission from the Russian government to return to Volhynia, and accordingly in 1848 they trekked back to Volhynia and founded the village of Heinrichsdorf some miles north of Berdichev in Eastern Volhynia” (1959). Although both sources agree on the location, I have been unable to uncover the basis or evidence for locating Heinrichsdorf north of Berdichev. Perhaps one of the historical documents associated with Heinrichsdorf locates it north of Berdichev; if so, Buller Time would like to hear about that.

2. To complicate matters, the Society for German Genealogy in Eastern Europe Volhynian Gazetteer (here) states what we know for certain, that the precise location is lost, but then gives the latitude and longitude for where they think the village was: 49.5800 28.1806.

Zhitomir is toward the top and just right of center, and Berdichev is center right. The red marker is the location of the SGGEE coordinates, roughly 28 miles southwest of Berdichev. The gazetteer is based on the work of Dr. Frank Stewner, who seems to be expert in Volhynian historical geography, but once again we do not know the basis or evidence for locating Heinrichsdorf here as opposed to somewhere else.

One additional piece of evidence might be taken into consideration. In an obscure book titled The Prussian-Polish Mennonites Settling in South Dakota 1874 and Soon After, John A. Boese writes, “Near Zhitomir was the village of Heinrichsdorf and then some 20 miles east was the village of Michalin near the west boundry of the province of Kiev” (Boese 1967).

I do not know what to make of this bit of evidence. Boese’s book apparently presents facts and stories passed down to him. Interestingly, the same individual compiled a genealogical chart for Henry and Eva Buller from the 1700s, a matter worth noting not only because his subjects were Bullers but also because he created the chart in 1930, which would indicate that he was not that far removed from the Mennonites who had moved from Heinrichsdorf (where some of his family lived) to South Dakota. In other words, Boese’s information may be reliable.

Why this matters to us is evident in the Google satellite photo below.

Berdichev is located toward the top, right of center. The line at the bottom extends from Michalin on the right (east) to the location where the SGGEE Volhynian Gazetteer locates Heinrichsdorf on the left (west). The distance between them is just over 27 miles. Boese wrote above that Michalin was “some 20 miles east” of Heinrichsdorf; the creator of the gazetteer apparently concurs.

The agreement between the SGGEE Volhynian Gazetteer and Boese’s oral-history account certainly does not settle the matter. However, it does call into question the standard location of Heinrichsdorf some 8–10 miles north of Berdichev. In fact, Heinrichsdorf may well have been roughly 28 miles southwest of Berdichev.

In the end, all we can know at this point is that Heinrichsdorf was located somewhere in the area of Berdichev. Maybe someday someone will locate Heinrichsdorf a little more precisely. That would be a good thing for Bullers for one simple reason: wherever Heinrichsdorf was located, some of our family members still rest in peace there.



Works Cited

Boese, John A. 1967. The Prussian-Polish Mennonites Settling in South Dakota 1874 and Soon After. Freeman, SD: Pine Hill Press. Available online here.

Schrag, Martin H. 1959. Volhynia (Ukraine). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Schroeder, William, and Helmut T. Huebert. 1996. Mennonite Historical Atlas. 2nd ed. Winnipeg: Springfield.

Benjamin Buller 21

Given the amount of information we have discovered and discussed recently, a step back to reflect and summarize seems appropriate, lest we lose sight of the forest and the trees. The center of our interest has been, of course, the family of Benjamin Benjamin Buller (Benjamin 2), father of David, whose line extended down to Grandpa Chris and all the rest of us.

1.  We discovered that Benjamin 2’s father was also named Benjamin from a list of 1839 Waldheim settlers that identified him as Benjamin Benjamin (here). The middle name reflects his father’s first name.

2. We learned earlier (here) that Benjamin 2 was married to a woman named Helena; her last name remains unknown to us. Born around 1793, she was four years Benjamin’s junior.

Most of the new information we have discovered relates to Benjamin 2 and Helena’s children. The following diagram presents what we know in a compact manner. (For a large-size version of the diagram, see here.)

3. Benjamin 2 and Helena’s firstborn child and son was named Benjmain (after his father and grandfather, so Benjamin 3 in our labeling). He had been identified as Dominic when we first encountered him in Wysock (here), but the list of 1840 Waldheim settlers (here) and a record of Mennonites who planted crops in 1839 (here) demonstrate conclusively that his name was Benjamin.

Benjamin 3 was born around 1816 and was likely married by 1840, when he received an allotment of land in Waldheim. From the 1845 list of those Mennonites who returned to Volhynia and those who stayed in Waldheim (see here; Benjamin 3 was in the latter group) we learn that Benjamin 3 and his wife had a son and three daughters. At present we do not know anything more.

4. Benjamin 2 and Helena’s second son was our ancestor David Buller. He married Helena Zielke, as we already knew, but we can now suggest with more confidence that Helena was born in 1819. If so, she was a year younger than David.

According to an 1850 Heinrichsdorf census (here and here), David and Helena’s first three children were Helena, Peter D, and Elisabeth. We already knew that from the Buller Family Record, but the census confirms that the BFR order of birth is correct (contra the GRANDMA database). The 1850 census also permits us to supply Helena’s approximate year of birth (1844), a fact that is missing in the BFR.

5. The next child of Benjamin 2 and Helena listed is another son: Heinrich. One wonders if he really was the next child born or if there was another between David and Heinrich. One might imagine that a daughter was born between the two boys and that by 1850 she was married and living with her own husband; this would explain her absence from the Buller family list in 1850. Of course, all that is no more than a possibility, an appealing theory to explain a five-year gap between children.

What we do know is that Heinrich was born around 1823 and that by 1850 he was married; his wife, born in 1819 and thus four years his senior, was named Anna. Heinrich and Anna had two children, both daughters: Helena (the same name as her grandmother Helena, wife of Benjamin 2) and Maria. The girls were four and two in 1850.

6.  Benjamin 2 and Helena’s fourth and last son mentioned is Peter: seventeen years old in 1850, so born around 1833. Not surprisingly, the census lists no wife or children for him. Clearly, he was still unmarried and living at home.


By 1850, Benjamin 2 and Helena had four sons (possibly also one or more daughters) and at least nine grandchildren (more, if any daughters also had children). All told, Benjamin and Helena’s family included at least eighteen members, probably more. Twelve of the family lived with Benjamin and Helena in Heinrichsdorf; the other six (their oldest son Benjamin and his family) were roughly 400 miles to the south, in Waldheim.

In 1850, Benjamin 2 was sixty-one years old. His life had begun in Prussia/Poland, probably in the Schwetz area along the Vistula River. When he was twenty-eight, he and Helena and family journeyed 360 miles southeast to the province of Volhynia. A little more than two decades later Benjamin led his family 500 miles farther southeast to Molotschna colony, where he received a land allotment in 1839. For some reason Benjamin and other recent settlers found life in Waldheim to be intolerable, so in 1845 they moved 400 miles northwest to another part of Volhynia. In all likelihood, Benjamin 2 and Helena died there.

I recite that brief history again to call attention to the extent of Benjamin’s journeying. He moved his family and entire household at least 1,260 miles in less than forty years (1817–1845). Given the slow rate of travel of that time (by wagon or cart), Benjamin, Helena, and family must have spent months of their lives on the road from one place to another.

Why did Benjamin move so often and so far? Obviously we cannot know, but I would like to think that he was ever in search of a better life for his family and for himself. It seems that many Bullers (and other Mennonites) moved from one home to another far more than one might expect. In retrospect, that was a good thing, since it led our ancestors from wherever we originated to Poland to Volhynia to Molotschna and eventually to Nebraska, where our clan finally managed to settle down.

But we are jumping too far ahead in the story. First we need to learn more about Heinrichsdorf, the village in Volhynia that Benjamin and other Mennonites from Waldheim established. After that, we will explore a particular primary source that provides further information about both our immediate and more distant family.

Benjamin Buller 20

The previous post identified the male Bullers associated with Benjamin Buller 2 on the 1850 census, including three of his sons—David, Heinrich, and Peter—as well as David’s son Peter D. We turn our attention now to the females in the family.

As before, we are looking at the members of family 22.

1. Listed opposite Benjamin 2 is his wife Helena. An age of fifty-seven in 1850 would place her year of birth sometime around 1793, which corresponds to her being four years younger than her husband.

2. If you recall, David Buller was listed immediately after his father; likewise, David’s wife Helena is listed just after her mother-in-law of the same name. Helena wife of David’s age is given as thirty-one, the same as her husband David. This would imply a year of birth for Helena around 1819. This is consistent of her age being listed as one in the 1819 or 1820 Rovno census (see here). Of course, thus far we have believed that David was born in 1818, so we should be cautious about assigning any definite year to Helena’s birth. It was probably 1819, but we cannot be certain.

3. Next listed are two of “his” (David’s) daughters. We might prefer to say “their daughters” or, since Helena is listed immediately above, “her daughters,” but social conventions were different in the mid-nineteenth century. At any rate, we see here the names Helena and Elisabeth, both of whom appear in the Buller Family Record (only David’s first marriage and children shown).

Helena the daughter’s year of birth is unknown in the BFR, but we can suggest that it was 1843 or 1844, since she was seven at the time of the 1850 census, one year older than her brother Peter D. At the very least this settles the question of who was David and Helena’s firstborn child (see our earlier discussion here): it was clearly Helena, not Heinrich (as GRANDMA has it), who actually was born much later to David and his second wife.

4. Daughter Elisabeth’s age is given as three, which would place her birth around 1847, just as the BFR has it.

5. After David and Helena’s children we encounter Heinrich’s wife Anna (born ca. 1819) and their two daughters Helena (a popular name in the Buller family, probably in honor of Benjamin’s wife) and Maria (born ca. 1846 and ca. 1848, respectively).

All told the Benjamin Buller 2 family included twelve people: seven females and five males. In the 1845 “List of Mennonites Moving from Waldheim back to Volhynia” (see here and here) Benjamin’s family had five males and five females. We can now identify a little more precisely who those people were.

The males were Benjamin, his three sons David, Heinrich, and Peter, and David’s son Peter D. Four of the five females can be identified with certainty: Helena wife of Benjamin, Helena wife of David, Helena daughter of David and Helena, and Anna wife of Heinrich. None of the other females was alive in 1845; the closest was Helena daughter of Heinrich and Anna, but she was only four in 1850 and thus presumably born after the 1845 list. It is possible that one of the Buller females counted on the 1845 listed died before the 1850 census; childhood death was fairly common in that context, so perhaps that is what happened in this case.

We are by no means finished with this primary source, but this is a good place to stop. We know all the names of our immediate family who lived in Heinrichsdorf, Volhynia, in 1850:

• Benjamin and Helena Buller, plus their three sons and their families


• David and Helena Buller and their children: Helena, Peter, and Elisabeth
• Heinrich and Anna Buller and their children: Helena and Maria
• Peter Buller (unmarried)

One final observation: Peter D was counted on the 1845 list of people who wished to leave Waldheim, so we can conclude beyond reasonable doubt that he was born in that Molotschna village during his family’s brief residency there.

Happy birthday, Dad!

Eighty-three years young!

Benjamin Buller 19

Now that we have surveyed the 1850 census in general (here), it is time to dig into the details—and this document certainly is rich in details for our family. We will look first at the male columns, then at the female ones.

By way of recap, the first column is the family number on the census of this village, the second gives the individual’s name, the third states his age or status in the prior census, the fourth indicates if an individual has died, and the fifth records the individual’s age in 1850, the time of the current census. The numbers placed in brackets are Glenn Penner’s addition of GRANDMA numbers, when they can be identified.

So, what do we learn from the entry of family 22?

1. The family is headed by Benjamin Buller (Benjamin 2 in our system), who was forty-five in the prior census and sixty-one in 1850. We will discuss the issue of the sixteen-year difference in ages separately. The important thing to note here is that Benjamin’s age of sixty-one in 1850 corresponds to our previous hypothesis that he was born in 1789 or thereabouts (here).

2. Listed next is Benjamin’s oldest son in Heinrichsdorf: our ancestor David. He was not the oldest son in the family—which was Benjamin 3, who had remained in Waldheim—merely the oldest son living in Heinrichsdorf. David was fifteen in 1834 and thirty-one in 1850, which would place his birth around 1819. In fact, we know that David was born in early 1818 (here).

3. Immediately below David we find David’s son Peter—as in Peter D who would latter marry Sarah Siebert. Peter D, as noted, was born after the prior census and was age six in 1850. This would imply a birth year of 1844; the Buller Family Record, however, gives a birth date of 11 January 1845 (so he was just a few months shy of his sixth birthday when the census was taken).

4. The number 2 next to the following name corresponds to the number 1 with David’s name; that is, it signifies that Heinrich is another son of Benjamin. We first learned about Heinrich several posts back (here), when he was listed among those of Benjamin’s family who wished to leave Waldheim and return to Volhynia. Now we know that he was eleven in the prior census and twenty-seven in 1850, so presumably born around 1823 and thus four years David’s junior.

5. The last entry contains brand new information: the identity and age of another son of Benjamin’s and thus another brother to David. Peter B Buller was one year old in the previous census and still a teen of seventeen in 1850. Born around 1833, he was ten years younger than his next brother. This does not necessarily mean that no sons were born between Heinrich and Peter, only that there were no sons living in 1850 between them. The appearance of another Peter in the family seems noteworthy, in that it shows that this was a common family name.

In this short entry we find three generations of Bullers, one of them someone we have never before encountered. We now know that Benjamin 2 had at least four sons (Benjamin 3, David, Heinrich, and Peter) and that at least three of our direct ancestors (Benjamin 2, David, Peter D) lived in Volhynia, in the village of Heinrichsdorf, at least for a while. This seems a good place to stop for the moment. The next post will explore the names and ages in the female columns of the census, before we take time to explore this new territory further.

Benjamin Buller 18

We will return to Waldheim shortly, since there is more history of the village to be written, but for now we continue with Benjamin and family, which includes Grandpa Chris’s great-grandfather David Buller.

We last encountered David on an 1845 list of Waldheim residents who had decided to move back to Volhynia (see here and here; for the full list, see here). Just six years after arriving in the village of Waldheim, most of Benjamin 2’s family joined a number of other villagers and made the long trek (around 400 miles) north to a new village in Volhynia whose name will be revealed shortly.

The document that permits us to speak of their move with such confidence is an 1850 census, that is, an official government record a mere five years after the Benjamin Bullers and other Mennonite families from Waldheim had left.

It is not clear (to me, at least) how often the Russian government took a census—assuming they even followed a regular schedule. What we do know is that Russia took a census at least in 1835 and again in 1850, both of which are reflected in the 1850 census that lists Benjamin and family. That document is titled “The 1850 Census of Heinrichsdorf, Volhynia” (translated by Steve Fast, with GRANDMA numbers added by Glenn Penner; see here).

Before we look at the relevant Buller entries in detail, a brief overview of the structure of the census will help us see the big picture.

1. Vertically considered, the census is arranged into two wide columns, with males on the left and females on the right.

2. Horizontally, the census arranges people by families, with each entry beginning with the family head, then children in order of age (generally).

3. As one can see in the far left column, each family is numbered consecutively.

4. The next column records the name of each male, led by the family head, as mentioned above.

5. The two columns after that give (1) the age of that person at the prior (1835) census or a note that the person was born after the 1835 census and (2) a note if the person listed had died.

5. The final column in the male half of the census lists the age of the person now, in 1850.

6. The female half of the census is similar at the outset, with the family number repeated on the left and the name of each female, often corresponding to the male name to the left (e.g., a wife is listed across from her husband).

7. The blank column in the middle of the female section is titled “Temporarily Absent” and “From What Time?” Since this column is blank throughout the census, it is not clear what might have been written there.

8. The final column gives the age of the female listed.

It is interesting that the census begins, at least with the males, by listing a person’s age in 1835 or noting that he was born or died after the 1835 census. Presumably this was one way for the census takers to calculate the change in population over that fifteen-year period. We should not imagine the census taker having a copy of the 1835 census in hand and supplementing it. Rather, the information was recorded fresh on the new census, reconstructed from the memories of the people being counted. Needless to say, we should expect some inaccuracies with regard to past events, although the names and ages of the people recorded in 1850 should be reliable.

So the 1850 census goes for thirty-one families comprising 144 males and 129 females, for a total of 273 Mennonites in the Volhynian village of Heinrichsdorf. The census also notes that it was signed on 25 October 1850, a little more than 165 years ago. To situate this historically, the U.S. Civil War was still more than a decade in the future. Even the Republican Party would not yet exist for another four years.

The next post will focus on the Benjamin Buller family in particular. If you want to look ahead, the Fast-Penner document can be viewed here. There is a great deal to learn about our family from this one document.

Thoughts on transcribing

Much of what we cover in Buller Time depends on the expertise and efforts of a group of researchers who do the hard work of carefully examining original (often hand-written) documents in German, Russian, or even Polish and transcribing the words and numbers recorded there into a form that all of us can read, that of our standard Latin alphabet. Over the past few years we have benefited especially from the work of Glenn Penner, Steve Fast, Rod Ratzlaff, Richard D. Thiessen, and Tim Janzen, to name but a few.

I aspire to join their company someday (retirement is only ten or eleven years away), but for now we can appreciate and occasionally understand in a little more detail the work that they do. That is the point of this post.

Recently I came across an interesting webpage that offers “Ten Tips for Deciphering Old German Handwriting” (here), a helpful resource for anyone who wishes someday to transcribe records and documents from the Mennonite past. The very first tip addresses a question that we raised long ago: What is the meaning of the curved line (apostrophe, circumflex, circle) over the letter u in the name Buller recorded in the Przechowka church book (here)?

According to the webpage cited above,

“u” has a little “swoop” (my non-technical term) above it and “i” has a dot above it. Word of warning: sometimes the swoop or the dot can be slightly to the right of the actual letter itself. Notice also how everyone’s “swoops” can be slightly different, as seen in the real-life example of the word “gut” (good) below. [see the image on the website linked]

In other words, the presence or absence (as below) of the swoop does not indicate anything special about the quality of the vowel u. When used, the swoop signifies only that the letter below is a u. As one would expect, the shape of the swoop does not really matter, being a matter of personal style.

Nevertheless, the question remains: What was the usual (a better term than correct) pronunciation of our name in centuries past? Unless I am mistaken, German vowels are generally long when followed by a single consonant and short when followed by more than one consonant. Thus the u in Buller was probably pronounced/heard as a short vowel, and the pronunciation of our name that we all grew up with was probably in line with its historical pronunciation.

I invite any of the transcribers/researchers who occasionally stop by Buller Time to correct me if I have any of this wrong.

Benjamin Buller 17

In 1817 Benjamin (2) Buller and his family emigrated 350+ miles from Prussia (probably the Schwetz area) to a new settlement in northern Volhynia. Twenty-two years later, in 1839, the family (which now included our ancestor David) journeyed another 500 miles to the village of Waldheim in Molotschna colony. A mere six years after that, in 1845, Benjamin 2 and David and most of the rest of the family retraced their steps and made a 400-mile journey back to Volhynia to live there (where they settled is the subject of another post). Thus we add a blue arrow to the map to signify this latest journey.

Knowing as we do that David and his family eventually lived in Waldheim again (that is where some of his children attended school and where he died and was buried), we will obviously come back to the 1845 move, and we will examine several additional documents that help us to piece together (to some extent) his life’s journeys. For the moment, we focus on several less obvious discoveries about Benjamin 2’s (that is, our) family. The entry from the 1845 list transcribed by Steve Fast (see here) will provide the evidence.

	M	F	M	F
Benjamin Buller the elder
His sons David Buller and Heinrich Buller	4	4	5	5
Benjamin Buller the younger remained in the colony

1. The first thing to notice is that we now know the name of another brother of David: Heinrich. The list names three sons of Benjamin 2: Benjamin 3, David, and now Heinrich. Because this is the first we have heard of Heinrich, we can safely assume that he has was born after Benjamin 3 and David, both of whom were previously listed on the 1820 Rovno register (here). Slowly but surely we are fleshing out Bejamin 2 and Helena’s family.

2. Second, we should also note that the family increased in size between the totals in the left pair of columns (from 1839) and the totals in the right pair (1845): four males and four females are now five males and five females. Benjamin 3 (the younger) is entered later in this document (see below), so we are dealing here with Benjamin 2, David, Heinrich, and two unidentified males. One of those males was alive in the 1839 list (he was the fourth male on that list), but there was also a new addition between 1839 and 1845. Any guesses who that might have been?

The number of females in the family also increased. David was not married in 1839, so one would think that the four females in 1839 included Benjamin 2’s wife Helena and perhaps three daughters (sisters to David). We will see if this theory pans out as we sort through additional documents. Not to be forgotten is that one female was added to the family between 1839 and 1845 (from four to five), so again we ask: Any guesses as to her identity?

3. As noted in the main Benjamin Buller entry above and repeated later (page 5 in the Fast file), Benjamin 3 remained in Molotschna colony. The later entry offers the totals for his family as follows:

	M	F	M	F
Benjamin Buller the younger	1	1	2	4

We can deduce two things from this entry. First, Benjamin was married in 1839, since his entry lists one male and one female as part of his nuclear family. Second, between 1839 and 1845 Benjamin 3’s wife apparently bore one son and three daughters, so that the family had two males and four females total.

4. Actually, this is not the first record that has listed the number of males and females in the family. The 1833 list of Mennonites who wished to move from Volhynia to Molotschna (see here) also gave the total number of family members by gender. Benjamin 2’s entry read:

	M	F	total	occupation
Benjamin Buller	5	6	11	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)

Adding the four males and four females from the Benjamin 2 1839 entry above to the one male and one female from the Benjamin 3 1839 entry gives us a total of five males and five females, or a total of ten family members. There was one more female in 1833. There are two likely explanations of the discrepancy between the 1883 and 1839 totals: one of Benjamin and Helena’s daughters married and left the Buller household between 1833 and 1839; or one of Benjamin and Helena’s daughters died during that time. Which of these two explanations is correct (if either) cannot be known at this time.

From this brief look at the 1845 list we have both learned a great deal and uncovered more questions. We now know that our ancestor David Buller had a brother named Heinrich, but we do not know the names of two other male members of the family or the names of four of the female family members (everyone except Helena, David’s mother). Clearly, much work remains to be done.

Benjamin Buller 16

Toward the end of the last post we introduced another primary source, descriptively titled “List of Mennonites Moving from Waldheim Back to Volhynia and Those Remaining in Waldheim: 1845” (Steve Fast’s transcription is here). A question then followed: Want to guess which of the two lists has Benjamin Buller’s name recorded?

That was actually a trick question, as those who examined the entire document carefully discovered. But before we jump too far ahead, let us revew at least a part of the list. The first page is displayed below:

The column to the far left (Item No.) assigns a number to each entry in the three sections of the list, with the numbering starting over at 1 with each section. The next column (Census No.) records the family’s entry number on unnamed census. As far as I can tell, these census numbers correspond to the Waldheim “farm numbers” where these settlers first resided in Waldheim (not the same as the later Wirtschaft numbers). Thus, according to the list of 1840 settlers (here) Jacob Gregor Buller (= Jacober Buller above) lived at number 3 in Waldheim.

The first wide column is obviously the name of the head of the household being recorded. After his or her name we find two sets of two columns. The first set lists the number of males and females from the census referenced in the census number column; the second lists the number of males and females in 1845, taking into account births and, one imagines, deaths. The final column documents “whether [the family members] have written visa.” Within Tsarist Russia, Mennonite settlers could not simply decide to move from one area to another; they needed permission to move back to Volhynia, just as they had needed approval to move from Volhynia to Molotschna in the first place.

The first two entries give us a flavor of the types of comments one finds in the last column: Cornelius Funk was able to leave with a “two-month passport,” while Peter Schmidt “left at night, secretly without passport.” The last person entered on this page had a “visa for two months for commercial matters,” so we should probably understand the regular two-month visa as granting different rights, presumably permission to leave within the next two months (before the visa expired) and then to stay in Volhynia.

Enough general introduction. What about the Bullers on the list? It is worth noticing that there are four Bullers listed on this first page: Jacob, Jacober, his son Heinrich, and Peter. These are probably only far distant relatives, not members of our particular line.

The next Buller entry is ours, however, entry 24 on the list, number 45 on the census.

	M	F	M	F
Benjamin Buller the elder
His sons David Buller and Heinrich Buller	4	4	5	5
Benjamin Buller the younger remained in the colony

There is a great deal to learn from this short entry. We begin with the answer to our earlier question: Benjamin Buller the elder (Benjamin 2 in our system) appears on the list of individuals returning to Volhynia; however, his son Benjamin 3 also makes an appearance—on the list of those remaining in Waldheim (both here and in the third section, page 5 of the document). A mere six years after moving from Volhynia to Waldeim, Benjamin 2 moved back to Volhynia; his son Benjamin 3 chose to stay in Waldheim instead.

Of course, we dare not gloss over the more obviously relevant point: Benjamin 2 was accompanied by his two other sons: Heinrich and David—the father of Peter D, grandfather of Peter P, and great-grandfather of Grandpa Chris. Our ancestor David left Molotschna and returned to Volynia with his father Benjamin 2 and the rest of the Buller clan (except for Benjamin 3 and family). Now you know why I warned in the last post that our family story was about to become a little complicated.

We will return to this document in the next post, but for now we end with an updated Buller family timeline, which has interesting new information to add.

Year	Person(s)	Event
1765–1770	Benjamin 1/X	birth (X signifies unknown middle name)
ca. 1789	Benjamin Benjamin 2	born to Benjamin X
1817	Benjamin 2 and family (4)	emigrated from Prussia to Volhynia
1818	David Benjamin	birth on 25 January to Benjamin B
1819/1820	Benjamin 2, Helena, David, Benjamin 3, nephew David	listed on census living at Zofyovka, Rovno, Volhynia
1828	Benjamin 2 and family (?)	moved from Zofyovka to Ostrowka, Lutsk, Volhynia
1833	Benjamin 2 and family (11)	expressed desire to emigrate from Ostrowka to Molotschna colony
1839	Benjamin 2 and family	relocated to Waldheim, Molotschna colony; assigned a Wirtschaft
1839	Benjamin 2 and Benjamin 3	planted potatoes and flax
1840	Benjamin 3	assigned a Wirtschaft
1845	Benjamin 2, David, Heinrich	moved from Waldheim back to Volhynia
1845	Benjamin 3	remained in Waldheim

Benjamin Buller 15

Recently we have been intertwining the story of our ancestors David and Benjamin Buller with the broader history of the early days of Waldheim, but now it is time to return the focus squarely to our family. Fair warning: it is about to become a little complicated. To help us navigate, we begin with a recap of the route we have traveled thus far both chronologically and geographically.

1. Our earliest known ancestor is Benjamin X Buller (X for unknown). We know of his existence only because his son, our ancestor, was named Benjamin Benjamin Buller, and his middle name tells us the first name of his father. We assume that Benjamin X was born around 1765–1770 presumably in Poland (soon to become part of Prussia). For simplicity we refer to Benjamin X as Benjamin 1 and to his son as Benjamin 2.

It is plausible to think that Benjamin 1 and his family lived in the general vicinity of Schwetz along the Vistula River, the location where many Bullers were congregrated (number 1 on the map below). We really can say little more than this.

2. Benjamin 2 first appears on a census of Mennonites who had settled in a village named Zofyovka in Volhynia (number 2; see here). Benjamin, his wife Helena, their firstborn son Benjamin (Benjamin 3), and their nephew David emigrated to this area from Prussia and settled on a noble’s estate far north of the city of Rivne/Rovno, near the town of Wysock. If they began in the Schwetz area, their journey was approximately 360 miles in length.

The census reports that they emigrated in 1817 and that Benjamin 2 was thirty-one when the census was taken (probably 1820). Based on this we calculated that Benjamin 2 was probably born in 1789. We also deduced that his wife Helena, aged twenty-five, was likely born in 1795, their son Benjamin 3 in 1816. Our ancestor David Benjamin Buller makes his first appearance on that 1820 census, which helped us to date his birth to 1818, the year following his family’s emigration to Volhynia.

3. According to Martin Schrag, Benjamin 2 and family were among a group of Mennonites who left the village Zofyovka in 1828 and moved to a village named Ostrowka. We do not have documentary evidence for the date, but we do know that these Mennonites were in Ostrowka no later than 1833. Unfortunately, we do not know with certainty precisely where Ostrowka was located (Schrag’s location of it north of Lutskz notwithstanding), so there is no number for Ostrowka on the map. Ostrowka was probably 50–75 miles to the south of Zofyovka; whether to the east or west or straight south we do not yet know.

4. The 1833 document mentioned in the preceding paragraph listed Benjamin 2 and the ten members of his family as wishing to move to Molotschna colony (see here). That wish was fulfilled in 1839, as Benjamin and family journeyed 500 miles southeast to the village of Walheim in Molotschna colony (number 3). We know that not only because Benjamin 2 is listed as an 1839 settler (here) but also because his son Benjamin 3 is documented as an 1840 settler (here), and both are said to have planted crops in 1839 (here).

Our ancestor David is not mentioned in any of these latter documents, probably because he was still unmarried and thus living at home. That will change in the next document that we explore. To recap, in 1840 Benjamin 2 and family were in the Molotschna village named Waldheim; Benjamin 2 and his oldest son Benjamin 3 each owned a 175-acre Wirtschaft (plot), and the family appeared to be set for a long time to come. One would think that, after journeying nearly 1,000 miles since early 1817, they would be content to stay in one place. One would think …

The next primary resource for us to investiage was translated by Steve Fast; like all the other files, it is available on the Mennonite Genealogical Resources website. It is linked from the master document that Steve and Glenn Penner created (here) but can be directly accessed here. The title tells what the document is fairly clearly: “List of Mennonites Moving from Waldheim Back to Volhynia and Those Remaining in Waldheim: 1845.”

Several elements of the title deserve particular attention. (1) We start at the end, with the date. This list was created in 1845, a mere five years after we last checked in with Benjamin 2 and family. (2) the list is concerned only with Mennonites living in Waldheim. (3) The list presents the names of two groups of people: those remaining in Waldheim, and those returning to Volhynia (the previous home of all Waldheim residents).

Take a moment to think about that. The first settlers and residents came to Waldheim in 1838. Only seven years later, some residents were ready to leave, to return “home” to Volhynia. Was the soil of Waldheim inferior to Volhynia’s? Was the climate less hospitable? Was life in Molotschna colony intolerable from a religious or social perspective? I am unaware of the reason that some Waldheim residents wanted to return to Volhynia so soon, but the fact is that many did. Want to guess which of the two lists has Benjamin Buller’s name recorded?

We will pick up at this point in the next post. For now, feel free to review the 1845 list for yourself (here). Before we end this post, we should repeat and update our family timeline; there will be additional lines to add in the near future.

Year	Person(s)	Event
1765–1770	Benjamin 1/X	birth (X signifies unknown middle name)
ca. 1789	Benjamin Benjamin 2	born to Benjamin X
1817	Benjamin 2 and family (4)	emigrated from Prussia to Volhynia
1818	David Benjamin	birth on 25 January to Benjamin B
1819/1820	Benjamin 2, Helena, David, Benjamin 3, nephew David	listed on census living at Zofyovka, Rovno, Volhynia
1828	Benjamin 2 and family (?)	moved from Zofyovka to Ostrowka, Lutsk, Volhynia
1833	Benjamin 2 and family (11)	expressed desire to emigrate from Ostrowka to Molotschna colony
1839	Benjamin 2 and family	relocated to Waldheim, Molotschna colony; assigned a Wirtschaft
1839	Benjamin 2 and Benjamin 3	planted potatoes and flax
1840	Benjamin 3	assigned a Wirtschaft

Waldheim settlers … and residents

An earlier post (Waldheim settlers 2) ended by suggesting that one might try to identify Waldheim’s first settlers, those eight individuals who founded the town before 1839 and 1840, by noticing which 1840 settlers were living with a relative who was already in Waldheim in 1838 (i.e., not on the 1839 list). We identified four possibilities:

• Peter Heinrich Nachtigal
• Kornelius Johann Funk
• Kornelius David Unruh
• Peter Tobias Sperling

Since that post we have been able to correlate the 1839 spring planting list with the 1839 and 1840 lists of settlers to determine beyond reasonable doubt the actual names of the first eight settlers:

• Michael Teske
• Peter Wedel
• Johann Worwel [Worbel]
• Peter Nachtigal
• Friedrich Kunkel
• Benjamin Ratzlaff
• Christian Teske
• Peter Sperling

A quick comparison of the two lists reveals that two on the first list (Peter Nachtigal, Peter Sperling) appear on the second list and two (Kornelius Funk, Kornelius Funk) do not. How are we to explain this inconsistency? Yet another document that we examined earlier may contain a hint.

The first document that we consulted in the Benjamin Buller series, “List of Mennonites Wishing to Leave Volhynia and Settle with Their Brethren in the Tauridian Governorate, 1833” (see here for the post and here for the original document) actually lists three of the men in the first list above: Peter Nachtigal, Kornelius (Cornelius) Funk, and Peter Sperling. If you look at the file, you will see that it lists each person’s occupation: Peter Nachtigal and Peter Sperling are landowners or farmers (Landwirt); Cornelius Funk is a linen weaver (Leinweber).

Why is this significant? If Cornelius Funk’s primary occupation was linen weaver—that is, he took harvested flax from farmers and spun and wove it into linen, perhaps just the latter—he had no need of a land allotment. He had no intent of ever farming as an occupation, so he became a resident of Waldheim in 1838 but not a settler then or, presumably, in the years that followed. The same may have been true of Kornelius Unruh, although we have no record of his occupation.*

There are two lessons to be learned here. First, we should not think of Waldheim as being populated in 1838 by only eight families of settlers; at least two additional families moved there at the same time. Second, we should use terminology carefully and precisely. I suggest that we refer to those who owned a Waldheim Wirtschaft as settlers; those who lived in Waldheim but did not own a Wirtschaft might better be described as residents of the village. Waldheim had both types from its earliest days; the presence of nonlanded residents was not a later development, although it became a problem within a few decades, when those who wanted to farm were unable to secure the necessary land to do so.


Note
* If Kornelius David Unruh is the same person as listed on the 1819 Ostrog census (see here), we may need to reconsider the question of where Waldheim’s first settlers originated. This will need to be the subject of a future post, but for now one wonders whether this small piece of evidence might further undermine Martin Schrag’s location of Ostrowka further to the west, in the Lutsk (Lusk) area.

Waldheim settlers 6

The previous post identified the first twenty-one settlers in Waldheim: eight in 1838 and thirteen in 1839 (here). Because there were forty total Wirtschaften (land allotments) in Waldheim, as there were in many other Molotschna villages, we have nineteen more persons to identify to round out the entire group of original settlers.

As noted earlier, the 1839 planting list (which can be viewed in its entirety here) includes twenty-one numbered names (the 1838 and 1839 settlers) and fifteen unnumbered names. Among the latter one would expect to find some of the 1840 and 1841 settlers. To discover if this is the case, we reproduce the fifteen names from the 1839 planting list on the left and, for comparison, two lists we have looked at previously on the right: the 1840 settler list (here) and part of a 1839–1841 list of Mennonites who were assigned land at Waldheim (here).

1839 Planting List	1840 Settlers	1839–1841 Land Assignments
Jacob Richert	Jacob Jacob Richert	Jacob Richert
Andreas Nachtigal	Andreas Peter Nachtigal	Andreas Nachtigal
Heinrich Sperling	Heinrich Peter Sperling	Heinrich Sperling
Johann Schmidt	Johann Johann Schmidt	Johann Schmidt
Heinrich Voth	Heinrich Jacob Voth	Heinrich Voth
Peter Schmidt	Peter David Schmidt	Peter Schmidt
Johann Wedel	Johann Kornelius Wedel	Johann Wedel
Cornelius Wedel		Cornelius Wedel
David Nachtigal	David Georg Nachtigal	David Nachtigal
Jacob Pankratz	Jacob Heinrich Pankratz	Jacob Pankratz
Cornelius Unruh	Cornelius Cornelius Unruh	Cornelius Unruh
Samuel Boese	Samuel Martin Boese	Samuel Boese
Heinrich Wedel	Heinrich Kornelius Wedel	Heinrich Wedel
Benjamin Voth

For the most part, the lists correspond, with only Cornelius Wedel absent from the 1840 list and Benjamin Voth missing from the 1840 and 1839–1841 lists. We will return to this in a moment; for now we need to recall that there are only fifteen names in this half of the 1839 planting list, and we are looking for the final nineteen settlers. Where are the others to be found?

The answer is simple: in the other names listed in the 1840 and 1839–1841 lists that do not appear on the 1839 planting list. Those names include the following:

1839 Planting List	1840 Settlers	1839–1841 Land Assignments
	Jacob Gregor Buller	Jacob Gregor Buller
	Benjamin Kornelius Unruh
	Martin Martin Bayer	Martin Martin Bayer
	Andreas Andreas Schmidt
		Tobias Schultz

There are five unique names on the 1840 and 1839–1841 lists. Adding these five to the fifteen on the 1839 planting list gives us twenty names … which is one too many; we have room for only nineteen. There is, however, a logical explanation that arranges all the data into a consistent picture. Notice that Benjamin Voth at the end of the 1839 planting list (above) does not appear on any of the other lists. This is telling. For whatever reason, there is no record that Benjamin Voth ever became a landowner in Waldheim.

With Voth excluded, the numbers match exactly, and we have a full complement of forty landowners from the years 1838–1841. All that remains is to decide which of these final nineteen settled in 1840 and which in 1841. Fortunately, that task is relatively simple. Of the nineteen names given, only two are not listed as 1840 settlers: Cornelius Wedel in the first list and Tobias Schutz in the second one. These gentlemen are the two 1841 settlers whom we have been expecting.

One last time (I think) we look back at, and then revise, the 1848 Gemeindeberichte, the community report. The original stated:

This village was founded in 1836. That year eight landowners settled in it, twelve in the year 1838, and twenty landowners in 1840.

The Gemeindeberichte correctly reports the number of landowners in Waldheim’s first year (eight), but everything else is mistaken. A corrected version of report would read:

This village was founded in 1838. That year eight landowners settled in it, thirteen in the year 1839, seventeen in 1840, and two in 1841.

A tediously complete version might even list all of Waldheim’s first forty settlers:

This village was founded in 1838.

That year eight landowners settled in it: Michael Teske, Peter Wedel, Johann Worbel (or Werbel), Peter Nachtigal, Friedrich Kunkel, Benjamin Ratzlaff, Christian Teske, and Peter Sperling.

Thirteen additional landowners settled the following year, in 1839: Tobias David Dirks, Peter Jacob Pankratz, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Heinrich Johann Dirks, Peter Johann Schmidt, Jacob Aron Klassen, David Jacob Köhn, Benjamin Benjamin Buller, Benjamin Cornelius Wedel, David Heinrich Dirks, David David Köhn, and Johann Heinrich Ewert.

Seventeen landowners settled in Waldheim in 1840: Jacob Jacob Richert, Andreas Peter Nachtigal, Heinrich Peter Sperling, Johann Johann Schmidt, Heinrich Jacob Voth, Peter David Schmidt, BenjaminBenjamin Buller Jr., Johann Kornelius Wedel, David Georg Nachtigal, Jacob Heinrich Pankratz, Cornelius Cornelius Unruh, Samuel Martin Boese, and Heinrich Kornelius Wedel.

Two final settlers in 1841 filled the forty Wirtschaften allotted to the village: Cornelius Wedel and Tobias Schultz.

I believe we are finished with the Waldheim settlers series (but not the Benjamin Buller series). I am happy to report that the information presented over the last two posts is available in a slightly more formal document that has been posted on the Mennonite Genealogy Resources webpage. Thanks to Richard D. Thiessen for making it available on that site. The document is linked from the New Files page here and lives in the Russia section of the website here.

Waldheim settlers 5

In an earlier post (here) we examined the “List of Mennonites in Waldheim Who Planted Potatoes and Flax in Spring 1839” (extracted and translated by Glenn Penner) in order to mine it for Buller-relevant information. We discovered that in early 1839 Benjamin II (David’s father) and Benjamin III (David’s brother) planted potatoes for consumption and flax for the weaving of linen. What else one or both may have planted we do not know.

The 1839 list is significant for opening a window on the lives of our family members, but the list is also important for what it tells us about Waldheim’s earliest settlers: the names of the eight original settlers of this Molotschna village. When the evidence of the 1839 list is put together with the other lists we have examined, we are actually able to identify who settled in Waldheim in each of its first four years: 1838, 1839, 1840, and 1841. We begin with the 1839 planting list and the original eight settlers in Waldheim.

The 1839 planting list (which can be viewed in its entirety here) begins with twenty-one numbered names, then continues with fifteen unnumbered names. Thus the first question that comes to mind is: Why are some of the names numbered and others unnumbered? The fact that twenty-one names are numbered points toward the answer. As we have mentioned several times (most recently here), eight settlers were granted Wirtschaften (farms) in 1838 and thirteen more in 1839—a total of twenty-one. Since the planting list reflects the reality of 1839, the twenty-one individuals with numbers are most likely those who had been assigned a Wirtschaft.

Fortunately, because we know all the names of the 1839 settlers from another Waldheim list (see here), we can check our reasonable hyphothesis by comparing the names of the twenty-one people who planted potatoes and flax in 1839 with the list of 1839 settlers.

	1839 Planting List	1839 Settler List
1	Tobias Dirks	Tobias David Dirks
2	Peter Pankratz	Peter Jacob Pankratz
3	Cornelius Wedel	Cornelius Cornelius Wedel
4	Michael Teske
5	Peter Wedel
6	Johann Worwel [Worbel]
7	Peter Nachtigal
8	Cornelius Wedel	Cornelius Cornelius Wedel
9	Heinrich Dirks	Heinrich Johann Dirks
10	Peter Schmidt	Peter Johann Schmidt
11	Jacob Klassen	Jacob Aron Klas [Klassen]
12	David Koehn	David Jacob Kohn
13	Benjamin Buller	Benjamin Benjamin Buller
14	Friedrich Kunkel
15	Benjamin Ratzlaff
16	Christian Teske
17	Peter Sperling
18	Benjamin Wedel	Benjamin Cornelius Wedel
19	David Dirks	David Heinrich Dirks
20	David Koehn	David David Kohn? [or Kol"]
21	Johann Ewert	Johann Heinrich Ewert

The correspondence between the two lists is exact: each of the thirteen 1839 settlers (the right column) appears as a numbered name on the 1839 planting list (left columns). Further, this leaves us exactly eight names of individuals who planted potatoes and flax in 1839. These eight were in all likelihood the original eight settlers in Waldheim, the ones who had received their land allotment in 1838. There is no better explanation at the moment.

The names of Waldheim’s original eight settlers were:

• Michael Teske
• Peter Wedel
• Johann Worwel [Worbel]
• Peter Nachtigal
• Friedrich Kunkel
• Benjamin Ratzlaff
• Christian Teske
• Peter Sperling

This is not the first time we have encountered some of these names, but further discussion of that must await another post. For now, we end by providing a further revision of the 1848 community report (Gemeindeberichte). If you recall, the original read:

This village was founded in 1836. That year eight landowners settled in it, twelve in the year 1838, and twenty landowners in 1840.

At this point almost none of the original Gemeindeberichte remains; in fact, the only element of the original that has been found accurate is the statement that Waldheim had eight settlers in its first year. A corrected, expanded version would state:

This village was founded in 1838. That year the following eight landowners settled in it: Michael Teske, Peter Wedel, Johann Worbel (or Werbel), Peter Nachtigal, Friedrich Kunkel, Benjamin Ratzlaff, Christian Teske, and Peter Sperling. Thirteen additional landowners settled in the year 1839; their names were Tobias David Dirks, Peter Jacob Pankratz, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Cornelius Cornelius Wedel, Heinrich Johann Dirks, Peter Johann Schmidt, Jacob Aron Klassen, David Jacob Köhn, Benjamin Benjamin Buller, Benjamin Cornelius Wedel, David Heinrich Dirks, David David Köhn, and Johann Heinrich Ewert. Seventeen landowners settled in Waldheim in 1840 and two in 1841, filling the forty Wirtschaften allotted to the village.

The next post will expand the list of names further by comparing the unnumbered names on the 1839 planting list with other lists we have already examined. When we are finished, we will have identified the names of all forty Waldheim settlers for the years 1838–1841.

Holodomor Remembrance Day

Buller Time makes it a point not to venture or wander into the policitical (no mention, for example, of the 2016 U.S. election), but sometimes the historical and the political cannot be kept separate. So it is that we take a few moments to note Holodomor Remembrance Day on this fourth Saturday in November, an official day of remembrance established by the Ukrainian government and observed by people around the world.

Holodomor (Голодомо́р), a Ukrainian term meaning “extermination by hunger,” refers to the Stalin-directed, Soviet-implemented starvation of millions (the exact total is unknown, and estimates vary from 2.5 million to over 14 million) of ethnic Ukrainians and other residents of the region. Readers can find far more informative accounts of the genocide in the resources listed below; suffice it to say for now that, in response to continued Ukrainian resistance to Soviet rule, the Stalin goverment chose to extinguish Ukrainian nationalistic ideals by exterminating those who held them. The Soviets laid the foundation in the last years of the 1920s and the first few years of the 1930s; the majority of the people died in the space of just a few years: 1932–1933.

The Soviet weapons in this fight were several. First, privately owned land was siezed and organized into collective farms; the rural peasantry thus became employees (or slaves) of the state. Second, the taxes (generally paid in produce, not currency) due on the land of a particular area were increased to the point that an entire year’s harvest (or more) was due to the Soviet state, leaving little or none for the residents of that place. Third, when harvests did produce an excess, it was piled within a secure compound—left there to rot instead of being distributed to the starving peasants who had produced it. Fourth, the Soviet authorities banned all travel and emigration, forcing the peasantry to remain in the country to die. Fifth, Stalin’s officials also rejected any international aid initiatives that would have alleviated the suffering and saved innumerable lives; the point, after all, was to kill a people. Sixth and last, many individuals were imprisoned and many families exiled to Siberia and similar regions on charges imagined or real. The outcome of these measures was not surprising: the destruction of an independent way of life, the desolation of the Ukraine, and the death of millions of residents of the Ukraine.

The horror of the Holodomor is best captured by Robert Conquest, who wrote the definitive account of this genocide. The preface of his 411-page book begins as follows:

The task of the historian is the notoriously difficult one of trying to represent clearly and truly in a few hundred pages events which cover years of time and nations of men and women. We may perhaps put this in perspective in the present case by saying that in the actions here recorded about twenty human lives were lost for, not every word, but every letter, in this book. (1986, 1)

At twenty lives lost per letter, the paragraph above represents approximately six thousand deaths. As horrific as this clearly is, one may wonder why this is a particular concern of this blog. The answer is simple: the Mennonites of the Molotschna who had remained behind when others emigrated to North America were in the heart of the Holodomor. Many of these Mennonites no doubt died during Stalin’s genocide.

But the Holodomor is even more personal for Buller Time. It raises the haunting question: Whatever happened to Katja Buller?

Katja is the little girl marked with an arrow on the right end of the front row. This photograph, which was reproduced in John A. Harder’s From Kleefeld with Love (see here, here, and here), pictures the students and teacher of Kleefeld’s 1930 school.

If you recall, Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller lived in Kleefed with Sarah’s parents before they left for Nebraska in 1879. Obviously, other Bullers lived in Kleefeld in the decades after they left, if not at the same time. Given what we know about the Mennonite Bullers—that we are all part of a single extended family— it seems reasonable to conclude that Katja Buller (and her brother Abraham and her sister Neta, the other two arrows) was part of our larger family.

Here we see Katja and her Kleefeld schoolmates in 1930. Farm collectivization was in place, and in all likelihood Stalin’s policy of dekulakinization had begun to be felt, with some landowners already arrested and/or forcibly removed to distant work camps. The Holodomor itself was just beginning. One wonders how many of these children were still alive three years later, how many still lived in Kleefeld.

One wonders: Whatever happened to Katja Buller? Thus far we have not uncovered any evidence of her life or death apart from this photograph. We will continue looking, but for now, on 26 November, we remember Katja and the other victims of the Holodomor.

Additional Resources

The documentary Harvest of Despair (55 min.) can be viewed online here. Although some of the images are disturbing, the documentary is worthwhile for placing the Holodomor in its historical perspective.

The Wikipedia article on the Holodomor is full and informative (here), although the usual cautions about Wikipedia’s reliability apply.

Alexander Wienerberger’s photographs (here) of the Holodomor are mostly of urban areas, but they still convey the horrific nature of the genocide.

The Holodomor Education website provides a variety of resources, including a brief overview essay here. The website also offers a section on International Recognition of the Holodomor here.

In that vein, the White House website offers here President Obama’s 2009 Holodomor Remembrance Day statement.

A monument memorializing the Holodomor was erected in Washington, DC, in 2015 (here).

Works Cited

Conquest, Robert. 1986. The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror-Famine. New York: Oxford University Press.

Harder, John A., ed. and trans. 2003. From Kleefeld with Love. Kitchener, Ontario: Pandora Press.