Grandpa’s siblings 5

With this post, we are halfway through Peter P and Margaretha’s twelve children.

1. Peter, the first, died eight days after he was born in August 1891.
2. Margaretha followed in 1892; in time she raised four children with Klaas T. Friesen.
3. Katharina was born in 1895; she and Dietrich C. Quiring had eleven kids.
4. Benjamin, who was born in 1897, married Anna Regier and raised seven children with her.
5. Sara followed in 1899; never marrying, she pursued a nursing career.

This brings us to Klaas P Buller, child number six.

Klaas P Buller in 1926, the year of his wedding.

Klaas was born 3 March 1902, two and a half years after Sara. He was baptized at the age of twenty-one, on 20 May 1923. Three years later, on 21 March 1926, he married Anna Hiebner. Together they raised six or seven children. Interestingly, the Buller Family Record lists Mabel, Agnes, Katherine, Margaret, Arnold, and Raymond, but the Grandma database indicates that there was a seventh child between Katherine and Margaret. Neither the name nor the gender of the child is known.

The 1930 census lists Klaas as a farmer, but there is no record of where he farmed. However, with a little detective work, we can venture a reasonable guess. A census sheet (viewable here) of this era listed people roughly in the order in which the census taker encountered them. Therefore, noting that Klaas and Anna (no children at that time) are listed after two Ronne families and are followed by Mrs. Jacob F. Epp and children, Mrs. Cornelius Dahlke and children, then Peter P and Margaretha and the four children still living at home, Peter P Siebert, and D. D. Epp and family, one can develop an idea of where Klaas and Anna might have lived: between several Ronne families and Peter P’s farm, likely with an Epp and or a Dahlke nearby.

Looking closely at the map of Henderson Township below (for the full map, see here), we can see that there were four Ronne families on the east half of section 12 and that Peter P Buller owned the east half of section 11. In addition, Jacob F. Epp owned farmland on the same section 11 as Peter P, and Peter Siebert lived and farmed in section 12, across the road east from Peter P. All this suggests strongly that Klaas and Anna farmed somewhere nearby. They are not included on this 1924 map, of course, because they did not establish their household until 1926: But given what we already know about Peter P and Margaretha’s practice, one might reasonably suggest that the 120 acres owned by P. P. Buller in section 13 was given, sold, and/or rented to Klaas and Anna after they married. This would explain the progress of the census (Ronnes followed by Klaas followed by his parents) and cohere with the family tradition of Peter P and Margaretha setting up their children with farmland.

At some point Klaas and Anna moved to York, where he continued to reside until he passed away in Lincoln, Nebraska, on 8 May 1971, at the age of sixty-nine. Anna outlived him by twenty-three years. Klaas’s funeral was held at the First United Methodist Church in York, after which he was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery on the west side of York.

*****

Additional note on Katharina and Dietrich C. Quiring: Looking north of Peter P’s farm in section 11, one sees that the southeast quarter of section 2 was owned by D. C. Quiring. Certainly this must be Dietrich and Katharina, right? Further, glancing to the east at section 1, what is one to make of Katherine Quiring being named the owner of the west half of the southeast quarter of that section? Did Peter P and Margaretha purchase that 80-acre tract and deed it to their daughter Katharina alone, not to the couple together? Intriguing and revealing, if that is in fact the case.