Dutch anthropologist Arlette Kouwenhoven researched the de Veer/Fehr family line extensively for her remarkable book, The Fehrs: Four Centuries of Mennonite Migration.
Unless otherwise noted, the information below comes from Kouwenhoven’s extensive work digging into original archival sources:
Benjamin was born in 1733 in Klein Mausdorf (now Myszewko), about 40 km from Danzig (Gdańsk). That year, Danzig was under siege by the Russian army, so his family was likely staying in the countryside. By the next year, they had returned to a suburb of Danzig. Both of Benjamin’s parents died before he was ten.
In 1749, new government restrictions severely limited Mennonite life. They were barred from markets and trades, restricted in where they could operate businesses, and required to buy materials from non-Mennonites. Fees for exemption from military service also rose sharply. Some locals even mocked Mennonites publicly. For many—including Benjamin—moving to the countryside became the only real option.
Benjamin married Anna Bergen in October 1761. They had ten children, though two daughters named Maria died young.
Benjamin became the first in his family line to write his last name in the Germanized form. His sister Liescke never changed the spelling of her last name.
He worked as a schoolteacher in Rückenau and is also listed in records as a clockmaker—reflecting the common Mennonite pattern of combining farming or teaching with skilled trades.
In 1790, Benjamin and Anna left Prussia with their three youngest children to settle in New Russia (modern-day Ukraine), joining the early Chortitza Colony at Neuendorf. Their eldest son Isaak followed five years later.
One of their sons, Benjamin, died before the 1795 census.
By 1802, Benjamin (67) and Anna (61) were living with their son Cornelius (18). They owned 176 acres of land, livestock, a wagon, and a spinning wheel—and even shared a plow with a neighbour.
At age 68, Benjamin moved again to help establish a new settlement in Nieder-Chortitza, handing off his Neuendorf farm to his son Jacob. A few years later, he passed the new farm to his youngest son, Cornelius, and returned to Neuendorf.
The family prospered. By 1808, Jacob and his wife Maria owned substantial livestock, equipment, and stores of grain and hay. Like many Mennonites of the time, they combined farming with trades—Jacob as a blacksmith, his brother Isaak as a weaver.
In 1814, the family moved once more to Neu-Osterwick, likely encouraged by Russian incentives to develop new farmland. Benjamin and Anna went with them.
Anna died in 1816 at age 80. Benjamin died in 1822 at age 89.