BULLER TIME: Nebraska railroad land

The serendipity continues. In addition to providing an article on Mennonites using straw to cook and heat their homes, American Agriculturist proved to be an interesting resource for learning more about early settlers’ purchase of land from the railroads.

Aunts Maria and Sara write in the Buller Family Record that, upon their arrival in Nebraska, their “grandparents [Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller] and their six children stayed with the Goertzens for about a week. During this time grandfather bought an 80-acre farm about 1¼ mile west from where Henderson now is. Dad grew to manhood on this farm.” Left unsaid is the identity of the seller, but Peter D and Sarah almost certainly bought it from the railroad.

The U.S. government had given railroads millions of acres as an inducement to building tracks across the nation. The railroads were expected to sell the land to settlers, then use the proceeds of that land sale to fund construction of the network of tracks. Once the tracks were built and the settlers were in place, the costs of maintaining the railroad service would be covered by the passengers and freight the railroads could carry.

In 1874, when the first wave of Russian Mennonite immigration was taking off, the railroads were in a heated competition to win settlers to buy their lands. Not only would the sale provide revenue for the railroads, but the settlers on a railroad’s land grant would become ready customers who would rely on the railroad to transport their crops and livestock. The Union Pacific received grants along the Platte River valley; the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company received its grants to the north and across the southern part of the state (i.e., the Friend–Exeter–Fairmont–Grafton–Sutton–Hastings line). The railroad often received every other section along its track for a width of ten miles on each side of the tracks; this put the Peter D and Sarah farm on the edge of the B&MRR grant. (The orange shading in the map below is the B&MRR land in Nebraska.)

All that is background to what we find in copies of the 1874 American Agriculturist. The Burlington and Missouri River Railroad advertised repeatedly in this magazine, seeking to convince settlers to purchase land from them (instead of the Union Pacific). These advertisements are valuable to us for several reasons: first, they spell out the terms of sale, which helps us clarify how Peter D and Sarah were able to purchase 80 acres just after arriving in the U.S.; second, they include drawings of the areas for sale, which offer a contemporary view of 1870s central Nebraska.

We begin with a full ad, in order to see the terms, then follow with drawings from other ads in the series.

The writing is a little small, but the terms can be summarized as follows: (1) the land would be sold at a price between $3 and $10 an acre; (2) the purchaser could take ten years to pay off the balance due; (3) the only payments required for years 1–3 were for the interest of 6 percent on the purchase price; (4) in years 4–10, the purchaser paid both interest and principal; (5) payment of cash generally warranted a 20 percent reduction on the purchase price; and (6) if the purchaser had half of the land purchased under cultivation within the first two years, the purchaser could deduct 20 percent from the purchase price (this last provision obviously applied only to noncash purchasers).

So, for example, if Peter D and Sarah purchased 80 acres at $5 an acre, they would have owed $400 on the land. For years 1–3 they would have paid only $24 a year in interest; beginning with year 4 and continuing through year 10 they would have paid one-seventh of the principal ($57.14) plus the interest on the unpaid principal ($24 in year 4 but going down $3.43 each year after that). The terms were appealing for several reasons: (1) if one worked hard and had half the land under cultivation in two years, the price was reduced by 20 percent; (2) paying interest only the first three years allowed settlers to establish themselves by raising raise several crops before they had to worry about paying off the note. (For an 1877 B&MRR pamphlet spelling out terms in greater and somewhat different detail, see here and here.)

As noted above, the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad placed a number of similar ads in the 1874 American Agriculturist. Interestingly, by 1879, when our ancestors arrived in Nebraska, there was little advertising being done. Presumably the rush was beginning to abate--or perhaps there was no need to advertise, since everyone knew that the best means of getting land was to purchase if from the railroads.

In any event, the sketches that accompanied the 1874 ads are worth viewing all on their own, as a window back in time to places familiar to us.