In the News: Shucking Corn

Before we turn to the subject of this post, a personal note: I just completed the annual conference that consumes October and November every year, so I hope to return to a much more regular and frequent blogging schedule. We have more to discuss about the Peter D and Sarah farm, as well as numerous clips from newspapers from days gone by, not to mention the family history material that Carolyn Stucky shared some time ago.

For the moment, we take a step back to read a local news item from the 29 November 1944 issue of a York County newspaper known as The New Teller. The second item in the “Round-about Lushton” section is of interest to our family.*

Mr. and Mrs. Chris Buller attended a corn shucking bee Wednesday for their brother-in-law, Klaus Friesen. Mrs. Friesen passed away a short time ago.

Note first that only Grandpa and Grandma Buller are mentioned as attending the bee. Did some or all of the children also go? Perhaps a Buller Time reader recalls.

The occasion for the bee was somehow connected with the passing of Mrs. Klaus (better: Klaas) Friesen, who was none other than Grandpa’s older sister Margaretha (for details about her, see here). Margaretha had died on 10 November 1944 at the age of fifty-two. According to the report, the bee had taken place on the previous Wednesday. Since the 29 November issue was also published on a Wednesday, we can say with relative certainty that the bee took place on 22 November 1944, that is, the day before Thanksgiving that year.

This leads us to the event that prompted the news report in the first place: a corn shucking bee, also known as a corn husking bee (hence Cornhuskers). Combines today pick, shuck, and shell ears of corn all as part of a single process. Not so in the 1940s. There were mechanical corn pickers back then, but most farmers still picked corn ears by hand, shucked them in the field, and threw the husked ears into a wagon for transport from the field to the farmstead (for further details, see here and here; for a newsreel of the 1937 National Corn Husking Championship, see here). Once picked and shucked, the corn still needed to be run through a corn sheller to separate the kernels from the cob.

The entire process was labor intensive and presumably demanded all able-bodied family members to pitch in. With his wife recently deceased and only one daughter still living at home, Klaas Friesen faced a long and lonely haul getting his 1944 corn crop harvested. Fortunately, family and friends came alongside him to help. 

The details of the shucking bee are left unstated in the news report, but we are probably safe to conclude that Klaas’s friends, family, and neighbors gathered to help him harvest the year’s crop. Although husking bees sometimes were primarily social in nature (see here and here), accounts contemporary to this one generally present these gatherings as the community serving someone who needed help.

For example, the 19 November 1942 York Daily News Times reports:

A group of friends and neighbors held a “husking bee” at the home of F. P. Ehlers on Tuesday and husked out a field of corn. A hot dinner was furnished by the ladies. Mr. Ehlers has been unable to do any work for many weeks. (p. 4)

The 24 November 1938 Bradshaw Monitor reported a similar gathering: 

A big husking-bee was held at the Art Whittemore home 9 miles northwest of Bradshaw, last Friday. About a month ago Mr. Whittemore broke his arm cranking a car, which disabled him from corn husking, so his neighbors gave him a welcome lift. About 50 men with 21 wagons husked about 80 acres that day; but some of the men claim that the group of ladies who served the big dinner in excellent shape played a big part in the success of the event. (p. 1)

Whatever the exact nature and purpose of the corn shucking bee, it is clear that, the day before Thanksgiving, Klaas was given a reason to give thanks even in the face of his great loss. It is nice to know that, eighty years ago, Grandpa and Grandma were a part of that serving, supportive group.

* I wonder if the first Lushton item has a factual error (in addition to the spelling one). Grandpa Chris’s older sister Elizabeth married Dave Regier in 1925, and they moved onto the Epp-Buller farm when Peter P and Margaretha moved to California in August 1936 (see here). They had four sons, one of whom was named Fred, before their daughter Margaret was born in 1936. Because I know of no other Regier family living in the vicinity of Lushton with someone named Fred, I suspect that the newspaper notice may have meant to refer to Dave and Elizabeth Regier and their sons spending the day in Lincoln.

Peter D Buller: Death Notice

In early July of this year we examined a brief account of Peter D Buller’s death (here). There, in the 21 October 1897 issue of the Christlicher Bundesbote, we learned that Peter may have been ill for quite some time before he finally passed away on 28 September 1897. Since that time I have been consumed with questions about the circumstances surrounding Peter’s death, not to mention how the family’s ownership of the farm a mile west of Henderson may have been affected by his early demise (he was, after all, only fifty-two years old).

Even after poring over several hundred pages of the Aurora Sun (later called the Aurora News Register), a weekly eight-page paper that began publication in 1885, I have yet to discover any mention of the sale of Peter D and Sarah’s farm. However, last night I did discover a second reference to Peter’s death.

The Aurora Sun, like most rural papers of that day, devoted space in each issue to news from the small towns around it. Sometimes, though not often, the Aurora Sun included news from Henderson. Fortunately, the 16 October 1897 issue (p. 8) was one of those rare occasions when the paper included a Henderson column (shown on the right).

Obviously, our main interest is with the final entry (although see below for the source of this information, the Henderson Herald):

Died, Tuesday, Sept. 27 [sic], Peter Buller. He was buried Friday, Oct. 1, under the auspices of the Mennonite church. Mr. Buller had been sick for over a year.

The death notice from the July post contained many more details (and correctly gave his date of death as 28 September):

Buller—On 28 September, near Lushton, Nebraska, after a long illness, Brother Peter Buller, aged fifty-two years, eight months, and eighteen days. The deceased leaves a deeply bereaved widow and ten children to mourn the death of their father. The funeral took place on 1 October. Elder Peter Friesen delivered the funeral oration, on Job 16:22, to a large gathering in the home of the deceased, to which Elder Isaac Peters gave an introduction on Isa 57:2.

However, only the notice published in the Aurora Sun, taken from the Henderson Herald, tells us that Peter D had been sick for over a year before he finally passed away. What was his sickness? We do not (yet) know. Where was he living at the time of his death? Beyond the reference to living near Lushton, we cannot say. Did Peter D and Sarah still own the farm west of Henderson? Although it seems unlikely, we lack clear evidence one way or the other.

The search for additional information about Peter D’s last days, not to mention the disposition of his and Sarah’s farm, goes on. 

 

*****

The heading of the clipping above indicates that the source of the Henderson report was “the Herald.” Reports from other small towns generally were attributed to “our special correspondent,” someone in the town who compiled the local news for the paper to include. Intrigued by the reference to the Herald, I decided to investigate. It turns out that for a few years the Henderson Herald was published by a man named John W. Foster. The first mention of the paper is in the 13 March 1897 issue of the Aurora Sun:

J. W. Foster, of Henderson, is running a small weekly newspaper. It does not have a large amount of local news, but the quality is good. It is called the Henderson Herald. (p. 4)

Like many small papers of that era, the Henderson Herald lasted only a short time. The 30 July 1898 issue of the Aurora Sun reported:

J. W. Foster, the editor, announces the demise of the Henderson Herald this week. The town was too small for a newspaper. Mr. Foster would make a good local editor if he had the patronage sufficient to make it pay. (p. 4)

So, for approximately sixteen months, Henderson had a weekly newspaper. Fortunately for us, this short-lived newspaper reported an important detail about Peter D’s final year.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 6

Nearly a month ago, in the first post in this series (here), I noted that a secondary motto of the blog might be: There is always more to learn. This post begins with a corollary to that secondary motto: Sometimes when you learn more, you need to correct earlier errors. 

For example, a January 2017 post titled “Nebraska Railroad Land” (here) included the statement that Peter D and Sarah had “almost certainly” purchased their initial 80 acres (the north half of the northeast quarter of Farmers Valley section 12) from the railroad. As we recently learned, they actually purchased the land from Johan Sperling, who had purchased it from the original homesteader, Adolph Reuber (see here). The 2017 post has now been updated with a correction.

The greater lesson in all this is that, if I knew then all that I have since learned about the Homestead Act, I would not have made this mistake. Let me explain.

The line drawing to the right shows the layout of a standard township. Although a county’s boundaries and shape did not always permit it, the ideal township was 6 miles tall and 6 miles wide. Each square mile was then assigned a section number as shown: starting with section 1 in the upper right and snaking across and down and back and forth until one arrives at section 36 in the lower right.

How does this relate to the Homestead Act? In the area of Nebraska that concerns us, it is easy to know which sections were homesteaded and which were disposed of through other means.

According to Bureau of Land Management records (searchable database here), the following sections in Henderson Township of York County were homesteaded: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34. In Brown Township just to the north, the following sections were homesteaded: 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34. Peter D and Sarah’s farm was located in Farmers Valley Precinct of Hamilton County; sections homesteaded in that township were 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34. So also Beaver Precinct, the township to the north, where sections 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, and 34 were homesteaded.

Are you seeing a pattern here? At least in this part of Nebraska (and probably elsewhere in Nebraska and even other states, though I have not checked), only even-numbered sections of land were available for homesteading. Had I known this in 2017, I would also have known that Peter D and Sarah did not buy their 80 acres of section 12 of Farmers Valley from the railroad; section 12 had been homesteaded.

What about the sections not included in the lists above? First, the federal government deeded all the odd-numbered sections in this area to the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company. An extract from the tract book for Henderson Township shows how the land grant was recorded.

The “all” in the left column indicates that this line encompasses the entirety of section 15 of township 9, range 4 west, that is, the entire 640 acres. The following statement identifies the owner of this section. The land was “selected by B&MRRCo” on 8 December 1871 according to a legislative “act” of 2 July 1864. The Nebraska State Historical Society explains:

The Union Pacific Land Grant Act of July 1, 1862, as amended by the act of July 2, 1864, granted all odd-numbered sections in every township within 20 miles on each side of the proposed Union Pacific Railroad. In addition, the amended act of July 2, 1864, granted the odd-numbered sections in every township within 10 miles to the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company from the Missouri River south of the mouth of the Platte to some point not further west than the 100th meridian of west longitude where the Burlington road should connect with the Union Pacific. … In Nebraska, the Burlington received a total grant of 2,374,090 acres. (see here; for the full text of the 2 July 1864 act, see here)

To promote settlement, the federal government granted land not only to individuals willing to homestead but also to railroads who agreed to lay track that would enable travel and transport into and back from the newly settled areas. The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company (B&MRRCo in the tract book) was the railroad laying track across Nebraska to connect with the transcontinental Union Pacific (see further here). The B&MR was thus granted sections 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15, 17, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27, 29, 31, 33, and 35 in the townships discussed above. Of the 23,040 acres within each township, the B&MR held the deed to 11,520 acres, half of the total township. 

What, then, of sections 16 and 36? Careful readers will have noticed that those sections are missing from the lists of even-numbered sections. They were neither available for homesteading nor granted to the railroads. Sections 16 and 36 were designated school land. This was not land on which schools were to be built but rather land whose sale proceeds would fund public education in the township. I am unsure which legal entity collected, held, and managed the funds thus generated; perhaps it was a county or state department of education. Whatever the details might have been, sections 16 and 36 were set aside to support public schools within the township, thus further helping settlers lay the foundation for the lives they hoped to build in this new territory.  

One final note: I notice that the Chris and Malinda Buller farm south of Lushton was located in section 36 of Henderson Township. Based on what we now know, we can say that the farm on which Chris and Malinda raised their family was neither homesteaded nor purchased from the B&MR; rather, its first owner bought a portion of the township’s designated school land.

* For an interesting and instructive blog post about the U.S. Homestead Acts, see the Sutton Nebraska Museum blog here.

 

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 5

This post has no grand organizing theme or significant question to explore. Its only goal is to share an interesting (at least to me) fact discovered during the research for this series: Peter D was the only Buller who homesteaded land in Nebraska. Other states reported a number of Buller homesteaders. For example, South Dakota reported sixteen, North Dakota six, and Colorado four. However, Peter D was the only Buller to receive Nebraska farmland via the Homestead Act. 

Equally surprising is the fact that, although many Bullers settled in Kansas, not one received a homestead grant. One wonders why the Bullers of Nebraska and Kansas, compared to the Bullers of the Dakotas, had such a low level of participation in the homesteading program. 

Location may have played some role; that is, perhaps the more desirable farmland of Kansas and Nebraska had already been claimed before the Russian Mennonite emigration of the 1870s (recall that Peter D arrived in 1879), whereas the land of the Dakotas remained available for a decade or more after that. This hypothesis finds some support from the observation that all South Dakota Buller homestead claims were filed between 1882 and 1895, and the earliest North Dakota claim was in 1901.

This gives the impression that claims were made when land was available, which might imply, conversely, that a low number of claims indicates a lack of available land. Without detailed research of the homestead records, this explanation is nothing more than a hypothesis. The one thing we do know is that our ancestor Peter D was the only Buller who received a grant of land via the 1862 Homestead Act.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 4

The last two posts in this series have focused on Peter D and Sarah’s farm, specifically how in July 1879 they purchased the north half of the northeast quarter of section 12 in Farmers Valley Precinct of Hamilton County and then a year later, in August 1880, staked a homestead claim for the south half of the same quarter. This post will take a step back and view the Buller farm as a part of the entire 640-acre section of land.

The drawing below will help us to navigate the terrain. Every acre of section 12 was acquired via a homestead claim. The names listed below identify the first individuals who successfully homesteaded the various parcels; earlier claimants who gave up or lost their claims (e.g., Abraham Sperling, Abraham Martens, and Gerhard Dück for the parcel that Peter D eventually secured) are not listed. The two dates under each name indicate the date the claim was filed and the date that the claim was finally approved and the land became the property of the claimant. Below the drawing I offer several observations about what it reveals.

It is immediately clear that the division of the section was not a tidy process. That is, the section was not neatly divided into four quarter sections and then claimed by potential settlers. Note, for example, the parcels of first two claimants: William George and Adolph Reuber, both made on 27 August 1872. George claimed 160 acres that included the west half of the northwest quarter and the west half of the southwest quarter; his farm was long and narrow. Reuber, on the other hand, claimed only 80 acres: the north half of the northeast quarter. Why he did not claim a full 160 acres is unknown. 

Once these initial claims were made, subsequent claims had to carve out their holdings in the land that remained. The next claim, made on behalf of the children of Charles H. Munn (more on that below) several months later, on 16 October 1872, was also for 160 acres (the maximum amount available via the Homestead Act). Although the claim could have been long and narrow like George’s, the claimant opted for the more common square shape; however, the only space that would accommodate such a parcel was to the east of the George claim, with the Munn claim comprising the east half of the southwest quarter and the west half of the southeast quarter.

The following year, on 28 April 1873, Nelson S. Rolland made a claim for the 80 acres between the George and Rueber holding. He could have, I believe, also claimed the 80 acres below the Reuber parcel to create an L-shaped 160-acre farm, but for some reason he was content with his 80 acres. The 80 acres to the south of Reuber remained unclaimed until January 1878, when Abraham Sperling made the first claim on the parcel; as we noted earlier, it passed through several hands until Peter D made his claim on 9 August 1880. Six months later, on 23 February 1881, Abraham Dalke claimed the last remaining piece of land: the east half of the southeast quarter.

Not only was the division of the section a little messy; the time between the original claims and the final granting of the land could vary significantly. As noted in an earlier post, a claimant had to live on and improve the land for a minimum of five years. Reuber’s claim was granted only several weeks after the end of this five-year period, while George’s grant was finalized nearly six years after his claim. The claim made for the Munn children was filed after the Reuber and George claims, but it was granted much earlier, less than three years after it was filed. The Rolland claim was like the Reuber one, being granted less than a week after the five-year requirement had passed. Peter D’s claim, however, waited more than twelve years to be finalized, by far the longest period in the section. Finally, the Dalke claim was granted seven years after it had been filed.

Most of the claims fell within the a five- to seven-year range between filing and finalization. The two outliers, Peter D and the Munn children, require some explanation. Regarding Peter D, it is important to note that, although a settler had to inhabit and improve the land for five years before gaining ownership of the land, there was apparently no deadline for finalizing the claim after the five-year requirement had been met. That is, a settler could conceivably file the paperwork six, seven, ten, or even twelve years after the initial claim with no danger of having losing the land or the claim. Why would someone wait? Perhaps there was a property-tax benefit to delaying official ownership of the land, or maybe there simply was no rush to formalize the settler’s de facto possession of the land with a de jure statement of ownership. Whatever the reason for Peter D’s delay, we do know that the homesteaded part of his 160-acre farm was entirely under his control from the moment that he laid claim to it in 1880.

The Munn children present an entirely different situation. One might ask first how children were able to file a homestead claim, even if someone else was actually filing the claim on their behalf. The answer lies in legislation known as The Soldiers and Sailors Homestead Act of 1872 and its application to the Charles Munn children.

This law, which was passed 4 April 1872, extended the benefits of the 1862 Homestead Act to members of the Union armed forces and to their heirs. The act applied first to

every private soldier and officer who has served in the army of the United States during the recent rebellion for ninety days, or more, and who was honorably discharged, and has remained loyal to the government … and every seaman, marine, and officer who has served in the navy of the United States, or in the marine corps during the rebellion, for ninety days, and who was honorably discharged, and has remained loyal to the government. (all quotations taken from the original bill here)

However, if the Union soldier lost his life, whether during the Civil War or subsequent to it, his benefits passed on to his heirs. Thus the act stipulates in section 3:

in case of the death of any person who would be entitled to a homestead under the provisions of the first section of this act, his widow, if unmarried, or in case of her death or marriage, then his minor orphan children, shall be entitled to all the benefits enumerated in this act, subject to all the provisions as to settlement and improvements therein contained.

Specifically, the benefits passed first to the soldier’s widow if she was unmarried; if she had remarried or herself was deceased, the benefits passed on to the soldier’s minor children. A “guardian duly appointed and officially accredited at the Department of the Interior” was to manage the children’s homestead claim.

In addition to identifying who could receive the benefits of the 1862 Homestead Act, the 1872 legislation also specified that the soldier’s service time counted against the five-year homesteading requirement.

the time which the homestead settler shall have served in the army, navy, or marine corps aforesaid, shall be deducted from the time heretofore required to perfect title, or if discharged on account of wounds received, or disability incurred in the line of duty, then the term of enlistment shall be deducted from the time hereto required to perfect title, without reference to the length of time he may have served: Provided, however, That no patent shall issue to any homestead settler who has not resided upon, improved, and cultivated said homestead for a period of at least one year after he shall commence his improvements as aforesaid. … if such person died during his term of enlistment, the whole term of his enlistment shall be deducted from the time heretofore required to perfect the title.

To summarize, a homesteading Civil War soldier could deduct the time served from the five-year residency requirement; however, if the soldier was discharged due to wounds or disability incurred in the line of duty, then the original term of enlistment (not the actual time of service) was deducted from the five-year requirement. The same terms applied to any soldier who died while serving. Finally, the five-year residency requirement could not be reduced to less than one year; that was the minimum time that all beneficiaries of this legislation had to invest in the claim.

What relevance does this have for Peter D’s neighbors to the south? Charles Henry Munn was a private in the Union Army, a member of Company F of the 8th Wisconsin Volunteers (infantry). He enlisted on 9 September 1861 and died of typhoid fever at the age of twenty-two, on 27 May 1862 (see here for all details on Charles Munn). In addition to his wife, he left behind two sons, Lemuel and Charles Jr. At the time of their father’s death, Lemuel was a year and eleven months, and Charles Jr. was eighteen days old. Four years after the death of Charles Sr., his widow, Mary Green Munn, married James M. Bearse, himself a Civil War survivor (see here). Bearse thus became the legal guardian of the Mumm children and was authorized to file the homestead claim on their behalf, as recorded in the tract-book entry shown below.

I admit that we have wandered a little from Peter D and Sarah’s farm, but from time to time it is helpful to be reminded of the world in which they lived. When Peter D and Sarah and all the other members of the larger Johann Siebert family entered the U.S. in the middle of 1879, the Civil War was still a vivid memory for many who had gone through it a decade and a half earlier. Indeed, the neighbor children who lived to the south had lost their father during the war, and the children’s stepfather had served in and survived it.

Even locally, the world in which Peter D and Sarah and their children (seven by the end of 1879) lived in was far different from ours. Henderson had not yet been platted (that was still eight years off), York was only a decade old, and Aurora was even younger than that. Although the land that eventually became their Farmers Valley home was not all unbroken prairie sod, their life was was undoubtedly difficult, and each year posed new challenges. We will look more closely at one of the more challenging experiences that the family faced in a subsequent post.

In the News: Quarantine 2

Last week we noted that 1947 began with the Chris and Malinda Buller family under strict quarantine (see here). That post ended with a series of questions:

• What contagious disease plagued the family?
• How had the family contracted it?
• How long had they been quarantined?
• Were all family members affected equally?
• Who took care of the chores during this time? the family needs?

Thanks to Dad (Carl) and further newspaper research, we can answer most of those questions.

We begin with the disease itself: some of the members of the family had contracted scarlet fever (or scarlatina), a bacterial disease that causes, first, a fever and sore throat, followed by a pink-red rash that spreads over part or most of the body. The disease was most common among children, though even adults could contract it. The mortality rate during the 1930s was 15–20 percent, but beginning in the early 1940s both the frequency of epidemics and the mortality rate declined, due to the use of antibiotics to treat patients with the disease. Before then and throughout the 1940s the most common—and first—response was to impose a strict quarantine on both the infected and anyone who had come into contact with that person.

Instances of scarlet fever were highest during the winter and spring months, and outbreaks of scarlet fever were, compared to the recent past, relatively common. For example, we cannot imagine that 1947 was an outlier, for a year earlier, in January 1946, the York Daily News Times (31 January) reported that scarlet fever was on the rise in Nebraska (see the article to the right). A month later (20 February) the same paper noted that the spread of scarlet fever had slowed but that the number of measles cases had risen from 18 to 146 during a one-week period.

All this goes somewhat toward answering the second question: scarlet fever was in the air, so to speak, and even in 1947 it would probably have been impossible to say how the family had contracted the disease.

We do not know now, nearly eight decades later, exactly who had scarlet fever. Dad did not catch it and thinks that perhaps one of two of the younger children had it. As far as the health authorities were concerned, it did not matter if only one person was afflicted or every family member was: in either case the entire family had to be quarantined for an extended period of time.

Grandpa and Grandma’s family was not the only one quarantined at that time. According to the Lushton section of “About York County People” in the 16 January 1947 York Republican, 

The Chris Buller family and the Henry Janzen family are in quarantine for scarlet fever. The school will be closed all week.

One week later (16 January 1947) the same column in the same paper reported:

School opened Monday morning after a four days’ vacation. No new cases of scarlet fever have been reported.

As can be seen in the extract to the right (York Daily News Times, 17 January 1947), Lushton’s Evangelical United Brethren Church, which the Chris Buller family attended, suspended services in mid-January as well. Much like during our recent experience with COVID-19, social distancing was the go-to measure to stop the spread of the contagious disease.

Dad’s memory is that the family was quarantined for six weeks or so. This recollection is reasonable, or at least in the ballpark, since we read the following update in the 13 February 1946 York Republican:

The Henry Janzen family were released from a four weeks quarantine, the last of the week. Three of the children had scarlet fever.

The phrase “were released” is not without significance. It reflects the fact that in most cases quarantine was not chosen but rather imposed by local health authorities. Those quarantined were not released from it until those same authorities lifted the quarantine.

If the Chris Buller family was under quarantine for six weeks and was released from it around 23 January, we can estimate that their quarantine period began sometime during the second week of December, most certainly before Christmas.

Finally, as noted above, it is likely that only one or two members of the family actually contracted scarlet fever, so life on the farm continued much as it always did: corn was picked, animals were fed, water was carried, and so on. The only real difference was that there was no going to town to sell eggs or other farm produce or even to attend school. For six long weeks, all the members of the Chris Buller family had was the farm and each other. And now, to paraphrase a voice from the past, we know the rest of the story—or at least a few more details and background than we did before.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 3

The previous post in this series (here) concluded with two important points: 

the north half of the northeast quarter of section 12 in Farmers Valley Precinct, which Peter D purchased shortly after arriving in the United States, was homesteaded by someone else. Peter D came to own the south half of that quarter via the Homestead Act, but only after three other homestead claims were canceled between January 1878 and August 1880.

This post picks up the story there and looks in greater detail at who originally homesteaded the north half of the northeast quarter of Farmers Valley section 12 and how Peter D came to acquire it after settling in central Nebraska.

The tract book that we examined earlier contains the answer to our first question.

The first line records all the information for the north half of the northeast quarter of section 12. The name of the original homesteaders was Adolph Reuber, who later became the owner of a billiard hall in Aurora, Nebraska. According to the corresponding right-hand page in the tract book, Reuber filed his claim on 27 August 1872. He fulfilled all the requirements of the Homestead Act and thus received his final certificate on 12 September 1877. The 80-acre parcel was legally and officially his.

The National Archives summarizes well both the process of making a claim and the requirements that had to be met for the claim to be approved. 

The new law established a three-fold homestead acquisition process: file an application, improve the land, and file for deed of title. Any U.S. citizen, or intended citizen, who had never borne arms against the U.S. Government could file an application and lay claim to 160 acres of surveyed Government land. For the next 5 years, the General Land Office looked for a good faith effort by the homesteaders. This meant that the homestead was their primary residence and that they made improvements upon the land. After 5 years, the homesteader could file for his patent (or deed of title) by submitting proof of residency and the required improvements to a local land office. (National Archives 2021)

Reuber obviously met the residency requirement (he lived on the parcel) and had made improvements to the land (breaking sod on at least part of the acreage, one would imagine), since a few weeks after his five-year period was completed his claim was approved with certificate 6748.

Less than a year later, however, Reuber (or Ruber) sold his homestead and moved to town. According to the 25 July 1878 Republican Register, published in Aurora, Reuber and his wife sold the the 80 acres of the north half of the northeast quarter of section 12, township 9, range 5 west, to John (or Johann) Sperling of Hamilton County, Nebraska. The sale price for this improved farmland was $500.

In other words, less than a year after he gained title to the land, Adolph Reuber sold it for a tidy sum, roughly double what other parcels sold that week fetched their owners. I would venture to guess (although I have no evidence proving this) that Reuber never intended to pursue farming as a life-long profession. Rather, like many other homesteaders, he planned from the outset to earn his stake, so to speak, then cash out and take up some other line of work. As noted earlier, Reuber set up a billiard hall in Aurora, which presumably was a much easier way for him to earn a living.

Of course, this leaves us with the question of how the property finally came into Peter D’s possession. Once again, the Aurora-based Republican Register provides the answer (see the extract to the left). The 31 July 1879 issue reports that Johan Sperling and his wife sold the north half of the northeast quarter of Farmers Valley section 12 to Peter Buller for $900. In one year, Sperling had nearly doubled his investment. 

Curiously, the selling price of section 12 was again roughly double the other parcels sold at roughly the same time. Why? Maybe section 12 was superior to many other parcels in the county and thus merited a higher price whenever it was sold. Or perhaps the improvements that Reuber had made—including, I assume, some sort of house and perhaps a barn or other enclosure for animals—increased the value of the property far above unimproved land. We really do not know. All we can say with certainty is that Peter D paid $900 for the first 80 acres of his U.S. farm.

Where did Peter D, a formerly landless hick from Molotschna, get the $900 to purchase the family farm? It is possible that he was extended credit from one of the many local lenders eager to write loans for farmers establishing their livelihoods in this booming area. Or perhaps Johann Siebert, Peter D’s father-in-law, bankrolled the purchase through a personal loan. I hope someday we stumble upon a piece of evidence that points to the answer. For now we can be content in knowing that Peter D purchased his first 80 acres approximately a week after arriving in the Henderson area. That acreage almost certainly contained both a house and one or more buildings for livestock. In addition, it is highly likely that at least some of the prairie sod had been broken and that crops had been produced for several years. Life was no doubt hard, but for the first time in their lives Peter D and Sarah had a home and a farm to call their own.

* The letters w d, which appear before the selling price in the transaction report, stand for warranty deed. A warranty deed is the seller’s guarantee that he or she has legal title to the property and that there are no unstated liens, encumbrances, or claims against the property that will call into question the buyer’s full title to the land.

Work Cited

National Archives. 2021. “ The Homestead Act of 1862.” Available online here.

In the News: Quarantine

In the Chris and Malinda Buller household, the year 1947 seems to have begun under less-than-ideal circumstances. According to the 30 January issue of the York Republican, in the Lushton section of “About York County People,” the Bullers had been caught in the grip of some sort of contagion. All we are told is the following:

The Chris Buller family is now out of quarantine and the children are in school.

This brief statement raises more questions than it answers: 

• What contagious disease plagued the family?
• How had the family contracted it?
• How long had they been quarantined?
• Were all family members affected equally?
• Who took care of the chores during this time? the family needs?

By my calculations, in late January 1947 Matilda was eighteen, Esther seventeen, Daniel sixteen, Darlene fifteen, Carl fourteen, Wayne ten, Ruth nine, and Alma eight. Matilda and Esther both had graduated in 1946, so the children who returned to school were the six youngest.

Perhaps a member of the family would care to fill us in on the details of the 1947 quarantine? If so, I will add an update to this post.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 2

The first post in this series introduced the tool the General Land Office used to record land transfers from the government to private owners: tract books. This post will apply what we learned there to a parcel of particular interest to our family: Peter D and Sarah’s Hamilton County farm a mile west of the south end of Henderson. As mentioned in the previous post, Peter’s name appears on the same page we examined earlier. Peter’s name is the fifth listed in the extract below.

As noted earlier, all the homesteaders for a given section were listed together in a tract book, even if years separated their claims. Although the handwriting is difficult to make out in places, the top row clearly indicates that this grouping is for section 12 in township 9, range 5, which is Farmers Valley Precinct in Hamilton County. All the subsequent rows use hash marks (") to carry the heading down to the end.

After identifying the location of the land, the tract book lists the size of the acreage that the homesteader has claimed. Notice that everyone in the first group of six claimed 80 acres (480 acres total), as do the next three men (240 acres total). Below them are two more entries, each for 160 acres (320 acres total). In other words, this section of the book records claims for 1,040 acres. Since a section of land is only 640 acres, how can this be? The corresponding right-hand page in the tract book explains. (See the first post here for an explanation of the columns on this page.)

Peter D’s row (the fifth row, written in darker ink) is a good point of reference. The wide middle column reads: Final Certificate 402. This tells us that Peter fulfilled all the requirements for homesteading and that a certificate of ownership was issued to him on the date listed in the following column: 3 September 1892. This information helps us to decipher some of the other rows, presented below in a larger size.

Row 1, for example, reads: Final Ctf. No. 6748, which was issued (or so it is claimed) on 12 September 1877. In fact, land grant 6748 (see here) records the date as 24 June 1878. It appears that someone made an error when entering the information into the tract book.

Row 2, by contrast, makes no mention of a final certificate; rather, it states that the homesteader’s claim was “Canceled” on 13 January 1879. Rows 3 and 4 also record the cancellation of the claim. The reason for cancellation is not supplied, leaving readers to wonder whether the homesteader failed to meet the requirements or simply decided not to pursue the claim to the very end.

Whatever the explanation for the canceled claims, we now know why the tract book records for section 12 of Farmers Valley Precinct listed claims totaling 1,040 acres: some original claims were canceled, and others were then made when that land came back on the market, so to speak.

Now that we have solved that minor mystery, we are ready to look more closely at the homestead claims relevant to our family.

The figure above focuses on the first six entries on the left-hand page for section 12 in Farmers Valley. The first thing to notice is that the entries in rows 2–4 are crossed out; that is because these claims were canceled. That does not mean that we can ignore them, only that we know that these claims did not lead to land ownership.

These entries have their own pattern and system of abbreviation that takes a bit to figure out. Each one begins with the word “Home,” then follows with a precise but abbreviated description of the parcel. For example, the top row in the image above has an N with a superscripted 2 next to it, then NE with a superscripted 4 next to it, which means the north half of the northeast quarter (of section 12). If you look down to row 5, Peter D’s row, you will see an S with the superscripted 2 and an NE with a superscripted 4: the south half of the northeast quarter.

Why is this information important? If you recall, the Farmers Valley plat map in the previous post (here) showed that Peter D owned the entire northeast quarter of section 12. Now we know a little of the history of how he acquired that land. The north half of that quarter was homesteaded by someone else and later purchased by Peter D; the south half of that quarter was homestead by Peter D himself. We will come back to that “someone else” and how Peter came to possess the north half of the quarter in a subsequent post.

For now, this page has more secrets to reveal. If you look closely at the three crossed-out entries, you will see that the first one has S\2 NE\4, while the second and third have the same S+2 and NE+4 that we saw with Peter D’s entry. What does this mean? Peter D was the fourth person to make a claim for the south half of the northeast quarter of section 12.

The first person to claim this 80-acre parcel, Abraham Sperling (see the top image in this post), made his claim on 23 January 1878 and canceled it less than a year later, on 13 January 1879 (all information from the right-hand page of the tract book). Sperling was followed by Abraham Martens, who made a claim fifteen days after Sperling’s was canceled, on 28 January 1879; his claim was canceled later that year, on 11 September. Eleven days after that, on 22 September, Gerhard Dück (presumably Dyck) claimed the south half of the northeast quarter; his claim was canceled on 9 August 1880—the very same day that Peter D made his claim for the parcel. In other words, Peter was the fourth, not the first, to claim this land through a Homestead Act grant.

One additional (minor) observation about the filing fee. The top image in this post shows that Abraham Sperling, the first claimant of the parcel, paid a $10.00 filing fee; the three subsequent claimants each paid only $5.00. We cannot draw any firm conclusions from this small data set, but it appears that only the first filer of a claim paid the full $10.00 fee; if that claim was canceled, subsequent claims could be filed with a reduced fee of $5.00.

This seems a good place to conclude this post. To recap, thus far we have discovered that the north half of the northeast quarter of section 12 in Farmers Valley Precinct, which Peter D purchased shortly after arriving in the United States, was homesteaded by someone else. Peter D came to own the south half of that quarter via the Homestead Act, but only after three other homestead claims were canceled between January 1878 and August 1880. We will pick up the story at that point in the next post; we have plenty more to explore in the series about Peter D and Sarah’s farm.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 1

If Buller Time had a secondary motto, something tacked on after “An occasional blog for the family of Cornelius (Chris) Buller and Malinda Franz,” it would probably be: There is always more to learn.

For example, Aunts Maria and Sarah wrote in the Buller Family Record that, after landing in the U.S. and traveling by train to Nebraska in late June of 1879, Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller “and their six children stayed with the Goertzens for about a week. During this time grandfather [Peter D] bought an 80-acre farm about 1¼ mile west from where Henderson now is.” As we learned back in 2016, Peter D added a second 80 acres to his original purchase via the Homestead Act (see here). In the end, they owned the entire 160 acres of the northeast quarter of section 12 in the Farmers Valley Township of Hamilton County (one section below the upper right corner of the map to the right).

That has been the sum and substance of our knowledge, but there is, of course, always more to learn. So it is that we embark on a blog series to see what more we can learn about Peter D and Sarah’s farm. In the process, we will also learn about the Homestead Act in general and as it relates to our family history. We will also have occasion to learn about a devastating drought in the early 1890s that brought many Nebraska farm families to financial ruin—and wonder what effect it had on Peter D and Sarah and their family.

I cannot say that this will be a linear series moving logically and methodically from point A to point B. Rather, I expect that we will be collecting pieces of information from disparate sources that slowly will help us to assemble a clearer and fuller picture of our topic of interest: Peter D and Sarah’s first farm in their new life in the United States. With the background and goal of the series now set, we begin with the first bit of information from a previously unknown source: tract books.

Every governmental program creates its own demand for record-keeping. The U.S. federal government’s distribution of federally owned land was no exception. Beginning early in the nineteenth century, the General Land Office (predecessor of today’s Bureau of Land Management) carefully recorded each transfer of land from the public domain to some other party (Powell 2024). As Kimberly Powell explains,

Tract books are not indexed by name—instead, they are organized by state and then by the legal land description (numbered range, township, and section). … a typical bound volume holds the records of about twenty townships.… Each township (23,040 acres [i.e., 36 sections x 640 acres]) is documented over twelve pages, with three sections (640 acres per section) on each page.… Each land entry is recorded across two pages.

If you wish to read more about tract books in general, I recommend the Powell piece linked below. For our immediate purposes, actually looking at the pages of a tract book is the most effective way to learn about them (for a larger version of the photo below, see here; you can download that version and make it as large as you want on your computer or other device).

We will look at examples of the writing in a moment. For now we simply need to note that each entry extends across two pages and that the entries are grouped together. What do we need to learn from this? (1) A single line across the two pages contains all the information for a given person’s homestead claim. (2) All the pieces of a single section are grouped together, so we have in the two pages of that grouping all the homestead information for that section of land. What kind of information is supplied?

The left-hand pages first identify the tract by its location within the section, then its section number, township, and range. After that follow the “contents” (the size in acres and 100ths), the rate per acre in dollars and cents, the purchase money in dollars and cents, and the name of the “purchaser.”

Looking closely at the extract above, we see that the parcel is the northeast (NE) quarter of section 10, township 9 (Farmers Valley), range 5 west. The tract is for 160 acres, and the price is given as $2.50 an acre. However, the purchase price that James W. Hunnel paid was only $10.00. Comparison with other entries on the page reveals that the purchase price is generally $10.00 but sometimes only $5.00. Why did James Hunnel not pay $400 (160 acres x $2.50/acre)? Clearly, a book designed to record purchases has been adapted to record land grants. In all likelihood, the land was valued at $2.50 an acre, but the homesteader paid only a $10.00 filing fee.

The right-hand pages record additional information about the transaction. Once again we see that a book designed for land sales has been adapted to record homestead grants.

Right-hand pages begin with a column for the date of sale, followed by the “number of receipt and certificate of purchase.” The columns after that are titled “by whom patented” and “date of patent.” A land patent is the right or title to a particular area of land. Presumably the original book gave space in these columns to list the seller (by whom patented) and when the seller acquired the land (date of patent). The final two columns on right-hand pages are generally left blank

In the example above, the date of the sale is listed as “Aug 26/72,” that is, 26 August 1872. The number in the second column is 11504; this is, if I understand correctly, the application number, that is, the number assigned to the claim when it was first made. Instead of listing the name of the person who was selling the land (by whom patented), column 3 specifies the final disposition of the claim: the final certificate (Ctf), number 9273, was issued on 14 August 1879. From the information on this page we learn that the homesteader, James W. Hunnel, applied for his homestead grant on 26 August 1872 and received final title to the land roughly seven years later, on 14 August 1879. The Homestead Act required homesteaders to live on, farm, and improve the land for five years after an application was made, but clearly not all grants were finalized immediately after the five-year period.

The two pages of this particular tract book contain but a small part of the information that was recorded during the period of the Homestead Act. Each tract-book volume contains, on average, over two hundred two-page spreads like the one we see above, and Nebraska alone has 118 volumes of tract books. Thus the records for Nebraska’s homestead claims are spread across 23,000+ two-page spreads like the one we see above.

Now that we have a sense of what the pages of the tract books contain, we are ready to give attention to our own ancestor’s appearance within these records. In fact, if you look closely at the second image in this post, you may be able to spy an entry for Peter Buller. This is none other than Peter D Buller, and all the information relevant to his and Sarah’s original farm will be the subject of the following post.

Works Cited

Powell, Kimberly. 2024. “Tract Books: An Index to Public Domain Land. Learn Genealogy website. Available online here.

Bullers Registered for the Draft 7

The prior post in this series ended with the cases of the five Bullers who participated in the first (5 June 1917) registration of potential draftees all resolved: three of the men had been called up to serve, and two had been exempted. This leaves ten additional Bullers in York County who registered during one of the later registrations in 1918.

As we noted earlier (see here), the first registration was for men ages twenty-one to thirty-one. Several registrations followed. Exactly one year after the initial registration, on 5 June 1918, all males who had turned twenty-one since the first registration were required to register; two and a half months later, on 24 August 1918, anyone who had turned twenty-one during the short interim also had to register. Finally, the registration pool was expanded significantly to include all men ages eighteen to forty-five; a final registration to collect information on these men took place on 12 September 1918.

Nine of the ten remaining Bullers participated in this final registration. Only Benjamin P Buller, son of Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller, registered on an earlier date, on 24 August 1918. We see in a snippet from the 29 August 1918 York Republican (p. 1) that Benjamin was one of twenty-four registrants that day.

Before we explore what happened to Benjamin and to the other nine Buller registrants, it is important to recall that World War I was about to end: the Armistice that ended the conflict was signed at 11:00 a.m. on 11 November 1918, less than two months after the final registration. The fact that the war ended so soon after that last registration is significant for what we discover—and do not discover—about this group of ten Bullers.

Of this group of ten, only Benjamin P Buller (son of Peter P) was drafted. In fact, he was called up in the same group of 102 men as Henry B. Buller, who was part of the first registration (see “Called to Colors” quoted here). Benjamin and the other inductees reported to boot camp in California in late October but, given the end of the war two weeks later, never were shipped overseas or saw action. In fact, a later newspaper account states that the October 1918 contingent was “ready to serve but relieved from duty by signing of the armistice” (York Republican, 12 December 1918, p. 2).

Beyond Benjamin, we find only two other of these ten Buller registrants mentioned in contemporary newspaper accounts (York Republican, 10 October 1918, p. 5). Henry F. Buller (part of the second family discussed here) was assigned to class 4. We cannot say for certain, but the fact his wife and two child depended on him for support probably led to this classification.

Jacob P (J. P.) Buller was also assigned to class 4. J. P. was single and had no children, but you may recall that his draft registration card listed his employment as being “with [his] aged mother.” I assume that he made a similar comment on his questionnaire and that the local draft board took this to mean that his mother (Sarah Siebert Buller) was dependent on him for support. Although we do not have direct evidence that this was the case, it is a logical explanation of what we do know.

None of the other Bullers who registered on 12 September 1918 is mentioned. (George Buller, you may recall, was institutionalized in the Ingleside State Hospital near Hastings, Nebraska.) Presumably the war ended before their registrations and questionnaires were fully processed. 

In the end, the 12 December 1918 York Republican (p. 2) list of all the men of York County who served in the war includes the names of four Bullers: Andrew, Frank D., Benjamin P, and Henry B. In reality, only Frank D. may have seen action, since he was called up in May 1918. Presumably the other three never made it out of the sixteen-week-long boot camp before the war ended, leaving them to return home and resume their private lives.

In all, the 12 December 1918 newspaper account mentioned above lists 668 men from York County who actually served in World War I. This does not include the 102 who were called up but never served. The U.S. government estimates that the entire population of York County was 17,114 in 1917 (here), which means that nearly 4 percent of the entire population of York County served in the World War I armed forces. What more can we say about these numbers?

The male-female split in Nebraska was 51.9 to 48.1 percent in 1920 (for all data in this section, see here). Using this figure, we can estimate that there were 8,882 males in York County in 1917. We know further that 38 percent of the male population in York County was between the ages of twenty and forty-four, which includes the age range of the men being called up. Given that the first and second registrations included only men ages twenty-one to thirty-one (no one was called into service from the third registration, which had the broader age range), we might reasonably reduce this 38 percent by half (since the age range twenty to forty-four is more than twice the range twenty-one to thirty-one), to 19 percent. Based on these figures, we can estimate the likely population of draft-eligible men in York County to have been around 1,688 (i.e., 8,882 x .19).

Why is this number important? It shows us that 40 percent (668/1,688) of the draft-eligible men in York County left their homes and jobs to serve in the armed forces. That is a high percentage that certainly created labor shortages for those managing the county’s farms and businesses. Fortunately, most of the men called into service returned home: only sixteen casualties are listed for York County (2.4 percent of the number who served). Curiously, more died of disease than were killed in action (nine to seven).

One final note: in spite of the government’s provision for a religious exemption, some Mennonites were called to serve. Within the list of 668 York County soldiers I see, in addition to the two Bullers, one Epp, two Franzes, one Friesen, one Hiebert, one Penner, and four Peters. We cannot say that all these persons were members of a Mennonite church, nor do we know at this time how many Mennonite men actually registered, but we can reasonably conclude that the religious exemption was applied unevenly and thus sent some men off to war against their will and their religious commitments. 

In the News: Peter D as Witness

A post several days ago (here) mentioned that there is at least one certain newspaper reference to a Peter Buller from our family line. That reference, from the 18 February 1886 Republican Register out of Aurora, Nebraska, appears in the notice to the right. 

The notice was issued by the Land Office in Lincoln on 23 January 1886. It was one of several notices published in that issue of the paper (see the top of the following notice at the bottom of the extract), all of which began with the same legal language:

Notice is hereby given that the following named settler has filed notice of his intention to make final proof in support of his claim and that said proof will be made before the Judge and in his absence before the Clerk of the District Court of Aurora, the county seat, on March 8, 1886, viz: Abraham Dalke. H. A. No. 16798 for the e hf of se qr [i.e., east half of the southeast quarter] section 12. town 9. N range 5 west.

     He names the following witnesses to prove his continuous residence upon, and cultivation of, said land, viz:

The notice then lists four witnesses who attest that the person meets the requirements to make a valid homestead claim: Peter Buller, Johann Penner, Johann Friesen, and Bernhard Friesen.

How do we know this Peter Buller is from our family line? Several clues make it almost certain. First, all four witnesses are from Farmers Valley, which is the precinct in which Peter D established his own farm. The “other” Peter Buller from the earlier post lived in Beaver precinct. Second, all four witnesses lived in close proximity to Abraham Dalke: Peter Buller directly to the north, Johann Penner to the northeast, Johann Friesen to the northeast of him, and Bernhard Friesen directly to the south. In fact, Peter Buller and Johann Penner lived on the same section 12 on which Dalke staked his claim.

Given this evidence, and in light of the fact that Peter P was only sixteen at this time, there is little doubt that the witness listed for this homestead claim was none other than Peter D Buller. Peter D would himself file a homestead claim within a few years after serving as witness. Although we have already explored Peter D’s homestead claim (here), I have since discovered additional resources that will flesh out our understanding of the process involved in homesteading the land.

In the News: Peter Bullers

The fact that we have two Peter Bullers in our immediate family line sometimes creates complications, as it is not always clear whether someone is talking about Peter D (the father) or Peter P (the son). This problem becomes especially acute when we have little context to point us in one direction in the other.

Consider, for example, the extract from the 14 December 1895 Hamilton County Register to the right. This is a list of expenses that the Hamilton County commissioners approved for payment at a meeting three days earlier. Note that the name Peter Buller appears twice, once for payment of $8.00 for searching Russian thistles* and once for payment of $3.00 of labor related to the bridge fund. What are we to make of this?

Careful readers will notice, no doubt, that the names have one slight difference between them: the first one is simply Peter Buller, and the second one has a middle initial: Peter D Buller. One might reasonably deduce from this that the first reference is to twenty-six-year-old Peter P, while the second is to his father, Peter D. Although that would be a logical explanation of the information before us, it is not the only logical explanation we can offer.

It turns out that Peter D and Peter P were not the only Peter Bullers in the area. Another Peter Buller lived 2 miles west and 2 miles north of our ancestor Peter D. The two Peters were both born in Molotschna and only a year apart: our Peter in 1845 and the other in 1846. Like our forebear, this other Peter Buller also farmed and had a son named Peter. Clearly, this sort of name overlap demands that we take care not to attribute to our own Peter Bullers actions and events that probably involved the other Peter Bullers who lived nearby (or any other Peter Bullers we may encounter).

So, for example, when we read in the 14 August 1884 Republican Register (published out of Aurora) that Peter Buller purchased the east half of the southeast quarter of section 27 in the Beaver Township of Hamilton County from the CB&Q Railroad Company, we should not jump to the conclusion that our ancestor purchased a farm in addition to the one we already know about (the northeast quarter of section 12 in the Farmers Valley Township). Rather, this is almost certainly the other Peter Buller.

So, was the Peter Buller who searched for Russian thistles our own Peter P or the other Peter Buller who lived several miles away? We really cannot say. However, there is another interesting newspaper notice from 1886 that almost certainly relates to one of our ancestors. That will be the subject of a subsequent post.

* The Nebraska legislature declared the Russian thistle (aka tumbleweed) a “public nuisance” in early 1895 and required county officials to inspect farms and roadways for infestations of Russian thistles. See further here.