Tenancy Terms

A little more than six months ago we examined a document that listed the names of a number of Mennonites who wished to leave Volhynia and to settle in Molotschna (see here for the blog post; see here for Glenn Penner’s translation of the document). The previous post mentioned that document in passing, since the time of the list (1833) was reasonably close to Johann Cornies’s comments about the superiority of colonist life over tenancy.

The mere fact that so many Volhynian Mennonite tenants sought to move to Molotschna in 1833 and were willing to make formal application to do so (the purpose of the list) is clear evidence that Cornies was not the only one to regard tenancy as an inferior, more tenuous existence. However, that is not all that we should say about the list. In retrospect, our earlier understanding of several statements on the list may have been mistaken or perhaps imprecise.

The first nineteen names on the list (out of a total of thirty-nine names) were residents of Ostrowka, or Ostrog, a village located in the lower center of Volhynia. All nineteen lived on the estate of  Michael Bischkowsky in the Lutzki region in the colony Ostrowka.

The nineteen names are divided into two groups as follows:

	First and Last Name	Male	Female	Total	Comments
1	Benjamin Wedel	2	2	4	Schaefer (shepherd)
2	Heinrich Wedel	2	7	9	Uhrmacher (clock maker)
3	Johann Wedel	2	1	3	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
4	Cornelius Wedel	4	3	7	Drechsler (wood lathe operator)
5	Heinrich Dirks	4	3	7	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
6	Michael Teske	6	4	10	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
7	David Dirks	1	2	3	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
8	David Nachtigal	6	3	9	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
9	George Nachtigal	4	5	9	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)

These above-mentioned nine families have enjoyed their free years and, since 1818, have paid the royal contributions.

10	Benjamin Buller	5	6	11	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
11	David Koehn	1	3	4	Stellmacher (wheelwright/ wagon maker)
12	Peter Schmidt	2	6	8	Leinweber (linen weaver)
13	Peter Becker	4	3	7	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
14	Benjamin Ratzlaff	4	3	7	Leinweber (linen weaver)
15	Cornelius Balzer	1	2	3	Leinweber (linen weaver)
16	Johann Werbel	1	2	3	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
17	Jacob Pankratz	4	7	11	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
18	Friedrich Kunkel	1	3	4	Landwirth (landowner/farmer)
19	Jacob Wedel	3	5	8	Leinweber (linen weaver)

The above ten families still enjoy the free years.

We observed in the original post and then in even greater detail (here) that there is a clear difference between the two groups: in 1833 the latter ten still enjoyed their free years, while the first nine had to pay the “royal contributions.”

Earlier we concluded (1) that the royal contribution was a tax and (2) that the difference between the two groups (group 1 no longer enjoying free years; group 2 still enjoying free years) indicated that the first nine families must have signed the lease with Michael Bischkowsky some years before the latter ten did. Both conclusions may need to be clarified somewhat in light of Johann Cornies’s comments about the superiority of the colonist life to that of tenants.

First, although we do not know exactly what the royal contribution was, we should not assume that it was a tax paid to the government. As Cornies reminds us, these Mennonite tenants were obligated to the noble on whose land they lived, not the crown per se. Of course, royal officials exercised ultimate control over the realm, but the tenants’ most immediate and direct obligation was to their lord. Thus, the royal contribution was likely paid to the noble, even if he passed it on to the government.

Second and more important, Cornies’s words remind us that nobles could negotiate whatever terms they wanted. Stated differently, it seems likely that nobles offered different terms to different tenants: more appealing terms when the noble was in need of settlers, less appealing terms when the need for tenants was not so acute. What this means for the two groups of Ostrog settlers named above is that the difference between the two groups may have been more a matter of the tenancy terms than when each group settled. The first group may have run out of free years because of the terms of their tenant contract, not necessarily because they had lived on the estate longer than the second group.

Much about the Ostrog situation remains unknown, but one thing is certain: Cornies was completely correct in his opinion that it was far better to live as a colonist on crown land (land originally owned by the crown but deeded to colonists) than as a tenant on some noble’s estate. The actions of our own ancestor Benjamin Buller (number 10 on the list) proves the case.

Of course, this raises yet another perplexing question: Why did Benjamin and family move back to Volhynia (to the village Heinrichsdorf) after he had become a Molotschna colonist (landowner) in 1839?

Johann Cornies Papers: Relevance

The last two posts (here and here) focused on two letters found in the papers of Johann Cornies: one written to Cornies by a Russian governmental official named Andrei Fadeev, the other written by Cornies to a fellow Mennonite named Johann Wiebe. The letters reminded us of a number of significant points.

1. In Fadeev’s telling, the Privilegium that the Russian crown promised Mennonites included four key elements. Specifically, Mennonites

•   were liable only for insignificant taxes, apparently not what the nobility paid.
•   enjoyed the right to include the proceeds from liquor sales in the community treasury.
•   received larger land allotments than those granted to other foreign settlers.
•   were exempt from military impositions, billeting, and military marches through Mennonite villages.

2. These royal privileges, Cornies points out, were available only to colonists, that is, Mennonites who settled on crown land (e.g., the residents of Molotschna colony); those living on the land of nobles, whom he labels free settlers, had no claim on them.


3. In fact, free settlers had no guaranteed rights; they enjoyed only those rights and privileges that they could negotiate with their landlords. Other realities further limited their options.

•   A noble might grant rights to a settler little by little or not at all.
•   The contract between a noble and a settler could not exceed twenty years.
•   After a contract expired, the settler had to leave the noble’s estate and find somewhere new to live.
•   A Mennonite settler was not guaranteed a place on crown land such as Molotschna colony.

4. Given the significant disparity in rights enjoyed and guaranteed, Cornies regarded the situation of the colonist on royal land to be far superior to that of the free settler on a noble’s estate.

Why is all this important to our family? As mentioned in the last post, Cornies cited as examples of free settlers the Mennonites in villages such as Michalin, Ostrog, and Dubno—villages in Volhynia, where our ancestor Benjamin Buller lived before he moved to Molotschna. According to Cornies, the Mennonites in Molotschna were far better off than those living in these Volhynian villages.

Earlier posts on the Bullers in Volhynia discussed the context within which our ancestors emigrated from Prussia to Volhynia and the terms under which they secured the right to live on and work the land owned by the nobility. Those discussions remain informative, but the sharp distinctions drawn by Cornies between a free settler and a colonist settler are particularly instructive.

1. Although it seems that Benjamin Buller and all the other Mennonite settlers in Zofyovka, Volhynia, were given “the rights and privileges conferred on Mennonites in the Emperor’s Privilegium” (here), this was only due to the estate owner’s generosity. These rights were not automatically conferred on them simply by virtue of their emigration to the Russian realm.

Further, those rights were neither guaranteed nor permanent. In all probability, their enjoyment of those rights was subject to the noble’s continued goodwill. What could settlers without clearly grounded legal rights do if he chose to suspend them? Further, the moment they moved from the noble’s estate, they left their special rights behind as well.

2. Earlier we read that the contract with the noble was “ewigen Zeiten,” or forever. However, Cornies states that the longest contract term possible was twenty years. In light of the fact that the Mennonite community did not remain in Zofyovka forever, one suspects the forever nature of the agreement was more symbolic legalese than binding term.

How long the  lease actually lasted remains unknown, but Cornies’s comment helps explain why some Volhynian Mennonites were so frequently on the move: although it was possible for a tenant to remain on an estate for a long period (up to twenty years and perhaps even longer under renewed contracts), the reality seems to have been that tenancy contracts were relatively short and frequently not renewed, which led to a high incidence of migration from one place to another.

3. At some point—we do not know precisely when, but certainly before twenty years had passed—Benjamin Buller and the other Mennonites left Zofyovka, and we next encounter Benjamin in an 1833 record, when he was in Ostrowka, or Ostrog, one of the villages that Cornies mentions (for further discussion of Benjamin in Ostrog, see here).

Several points merit special note. (1) Cornies offered his comment about Ostrog in December 1830; in 1833 Benjamin was among the Mennonites living in Ostrog, and he may have been living there for a number of years. Consequently, Cornies’s comment about Ostrog is directly relevant to Benjamin’s situation. (2) Benjamin is listed as a farmer who was leasing land from yet another noble. Cornies is once again shown to be correct: free settlers such as Benjamin could move from one noble’s estate to another. (3) Finally, Cornies’s opinion about the superiority of life as a colonist living on royal land was shared by the Mennonite tenants of Ostrog. Their names were on the 1833 list because they had registered their wish to “leave Volhynia and settle with their brethren in the Tauridian Governorate,” that is, Molotschna colony, which was in the Taurida district. They, too, recognized that life as a colonist on royal land was far more desirable than scraping out a living as a tenant.

4.  Benjamin did eventually become a colonist in Molotschna colony, but clearly only by special permission. As Cornies explained, free settlers could not move to crown land and thereby automatically enjoy all the rights granted to invited colonists.  Benjamin and the other Ostrog Mennonites had to apply to the ruling authorities not only for permission to move but also to be regarded as a colonist entitled to the rights of the Privilegium.

Thanks to the Cornies papers, our understanding of Benjamin’s situation is much clearer, so much so that we probably need to revisit the earlier posts on Benjamin’s time in Volhynia in order to correct and clarify our earlier suppositions in light of this new information. We should also reconsider Benjamin and family’s later move from Molotschna back to Volhynia (at Heinrichsdorf) and what conditions he may have encountered there.

Before we do so, however, I think we will quickly retrace our steps back to the 1833 list of Ostrog Mennonites, to explore further how Cornies’s comments may shape and sharpen our reading of that document.

Johann Cornies Papers: Free Settlers

The previous post drew upon correspondence from Andrei M. Fadeev, chairman of the Ekaterinoslav Bureau of the Guardianship Committee, to Johann Cornies in order to highlight the key elements of the Privilegium, the grant of rights from the Russian royal house (Catherine the Great and Paul II in particular). An earlier letter from Cornies to fellow Mennonite Johann Wiebe rounds out the picture and, in the process, provides background to our own family’s situation.

Who this Johann Wiebe was is not explored in the Cornies volume, although there are hints that may help us to identify him. The letter was written on 30 December 1830 and sent to Wiebe in the West Prussian (Polish) village of Tiege (22 miles southeast of Gdańsk/Danzig). GAMEO includes several Johann Wiebes, one of whom was born in 1806 (which would make him twenty-four when the letter was written) and who lived in Tiege until 1870 (see also Grandma 507764). We cannot with certainty that this was the recipient of Cornies’s letter, but he is a strong candidate.

Fortunately, we do not need to identify the exact recipient in order to understand the letter. Cornies himself provides the background to it: “You ask if the Duke of Anhalt-Koethen’s settlement in Tavrida is making land available for foreign settlement, and also if that land is on the steppes or in the Dnieper lowlands” (Cornies 2015, 205). As noted previously (here), the Taurida Governorate was the large administrative district within which the Molotschna colony was located (the area below the red line in the map). Wiebe’s question, then, was whether a particular estate within the Taurida district was available for settlement and was located in the lowlands or the steppes.*

Cornies’s reply to Wiebe’s inquiry is enlightening in a number of ways:

In reply, I can say that the Duke has concluded an agreement with the Russian state requiring that a specific number of colonists be settled within ten years. The Dnieper lowlands are not mentioned in the terms of the agreement. The Anhalt-Koethen administrators would naturally like to attract Mennonite settlers, but what rights and privileges could they provide? Their Charter of Privileges offers them no more than what our Privilegium guarantees us. In their own interest, the Anhalt-Koethen administration could decide not to give its settlers all these rights directly, but grant them in stages.

In my opinion, a settler whose rights are confirmed directly by the Crown is always in the best position. Remember that foreigners brought into Russia by estate owners can only conclude twenty-year contracts. They are never considered colonists, but are always strangers who can move about Russia after their contract has ended. They receive no Crown land for settlement, nor are they under the colonial administration. They have the right to live in the empire on leaseholdings. Mennonites at Michalen, Ostrog, Dubno, and other places live under such an arrangement. When I visited St. Petersburg, they authorized me to present their situation to the Ministry and to petition for their inclusion in the colonist estate. This was not granted. It was ruled that they were to remain as free people.

I would not advise anyone to settle as a free man under the authority of a particular lord. Please, dear friend, give my advice to anyone interested in concluding a contract for Anhalt-Koethen land. They must not think that, after their contract has expired, they can move to the Molochnaia if that seems more suitable and hope to be accepted and registered among their brethren-in-faith, with the same advantages and rights. There is a wall of separation here, anchored in law, that cannot and will not be easily breached. (Cornies 2015, 205–6, text 202)

Here Cornies distinguishes between two types of foreign—including Mennonite—settlers: colonists, who lived on crown land with rights granted by the Russian crown; and free people, who lived on the land (estates) of nobles and enjoyed whatever rights the noble granted. Cornies clearly considers the colonist status as superior, for several reasons:

1. A noble was under no obligation to give a settler the rights of the Privilegium and thus could grant them in stages—or presumably not at all.
2. The contract between a noble and a settler could not exceed twenty years, after which a new agreement needed to be concluded if the settler wanted to remain.
3. Although free people could move about the empire, they did so as sojourners, as it were, with no place to call their own and no guarantee of any rights—including the right to remain in the land.
4. Mennonites who were not colonists had no claim to join the Molotschna colony, once their contract with a noble had run its course. 

Cornies offers an interesting and insightful perspective on the different arrangements under which Mennonites lived within Russia. However, he also sheds light on our own family’s situation. To be specific, Cornies notes that the Mennonites living at “ Michalen, Ostrog, Dubno, and other places” (Cornies 2015, 206). Michalin, Ostrog, and Dubno were Mennonite villages in Volhynia, where our ancestor Benjamin Buller and his family (including David, father of Peter D, father of Peter P, father of Grandpa Chris) lived in the early nineteenth century.

The next post will pick up the story here, to explore what relevance Cornies’s comments about a colonist versus a free settler have for our ancestors.

Note
* For further information on the estate, including identification of the duke as Ferdinand Friedrich, a member of the German nobility, see here.


Works Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Thiessen, Richard D. 2011. Wiebe, Johann (1806–1872). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

Johann Cornies Papers: The Privilegium

Blogging has been sparse the past few weeks (apologies!), but reading has continued. As mentioned in the two-part series on well drilling in Molotschna (here and here), the papers of Johann Cornies, the leading member of the Molotschna Mennonite community throughout the first half of the nineteenth century, offer a contemporary perspective of life in that colony.

Although Cornies does not mention any Bullers in volume 1 of the collected papers (which covers 1812–1835), several passages do enable us to understand more accurately the situation of our ancestor Benjamin Buller, father of David.

The first is a letter to Cornies from Andrei M. Fadeev, who was chairman of the Ekaterinoslav Bureau of the Guardianship Committee. The Guardianship Committee (or Guardians’ Committee) was the

agency established by the Russian government in 1818 to succeed other agencies that had been established to supervise the foreign settlements in Russia. It was to supervise the activity of the Russian diplomatic representatives in recruiting colonists in foreign countries, to keep a file of lands available for settlement, and to see to it that the foreigners upon their arrival were properly received and aided until they had been settled. This Bureau had the status of a separate ministry and was responsible to the empress, who appointed its chairman. (Krahn 1959)

Stated simply, Fadeev was the primary Russian official with responsibility for and authority over the Molotschna colony. Fadeev and Cornies enjoyed a close and positive relationship. In fact, John R. Staples writes in the introduction to the Cornies volume that “Fadeev became Cornies’ friend and mentor, helping Cornies to enlarge his economic vision and to navigate the channels of officialdom” (Cornies 2015, xxxvii).

All this is the context in which Fadeev wrote to Cornies in mid-1831 (received 13 July) with regard to a “directive to establish societies for the advancement and dissemination of forest- and orchard-tree cultivation, and of sericulture and viticulture, in the Molochnaia and Khortitsa Mennonite Districts.” The letter begins as follows:

The Mennonite settlements in New Russia attract more government attention than do all other foreign settlements. Morality and a clear conscience should motivate these Mennonites to prove that they are the best inhabitants of this region and carry on the largest number of trades.

The privileges the government has bestowed on the Mennonites justify it in expecting that the Mennonites meet its demands. These advantages give the Mennonites the most favoured position among all Russian inhabitants of the peasant estate, particularly their insignificant taxes, their right to include the proceeds from the beverage trade in the community treasury, their larger land allotments compared to those of other foreign settlers, and finally, the very important exemption from all military impositions, billeting, and temporary military marches through most Mennonite villages, depending on their geographic location.

Mennonite settlers already distinguish themselves from others with their special dedication to several branches of agriculture new to this area, such as breeding and refining cattle, horses, and sheep. Their villages are well arranged and are kept in good condition, as are most of the agricultural establishments in these villages. They pursue a quiet, peaceful way of life and their behaviour is highly regarded. This has earned them the praise of the government and of all visitors to the region.

The Mennonites, however, can accomplish still more by making special efforts to achieve the highest possible level of perfection. This would justify the government's expectations in the fullest measure, and demonstrate that their significant advantages over other settlers have not been given to them in vain.

Mennonite communities in general, and every individual in particular, must henceforth give preferential and continuous attention to the development of orchard- and forest-tree culture. (Cornies 2015, 227–28, text 224)

The letter continues, laying out what Fadeev would like Cornies to do (organize three agricultural societies, for the cultivation of forest and fruit tress, of sericulture [silkworms], and of viticulture), but that is not what interests us at the moment. Rather, our attention is on Fadeev’s delineation of Mennonite rights, what is known as the Mennonite Privilegium.

We have referenced the Privilegium from time to time (use the search function at the upper right to find them all), so we need not repeat those discussions here. We should highlight, however, the four key elements that Fadeev mentions:

• insignificant taxes
• right to include the proceeds from the beverage trade in the community treasury
• larger land allotments compared to those of other foreign settlers
• exemption from all military impositions, billeting, and temporary military marches through most Mennonite villages, depending on their geographic location

These are the rights that Catherine the Great first promised in 1787 and that Tsar Paul I ratified in 1800 and that all Molotschna (and Chortitza) Mennonites enjoyed as a direct grant from Russia’s royal rulers. However, not all Mennonites in Russia were entitled to those rights, as yet another of Cornies’s papers makes clear. That letter will be the subject of the following post.

Works Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Krahn, Cornelius. 1959. Fürsorge-Komitee (Guardians’ Committee). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available here.

The blizzards of 1948–1949

A while back Dad mentioned a particularly bad blizzard that had kept the family house-bound for, I believe, several days, after which they had finally made it out to feed their cattle a mile north of the farm. (More on the location of that farm in a subsequent post.)

It seems that the blizzards of late 1948 and especially January 1949 were some of the worst, if not the worst, in Nebraska’s recorded history. York County was significantly impacted by the 2 January 1949 storm; counties in western Nebraska and the northern half of the state had it even worse.

In fact, in an attempt to save cattle on western ranches from starvation, the Air Force sent a number of planes on what was termed Operation Haylift. C-45, C-47, and C-82 cargo planes transported bales of hay and dropped them close to cattle stranded in inaccessible pastures. If I have my story correct, Daniel (eighteen at the time) wanted to help with Operation Haylift, but Grandpa thought better of the idea.

All that is prelude to something discovered while researching the history of this weather event: seven years ago the York News Times published a story about the blizzard in which Matilda was interviewed and had the opportunity to reminisce about it. The article can be read in its entirety here; the portion that is most relevant to Matilda reads as follows:

York resident Matilda Klippenstein remembers the same sort of self-reliance and resilience from Nebraska residents of those days.

Many rural people heated their homes with coal or wood. They raised or made their own meat, milk and butter. They baked their own bread in wood-fired ovens. Most of them, even if they had run electricity into their homes, still had old kerosene lamps and fuel around.

“We could be snowbound and not be hurt all that bad by it,” Matilda says.

A native of rural Lushton, Matilda was married in the last days of 1948. “There was snow then already,” she recalls, “but not like we had later.”

She and her new husband were living temporarily with his parents when the early January blizzard hit. She smiles, her only concession to the stresses of such close quarters under adverse conditions.

Matilda was teaching 15 pupils at the District 80 country schoolhouse [see map to the right], a mile north of Lushton, during this snowy winter. Part of Matilda’s duties included arriving early at the schoolhouse to build a fire in the heating stove.

Fortunately, school was out when the January blizzard descended on Nebraska. Neither Matilda nor her students were in danger of getting lost in the storm.

She recalls enormous drifts smothering the railroad tracks. In those years following World War II, the railroads were still central to transportation in Nebraska and many parts of the United States, moving people, goods, mail, coal and food. Just about every small town was served by regular train routes. As crews today diligently clear snow from highways, during those days they worked to open up the rail lines.

The railroad track is clearly visible in the map, going from the bottom toward the center and then turning to the right (east). It is also easy to spot the Buller farm in the southwest quarter of section 36 (the quarter labeled John Runnalls).

One thing that confuses is the disconnect between the news article, which says that Matilda taught at District 80 a mile north of Lushton, and the earlier information that Matilda taught at a school a mile west of Lushton and that Esther taught at the school a mile north (see here). So which is it? One more piece of family history that we almost know!

Until I saw the York News Times article, I had no idea that Matilda was a schoolteacher. Until I learned more about the Model A, I did not know that Esther was also a schoolteacher. Until a few weeks ago, I had no clue that (at least) one of Grandpa and Grandma’s children had served in the armed forces. (Do you know who?) One wonders how many other family facts are waiting to be rediscovered.

Well drilling in Molotschna 2

With apologies for the long gap between the previous post and this one and the general slow pace of posting to Buller Time the past month, permit me to wrap up our short detour into well drilling in Molotschna colony.

Several aspects of Johann Cornies’s account in the previous post (here) deserve special attention.

1. Cornies reports that he used a ground auger built of wood to drill the wells. In fact, he states that he “invented” or, probably better, built this wooden ground auger. We have all seen an auger before: it has a central pole and a corkscrew. An auger used to drill a hole in the ground probably looked at least something like the modern post-hole digger pictured to the right.

Cornies contrasts his ground auger with a heavy iron one that the government had. It seems most probable that the wooden part of Cornies’s auger was the shaft, not the auger itself. Although it is possible that Cornies constructed both parts out of wood, I cannot imagine a wooden auger lasting long under this type of usage.

We should probably picture the auger shaft not as a single piece but a as series of standard-length pieces that would be added one after another to go deeper and removed as the auger was pulled up.

2. Cornies’s reference to the smaller crew needed to operate his ground auger, as opposed to an iron one, leaves little doubt about the operation of the ground auger: it was not motorized or operated by horse power; rather, it was powered strictly by human labor. One might imagine an auger with two or, more likely, four bars across the top and men walking around and around in a circle to drill the auger deeper into the ground.

3. Cornies provides no evidence about the diameter of the well, and I am unable to find information in other sources that might provide an idea of the average well of that era’s diameter. All we know is that people of that time and place typically lined their wells with wood to keep the sides from caving in. Cornies explains that deep wells required “especially thick planks.” On the basis of this evidence, it seems highly likely that the wells being drilled were more than a foot or two in diameter.

4. The process, we may further imagine, was a matter of drilling the auger down into the ground so that the soil was loosened, then periodically pulling up the shaft and auger so that either (1) the dirt was lifted to the top by the auger and removed or (2) men were let down into the well to place the loose dirt into buckets that were then hoisted to the top and emptied. The latter, of course, would be an option only if the well had a significantly wide diameter.

5. All that remains to discuss is the depths of the wells. Cornies reports that he found water at the following depths:

• Tashchenak: 13 arshins and 9 arshins
• Orta Otluk: 13 arshins, 26 arshins, and 21 archins
• the Ovrakh of the Orta Otluk, at its peak: 33 arshins, 15 arshins, and 41 arshins

According to online sources, a Russian arshin (арши́н) is roughly comparable to what we think of as a yard; to be precise, an arshin is 71.12 centimeters, or 2.3 feet. Knowing this conversion enables us to translate the well depths into terms more familiar to us.

• Tashchenak: 29.9 feet and 20.7 feet
• Orta Otluk: 29.9 feet, 59.8 feet, and 48.3 feet
• the Ovrakh of the Orta Otluk, at its peak: 75.9 feet, 34.5 feet, and 94.3 feet

Based on a final piece of information provided by Cornies, we can also calculate how long it would have taken to drill to these depths. Cornies notes in his first paragraph that a crew of eight men can drill 10–11 sazhen on a “day as is short as is normal for this time of year,” that is, November. The Russian sazhen (саже́нь) was about 7 feet, so Cornies’s crew of eight could drill 70–77 feet a day. That is actually quite impressive, a testament to the efficiency of the ground auger and the efforts of its operators.

It is easy to hold the mistaken impression that the Molotschna residents were dependent on streams, rivers, ponds, and lakes for their daily water needs, for the settlers and their livestock (but not irrigation), as Cornies puts it. In fact, humans have dug and drilled water wells for centuries, even millennia. That our Mennonite ancestors did the same in Molotschna colony should come as no surprise.

Well drilling in Molotschna 1

Recent reading in the collected papers of Johann Cornies uncovered an interesting description of well drilling in 1825 Molotschna. I will write more later about Cornies; for now it is sufficient to note that he was the most influential leader in Molotschna during the first decades of its existence.

In a letter written 4 November 1825 to Andrei M. Fadeev, a governmental official, Cornies recounts his success in drilling for water in an area roughly 20 miles southwest of Molotschna colony itself, in a stretch of undeveloped land that was being considered for settlement. What is intriguing is not the location of the drilling but rather the process of drilling itself. Cornies writes:

Your Honour,

I have the honour to report that I found water at no great expense, using a ground auger built of wood, which can be moved from place to place with little difficulty. It can be operated by eight men and can drill ten to eleven sazhen on a day as is short as is normal for this time of year. The government’s heavy iron auger, on the other hand, requires at least twenty-five men to operate with great additional effort and expense.

Using the auger I invented, I found water in the Tashchenak in two spots at a depth of ten arshins: at thirteen arshins on site No. 1, and at nine arshins in one spot of site No. 2. In Orta Otluk, the levels were thirteen arshins at site No. 1, twenty-six arshins at site No. 2, and twenty-one arshins at site No. 3. In the Ovrakh of the Orta Otluk, at its peak, water was found in three spots at thirty-three arshins at site No. 1, fifteen at site No. 2, and forty-one at No. 3. …

Wells cannot be lined with wood this autumn because of a wood shortage. Especially thick planks are needed to make deep wells durable and long-lasting. A simple inexpensive pump could be constructed to provide settlers and livestock easier access to water. (Cornies 2015, text 34)

The following post will comment on and explain some of the details recorded, not least the depths drilled using this human-powered drilling technique.

Work Cited

Cornies, Johann. 2015. Transformation on the Southern Ukrainian Steppe: Letters and Papers of Johann Cornies. Volume 1: 1812–1835. Translated by Ingrid I. Epp. Edited by Harvey L. Dyck, Ingrid I. Epp, and John R. Staples. Tsarist and Soviet Mennonite Studies. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Farm sale

A photographic walk down memory lane—in hopes that perhaps other members of Grandpa and Grandma’s family might share photographs retrieved from their own scrapbooks, shoeboxes, and “archives.”

It was late 1960, and our family was preparing to move from the Buller farm south of Lushton “into town.” If I understand correctly, Grandpa and Grandma, who had moved to Lushton several years earlier, were ready to sell the farm. In preparation for those changes, Dad and Grandpa needed to get rid of unneeded farm equipment. There was no better way to do so than by having a farm sale.

The newspaper announcement of the sale, which was held on 16 December 1960, is to the right. It provides the occasion for the sale, followed by a list of all the implements and materials on the sale. The reason for the sale is clear:

I am quitting farming and will devote my full time to custom corn shelling and hay baling.…

There is no need to list all the items on the sale, but a number stand out—and some of them can be spotted in the photographs below:

• 1957 Super 77 Oliver diesel tractor
• 1955 Minneapolis Moline UB propane tractor
• IHC F-20 Farmall tractor
• 1957 Minneapolis Moline Uni-Harvester
• Minneapolis Moline four-row cultivator
• IHC four-row corn planter
• four-bottom plow and 13.5-foot disk
• IHC manure spreader
• Mayrath 40-foot wide elevator
• McCormick Deering threshing machine
• Viking electric feed grinder

We begin with the photo we viewed earlier, with the Model A Ford.

Here we also see the 1957 Minneapolis Moline Uni-Harvester in the row immediately behind the Model A. My understanding is that the Uni-Harvester was owned by Grandpa and Daniel. To the left of the Model A is a tractor, the IHC F-20 Farmall. To the left of the tractor is a hay rack. The wooden wheels are presumably a sign of its age, which likely implies that it was used to haul wheat sheaves from the field to the threshing machine (see the photo here).

The next photograph shows assorted machinery: the curved blower in the center belongs, I think, to a stalk cutter/chopper; the Gandy fertilizer spreader sits behind and to the right. We will return below to the light-colored piece of machinery partially visible to the extreme left.

More interesting to me is what is visible in the background: to the left and far behind the Gandy is a corn crib; a small bin is to its right (east). Still farther to the east, visually behind the irrigation pipe, one sees the end of the chicken coops. All those structures are more prominent in the next photo. (For an aerial view of the entire farmstead, which will help you locate the structures in these photographs, see here.)

To the far right of the picture (i.e., immediately south of the chicken coops) we see the north end of the machine shed. In the foreground is the irrigation pipe and an elevator.

The next photograph gives the view from roughly the same spot but rotated clockwise.

Now we see the south end of the machine shed and the elevator farther south. Between the two and far in the background is the house; to the far right and also in the background is the barn. Another elevator sits in the foreground, as well as the Viking electric feed grinder.

Walk south 15–20 yards and then turn maybe 45 degrees counterclockwise and you have the view of the photograph below.

The elevator and feed grinder are visible toward the back left (corn crib, bin and chicken coop in the background). The tractor in the center is the 1957 Super 77 Oliver, I believe. The full extent of the machine shed is visible behind the tractor and trailer to its right. The wheel at the extreme right of the photograph is probably part of the plow that was auctioned. The dark shadow to the left foreground is cast, I suspect, by the Uni-Harvester.

The next photograph gives us a better view of the light-colored piece of machinery: it is, in fact, the McCormick Deering threshing machine.

It actually deserves its own closeup.

This is what our family used to thresh wheat and barley. We viewed pictures of threshing earlier (see here); to what extent this machine and its power source were the same or differed I do not yet know.

Two final photos closer to the house bring our photographic stroll to an end. The first is rather dark, but the southwest corner of the house is still visible, as well as some of the arch on the south side of the house and the cement column on the west.

The second photograph is taken from the northeast corner of the house and looks to the northwest. Notice the machine shed behind the auction crowd; both chicken coops are visible to the right.

One final detail catches my eye: a dark object to the left of center in the photo immediately above. A closeup will help you see what I spotted.

There looking toward the camera is a dog, our family pet. Fifty-seven years later, it is comforting to encounter a familiar face.

Johann Buller 4

The last post in this mini-series uncovered a great deal about Heinrich and Helene Harder, parents of Anne (Njuta) Harder and thus parents-in-law of Johann (Hans) Buller. This post now turns to Johann. Drawing from the first three posts, we can assemble the following facts.

1. Johann (Hans) Buller was the son of Andreas Buller of Waldheim (Toews 1990, 98).

2. To escape Soviet harassment, the Andreas Buller family moved from Waldheim to a town named Krasnogorovka (modern Krasnohorivka) in the Donbass region of Ukraine (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 17). They moved specifically to the area of town named Borisowka/Borisovka (Toews 1990, 98).

3. Johann Buller married Anne (Njuta) Harder, daughter of Heinrich and Helene Harder (Toews 1990, 98).

4. Johann and Anne lived with her parents in Krasnogorovka for several years in the early 1930s (Toews 1990, 98).

5. Johann and his father-in-law Heinrich Harder were arrested on 30 April 1836. The charges against them are unknown but probably related to their holding of religious services. They were released the following year, in June 1937 (Toews 1990, 98).

6. In late 1941 Johann, Anne, and her parents were sent east to the village Algabass in the Akmolinsk region of southeast Kazakhstan (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 32).

7. There in 1942 Anne gave birth to a son David  (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 34).

8. Shortly thereafter Johann was still alive, since he wrote his relative Heinrich Buller in Ontario, Canada, about the deaths of his parents-in-law.

Beyond that, we can say nothing more about Johann, Anne, and David. For all that we now know, we still cannot say with any degree of certainty whether Johann and his father Andreas are close or more distant relatives of ours. We do have additional confirmation of Andreas’s life in Waldheim, thanks to a village map in Schroeder and Huebert (1996, 42).

The top map shows the entire village and its landowners in 1916. The larger plots north of the river were all part of the original assignments that we covered in detail some months back. The bottom map zooms in on the key area identified in the map above: the half-Wirtschaft that Andres (Andreas) Buller owned. This is the Andreas who was the father of Johann.

Was he a close relative of ours? At this point we cannot know. I have thus far been able to find out who this Andreas was. Nor is his son Johann any easier to identify. Given the fact that there were, as we know, other Buller families than ours in Waldheim and the surrounding villages, we will have to leave this question unanswered for the moment. We will be on the lookout, however, for additional appearances of Andreas and Johann of Waldheim, as well as for Johann’s wife Anne Harder or their son born in 1942, David.

Sources Cited

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

Toews, Aron A. 1990. Mennonite Martyrs: People Who Suffered for Their Faith 1920–1940. Translated by John B. Toews. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 6. Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary

Woelk, Heinrich, and Gerhard Woelk. 1982. A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. Translated by Victor Doerksen. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 4. Winnipeg: Kindred.

Johann Buller 3

Sometimes persistence + dumb luck pays off and leads to a new discovery. This is one of those times. This series has tried to discover the identity of the Johann Buller from Waldheim who was mentioned in several accounts of exile in Stalin’s Soviet Union (see here and here).

In the early 1930s Johann and his family fled Molotschna to Krasnogorovka, a village in the Donbass area of the Ukraine roughly 85–90 miles northeast of Waldheim. Like many Mennonite males in that time and place, Johann Buller was arrested on unspecified charges; whether he was later released is not entirely clear, but we assume that he was.

We next encountered a woman named Anna (Njuta) Buller, the daughter of Heinrich Harder, former minister in Halbstadt, Molotschna colony. She and the other Mennonite residents of Krasnogorovka were exiled nearly 2,000 miles east to the village of Algabass in southeast Kazakhstan. There Anna buried her father, gave birth to a son named David, and then buried her mother as well.

We wondered if Anna might perhaps have been the wife of Johann, and we pondered the significance of no mention of a husband during the accounts of Anna’s life in Kazakhstan. Finally, persistence and dumb luck allow us to fill in (at least parts of) the rest of the story.

The unexpected source of information about Johann Buller comes from Aron A. Toews’s Mennonite Martyrs: People Who Suffered for Their Faith 1920–1940. The book contains the stories of more than sixty Mennonites who suffered some sort of loss or privation, from exile to imprisonment to death, at the hands of the Soviet authorities. One of the individuals whose story is told is Heinrich Harder, the father of Anna (Njuta) Buller. The entry is worth quoting in its entirety.

He was a teacher but also a minister of the Molotschna Evangelical Mennonite Brethren Church, whose meeting hall was located in Lichtfelde. He himself, came from Neu-Halbstadt. His wife Helene was a daughter of the widely known teacher, minister, and poet Bernard Harder of Halbstadt. She also possessed outstanding poetic gifts. Many a fine poem of hers has appeared in our periodicals. I can still remember one of her poems which appeared in the Mennonite papers under the title Lose Blätter in which she portrayed the lot of the scattered Mennonite refugees in a most gripping fashion. This family unfortunately had no children, though both loved children intensely. Later they adopted a daughter called Njuta (Annie) who gave them much joy.

Heinrich Harder possessed a good pedagogical training and was a teacher for many years. His longest stay was at the estate Steinbach on the Juschanlee River. Here lived the well-known families Peter and Nicolai Schmidt, Jakob Dick, Klaas Schmidt, the family Regehr and others. The school was only small, but the teacher Harder completely dedicated himself to his profession. He had a very friendly manner which attracted people, yet he possessed a very steadfast character. In the school district stretching from Steinbach to Mariental he, together with his colleagues, was a regular participant in the teacher conferences and contributed much to their vitality. His colleagues included Abram Janz, Elisabethal; Johann A. Toews, Alexandertal; the teachers Boese and P. Toews, Schardau; Abram H. Harder, Pordenau; Peter Wiebe and Abram Nickel, Mariental.

During the German occupation in the summer of 1918, the teacher Heinrich Harder celebrated his twenty-fifth jubilee as a teacher. The author, at the request of the Molotschna Mennonite Teachers Association, presented the jubilee address utilizing the text, “The laborer is worthy of his hire.”

He left Steinbach and accepted a teaching position in Sparrau when Steinbach was largely depopulated by the Bolsheviks and a communist children’s home was established there. Since he was also a minister, he had to give up his beloved teaching position because of pressure from Soviet authorities. The family then moved to Neu-Halbstadt, where he had been appointed as minister of the Mennonite Brethren Church. The services were held in the so-called Vereinshaus
(Association House), where the services of other Mennonite groups were held as well.

Almost all of the ministers had emigrated or fled and so he had much work in the congregations. He did not labor in peace for long. As a minister, he was soon disenfranchised and deprived of civil rights. One high tax assessment followed another and soon he was obliged to leave his post. He and his family moved to the Memrik region. The meetinghouse in Halbstadt was closed and turned into a high school gymnasium.

Here (Memrik) they were very poor. Finally H. Harder found a position as night watchman at a government project. Later he was sent to the high north together with all the other Mennonite inhabitants near Memrik. All reliable information has been lacking since then. (Toews 1990, 96–97)

Fortunately for readers, the account does not end there. According to the translator’s preface, the original German manuscript of this book was destroyed in a house fire and had to be reconstructed (Toews 1990, 96–97). The silver lining in all this is that, due to the delay, some new material could be added to the account. Thus we find beginning with page 98 a postscript on Heinrich Harder from May 1948.

We have just now received further information about the last years of the whereabouts of the Heinrich Harder family. At the beginning of the 1930s, they had moved to the Russian village Borisowka, in the region of Stalino (Jusowo). Other Mennonite families were also living here: the deacon Abram A. Dick and family from Lichtfelde; the Andreas Buller family from Waldheim; Flemings and Woelks from Rudnerweide and others. Hans Buller, the son of Andreas Buller, had married H. Harder’s adopted daughter, Njuta. They lived together with their parents and spent several happy years there. In March of 1935, they wrote that they still felt secure, as if protected by a rocky cliff. Materially, they were not too badly off. They had their so-called family evenings (they were not to be called services) where Mennonite families came together and edified themselves through the Word, and with song and prayer. They were always happy when the day off stipulated by the government fell on a Sunday. They were still celebrating birthdays together and a lovely Bible verse was the usual birthday gift.

In August 1935, Njuta wrote to Canada noting that the help from the dear friends of their parents had kept them alive. They were only lacking in lard. Mother was becoming steadily thinner and their earnings only bought bread. During this time, Heinrich Harder found a position as a teacher of German in a ten-class school. He was highly respected in the school and the director of the school often came to visit him. Previously, he had been employed as a night watchman by a
nurseryman. In 1935 they celebrated Christmas with the Abram Dick family, and they even had a Christmas tree. The teacher H. Harder had brought a number of books along. These were Circulated and there was a good deal of reading.

Yet on April 30, 1936, Heinrich Harder and his son-in-law, Hans Buller, were arrested and imprisoned. The charges were probably related to the holding of religious services. They loved to sing the songs of Zion and that had not gone unnoticed.

In June 1937, they were freed but they did not say why. At that time it was dangerous to write or receive letters from abroad.

In one letter from that time, they mentioned Acts 8:3 where we read. “But Paul made havoc of the church and, forcing himself into homes and dragging out men and women, he put them in prison.” They also mention the song, “Master the tempest is raging.”

In March 1939, H. Harder lay seriously ill in a hospital. He suffered from a stomach ailment, and his wife had heart problems. They recovered and during this year they, together with their children, were able to move into their own four-room house. Dear friends lent them the extra money. They were happy together. They planted vegetables and flowers near the house. Then came WWlI and all the German settlers were forcibly deported to Kazakhstan and other places. The journey began on October 2, 1941, and on November 4 they disembarked. On December 23 and 24, the temperature stood at minus 45. Bitter misery and poverty held sway among the
deportees: they were now to establish a new livelihood without any means.

Heinrich Harder and his family came here (Kasakstan?), but they did not survive for long. Both died, one soon after the other, and were buried here.

The son-in-law, Hans Buller, eulogizes his parents-in-law and especially the father. He writes to his kin, the Heinrich Bullers in Ontario.

In the years when father sun had a regular income as a teacher in the diaspora, he did much good among the poor. He possessed an upright heart, was always kind and friendly, and can right be counted among the great of our people. I mention our dear aged ones, once again, and praise the goodness of God that He has taken them unto Himself. My dear father-in-law was a great gift to me. At his table I could absorb and learn what is currently so useful to me. I still have many things to ask now that his mouth is closed forever. There was hardly a thing for which he did not have an answer. He was not a craftsman for he hardly knew how to use a hammer—but he was a teacher by the grace of God. He has fought a good fight.

Is that not a splendid testimony for one of our servants of God who breathed his last so far from home? (Toews 1990, 98–99)

Buller Time would normally not include such an extensive quote, but in this case it seems warranted because GRANDMA has little information about Heinrich Harder. The rest of the post will focus on him and his wife Helene. The information gathered about Johann (Hans) Buller will be the focus of the following post.

We begin with the entry for Helene (or Helena) Harder, Heinrich’s wife. Helena Harder, daughter of Bernhard (Bernard; see the account above) and wife of Heinrich Harder, can be none other than the matriarch in view in the Toews account, as well as the earlier stories related by the Woelks here and here. This Helena Harder was the adoptive mother of Anna (Njuta) and thus the mother-in-law of Johann (Hans) Buller.

Since Helena 127118 is the matriarch of these stories, her husband Heinrich 127125 certainly must be the patriarch.

Needless to say, the information provided is rather sparse. For wife and for husband we know only the names of her parents and that Helena and Heinrich were married. Thanks to the accounts of their later years in exile (Woelk and Woelk 1982; Toews 1990), we can now fill in a number of details.

1. We do not know when Helena or Heinrich was born, but we might reasonably guess around 1855, since Helena’s parents were married in 1854, and she was their firstborn child (see GM 37422).

2. We are told by Toews that Helena was the daughter of Bernard Harder of Halbstadt, an original (1804) Molotschna village in the northwest corner of the colony. Toews locates Heinrich in Neu-Halbstadt, a later village that was immediately adjacent to Halbstadt. From this we can deduce the most likely birth villages of the pair.

3. The couple had no biological children but did adopt a girl named Anne (Njuta). Presumably she should be added to GM and listed in their entries as an adopted child. Her husband Johann Buller presumably also needs to be added and/or linked to Anne.

4. Based on the accounts, we can list dates of death for Helena and Heinrich. According to Woelk and Woelk (1982, 33), on 10 April 1942 Anne reported the death of her father sometime during the night before. Her mother followed nine months later, on 7 January 1943 (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 34).

5. We can also specify the place of death for both: “the Kazakh village of Algabass in the region of Akmolinsk” in southeast Kazakhstan (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 32).

6. The final information GM might add for Helena and Heinrich is where one can read more about their lives:

• Woelk and Woelk 1982, 16–18, 29–34
• Toews 1990, 96–99

Heinrich and Helena Harder were not direct members of our family, but we may have been related to them through adoption and marriage. Whether we are related is ultimately of no concern; their stories deserve to be remembered on their own merits, as do the stories of all who suffered for their faith in Stalin’s Soviet Union.

Sources Cited

Toews, Aron A. 1990. Mennonite Martyrs: People Who Suffered for Their Faith 1920–1940. Translated by John B. Toews. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 6. Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary

Woelk, Heinrich, and Gerhard Woelk. 1982. A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. Translated by Victor Doerksen. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 4. Winnipeg: Kindred.

The car: answers

Dad spoke with Matilda, and has now provided the final answer on the Model A sedan first pictured here and the Model A coupe mentioned here. We probably should not be surprised that the answer is not what we expected.

In fact, Matilda and Esther shared use of the Model A coupe when they both taught school. I am told that Esther would drive Matilda to the school at which Matilda taught a mile west of Lushton (the left arrow in the plat map below), drop Matilda off, then drive on to the school where she (Esther) taught (upper right arrow). After school the route was reversed. The main point of all this is that Matilda and Esther shared the coupe.

So who used the sedan that was still on the farm at the time of the 1961 sale? It turns out that that vehicle was also a school car—used by the younger children. To be specific, Daniel drove and the younger children rode in the sedan back and forth to school in Lushton.

All this took place around 1946, the year Daniel turned sixteen (although farm kids did not have to wait until they turned sixteen to get a driver’s license). His passengers presumably included Darlene (fourteen), Carl (thirteen), Wayne (ten), Ruth (nine), and Alma (eight). Now that that minor mystery has been solved, we will quickly revisit Johann Buller, before returning to the U.S. farm economics series.

The car

An earlier post (here) spotted the vehicle pictured below in a collection of photographs taken during a 1961 sale at the farm south of Lushton.

The early report was that the car in question is a Model A, which Ford manufactured from late 1927 through early 1932, selling 4,858,644 Model A vehicles in that five-year period. By 1932 there were nine different body styles available; the one pictured above is a Tudor Sedan (either a standard of a deluxe model).

Family memory is able to place this car with one of two of Grandpa and Grandma’s children; I hope that a reader of this blog may be able to narrow it down further. But first a little story and a teaser for a future post.

About a month ago I was looking for accounts of the 1949 blizzard, perhaps the worst in Nebraska history. In my online scrounging I happened upon a story that the York News Times published a few years back that interviewed several York County people who had gone through that blizzard. One of the interviewees is well known to us all: Matilda Klippenstein. Buller Time will come back to that story in a future post; for now we focus on what I learned about Matilda that I had never known: she used to teach school.

Why is that important for this photo? I am told that both Matilda and Esther taught school in the late 1940s (news to me) and that Grandpa and Grandma bought two Model A cars to  to enable them to commute back and forth to their schools. Family memory is that those cars were a Model A coupe and a Model A two-door sedan. The latter is the car in the photo above. What type of coupe is less clear, since Ford produced at least six diferent models: Coupe, Deluxe Coupe, Special Coupe, Sport Coupe, Standard Coupe, and Business Coupe (pictured below).

What we know for certain is that the sedan pictured at the top of this post was driven by Matilda or Esther. What we do not know is which one drove the sedan and and which one the coupe. If any of Matilda’s children happens to read this post, perhaps you can ask your mom if she recalls who drove which car.

One final request: I know where Matilda taught in 1949 from the blizzard story, but I do not know where Esther taught and when. Any information about Esther’s teaching is welcome and will be shared on the blog.

Johann Buller 2

Although we do not have a definitive identification Johann Buller of Waldheim (see earlier post here), we do know a little more than we did previously. Heinrich and Gerhard Woelk continue their work by including the reminiscences of Helene Woelk, who was a member of the Krasnogorovka community mentioned earlier (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 28–35).

She recounts how in 1941 the members of the Mennonite fellowship in Krasnogorovka were exiled to the east, carted to southeast Kazakhstan, to a region just north of Kyrgyzstan and 175 miles west of the border with China. As Helene Woelk tells her terrible story, she mentions one particular Buller several times.

The steppe-land of Kazakhstan not far from Algabass.

She mentions, for example, how Anna Buller rescued her when Helene was paralyzed by fear and in danger of being left behind by the train—the train that held her son Heinz (eleven) and her daughter Helenchen (seven) (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 31). She also recounts that, upon arrival her family and “the family of Heinrich Harder with their daughter Anna (Njuta) Buller (from Halbstadt) remained in the Kazakh village of Algabass in the region of Akmolinsk” (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 32). Now we know that Anna Harder Buller (perhaps Johann’s wife?) was the daughter of Heinrich Harder.

Within months “our minister Heinrich Harder, the former leader of the M.B. Church of Halbstadt,” passed away. Helene Woelk adds, “He often came to see father [Helene’s aged father, who lived with Helene and the children]; they understood one another. But it grieved him to see his daughter, Njuta Buller, who was expecting a child” (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 33).

One morning, it was April 10, 1942, Njuta came to tell us that her father had died that night and that her mother didn’t want to close his eyes. I went along with her. What a sad picture! Onkel Harder lay on the floor and his wife kneeled next to him, murmuring disconnected words.… I kneeled beside her and gently tried to persuade her to close her husband’s eyes. The Lord was gracious and her mind cleared long enough for her to do it. Then my father came, washed and dressed the body, covering it with a white sheet. I reported the death to the village council. This gave rise to the new question for them: where to bury the body. The corpse of a Christian would desecrate a Muslim cemetery. Then the body of Onkel Harder was carried out into the steppe where a grave had been hurriedly dug. There were no coffins here. Following Muslim custom, a niche was carved out at the bottom of the grave and there the body was placed and covered with earth. Njuta insisted on accompanying the body to the burial. The men didn’t want to permit it, since according to their customs no woman should touch or accompany a dead person. Because I had to stay with the children, father and Njuta were the only ones (from among us) who went along. Father prayed at the graveside. Tante Harder was in shock and afterward never regained her full faculties. But the heavenly Father knows his children and all their weaknesses. He will find his own, they will hear His voice and arise from their graves. Even if that is a lonely grave on the wide steppes of Kazakhstan. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 33–34)

The story continues:

Then Njuta came to give birth. I will not recount the difficult circumstances—no hospital, no doctor, no medicine. In the same room in which his grandfather had passed away, little David was born—into poverty. Tante (Aunt) Harder lived for another nine months and then the Lord reached into these pitiful circumstances and released her poor, weak spirit. One morning Njuta found her mother dead, beyond hunger, cold and all manner of suffering. That was January 7, 1943.

The details are enticing: Anna/Njuta Harder Buller was the daughter of Heinrich Harder, minister of the M.B. church in Halbstadt, Molotschna colony. She was exiled to Kazakhstan with her parents, but no mention is made of her husband. There, in a village known as Algabass, within the span of a few months, she buried her father, gave birth to a son named David, and buried her mother. Striking is the fact that at no point does Helene Woelk mention Anna’s Buller husband. What had happened to him, and where was he?

More important, who was Anna’s husband? The fact that Johann is the only male Buller mentioned in these Krasnogorovka accounts makes it reasonable to think that Johann and Anna were married. This is, of course, nothing more than a plausible hypothesis.

Beyond that, was Anna’s husband a close relative of ours or simply part of the larger Buller family and thus a distant relative at best? The search continues.

***

A teaser: we now know a little more about the car pictured here. The identification is not complete, but we can now say that the car was used by one or another of Grandpa and Grandma’s children. Stay tuned!

Source Cited

Woelk, Heinrich, and Gerhard Woelk. 1982. A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. Translated by Victor Doerksen. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 4. Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary.

Johann Buller

Not patient enough for a larger book to finish downloading to my iPad several nights ago, I began reading one already loaded: Heinrich Woelk and Gerhard Woelk’s A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. There one reads of how Russian Mennonites attempted to cope with and even escape the Soviet persecution of the early Stalinist period.

Another kind of way-station for harassed preachers and other believers were some Russian settlements—smaller and larger towns—where a few German families could live undetected for a period of time. They looked for protection in dispersal. One such place of refuge was the town Krasnogovka [sic: Krasnogorovka] in the Donetz Basin. Several families had come there in the years 1931–33, among them the old missionary to Sumatra, Gerhard Nickel of Gnadenfeld, with his family. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 16–17)

Map by RGloucester.

The Donetz (Donets) Basin is more commonly known as the Donbass, the area highlighted in brown in the map to the right. The town Krasnogovka mentioned in the passage is a mistake for Krasnogorovka (modern Krasnohorivka). The red dot under the Do of Donbass marks the location of that town.

If all that is correct, then we can see that the town in question was 85–90 miles northeast of Molotschna colony, which is marked by a red dot under the word Zaporizhia.

Now that we know the geography behind this account, we are ready to read on. The Woelks list other Mennonites who moved to the town Krasnogorovka in order to avoid the Soviet persecution.

Also the minister Heinrich Harder, leader of the M.B. church in Halbstadt, who had worked for many years on the estate “Steinbach” and later as teacher at Sparrau, with his family. Another was the deacon Abram Dyck from Lichtfelde, Molotschna, with his family. And minister Gerhard Fleming of Rudnerweide, who had been teacher in Nickolaidorf for almost 20 years, then manager and preacher for some six years in the forestry camp Sherebkovo, and finally farmer in Rudnerweide, where he had led the small M.B. church—an affiliate of Alexandertal. While there, he lived with his children, the Heinrich Woelks. Others were the minister Johann Weier of Barvenkova and his family, the families of Johann Buller of Waldheim, Jakob Janzen of Lichtfelde, Jakob Dick of Steinfeld and others. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 17)

Did you catch that? One of the families that moved to Krasnogorovka was the Johann Bullers of Waldheim. This will require further exploration, but reading of a Buller family from Waldheim, where our ancestor David lived for so many years, leads one to wonder whether Johann and family were part of our own immediate group of Bullers.

The account does not end here, as the Woelks continue:

The old missionary G. Nickel was soon called to his eternal rest. The other families lived in contact with each other and met on Sundays, as long as Sunday was still legally considered to be a day of rest. Soon this was changed and those days were considered days of rest which could be divided by the number six (thus: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30). …

So the believers here found time to meet together, for they were eager for spiritual food. Six or seven families met on the free days. Usually it was Heinrich Harder who read from the Bible and said something about it, leading to a discussion of a religious theme. This was followed by singing together (but not too loudly, so as not to be heard outside) and by prayer so that they left strengthened by the experience. This went on for a few years. They became accustomed to the loneliness and were satisfied not to be persecuted and to be able to make ends meet. But in 1936 this too came to an end. First, on April 24 Jakob Dick was taken at night from his large and poor family and put in prison. On April 30, again a day of rest, two young brothers Janzen (20 and 21 years of age) and the minister Heinrich Harder were arrested. The third arrest, on May 18 (again a rest day), took Heinrich Woelk and Johann Buller. All were accused of anti-revolutionary propaganda according to Article 54, 10 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code. Soon after, Article 11 was also applied to them because they were considered as a group. It was clear that it was a matter of their religious meetings and conversations, but the investigating judges asserted that the religious meetings were only an excuse in order to advance the cause of Hitler, who had in the meantime come to power in Germany. …

After almost three months in prison three brethren were released. They were Heinrich Harder, Jakob Dick and Heinrich Woelk. … But the other three were judged and sentenced (though guiltless). The brothers Janzen never returned. Jakob Dick endured five years of imprisonment, then returned to his family in 1941. But when the war began, he was taken again and never returned. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 17–18)

Frustratingly, the account does not contain a key piece of information of importance to us: What happened to Johann Buller? As the table below makes clear, two reports are given for Jakob Dick but none for Johann Buller.

Jakob Dick	released after three months or released after five years, then rearrested
Janzen 1	never returned
Janzen 2	never returned
Heinrich Harder	released after three months
Heinrich Woelk	released after three months
Johann Buller	???

Presumably one of the two reports for Jakob Dick applies to Johann Buller, so one can reasonably conclude that Johann Buller was released at some point. Given the level of detail for the second Jakob Dick report (return in 1941, followed by rearrest after the war), it seems most likely that the other report applies to Johann Buller: he was released three months after his arrest.

A subsequent post will explore whether Johann Buller was a somewhat close or much more distant relative of ours. Whatever the answer to that question may be, it is interesting to discover that, while one group of Bullers was hard at work on their Depression-era farms, another family of Bullers was focused on a much more basic task: securing the freedom to live and worship consistent with their faith.

Source Cited

Woelk, Heinrich, and Gerhard Woelk. 1982. A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. Translated by Victor Doerksen. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 4. Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary.