Speaking of that refrigerator

Following up on the previous post, the photograph below is reportedly of a 1947 International Harvester refrigerator.

If it is indeed a 1947 model, then the photographs below are likely the same year and model (8HB-4), given the identical design, even down to the handle. So, the obvious question: Does this look familiar to any of the Buller kids who grew up on the Lushton farm?

Speaking of electricity

The original ice-harvesting post (here) ended with a bonus question: What was the first electricity-driven household item that the family owned?

First a bit of background: we were were told earlier that electricity came to the Lushton farm in 1946 (see here). Assuming that is correct (but see below), then we can specify further that it was in the spring of that year, probably in April, that the farm received electric power. The first electric appliance was, in fact, a refrigerator, likely purchased in May.

I am told that the refrigerator came from the International Harvester store in York. I was unaware that International Harvester used to sell appliances, but according to several sources they did so between 1947 (not 1946!) and 1955. For example, the International Harvester Wikipedia article, states:

Although best known for farm equipment, IH produced home appliances for farmers and nonfarmers alike. This included refrigeration equipment such as refrigerators, air conditioners, and freezers. IH had a refrigeration division of its own, as did other vehicle manufacturers of the time.… The IH appliance division had originally been developed to manufacture commercial-grade items to farmers, most of whom had just received electricity by way of the many electrification projects in the U.S. before and after World War II. Among the offerings were milk coolers and walk-in freezers for produce and meat. Later on, IH courted the farmer’s wife with kitchen refrigerators available in the latest designer styles. The IH spokeswoman for these products was Irma Harding, a factory trademark. These products were introduced in 1947 and sold for less than 10 years. The refrigeration division was sold to Whirlpool Corporation in 1955. Since the time of production was short, IH appliances are rare today.

So, did electricity come to the farm later than originally thought (1947 at the earliest), or did Grandpa and Grandma buy a refrigerator from some other manufacturer? Or did I get the story of the Bullers’ first refrigerator wrong? Further, does the refrigerator from the late 1940s pictured here resemble the family’s first refrigerator?

Other electric appliances soon followed, including a stove for the kitchen and a Forney welder and a (wheel?) grinder for Grandpa’s shop. Sometime later (in the fall of the first or second year after the farm was electrified) Grandpa sold 200 bushels of corn at $2.50 a bushel* and used the money to buy an “electric furnace” for the house. The furnace, which was set in the basement, burned wood or cobs and had an electric fan to push the warm air into the house.

I am certain other electrical appliances were added over the next few years, and I am also told that a kerosene-burning hot water heater was added sometime much later. This enabled family members to take showers of a sort in the basement, albeit not in a dedicated shower stall but merely on the floor itself. There is much more to learn and to document about the Buller farm and house, so please keep those stories coming!


* If the memory of the corn price is correct, this supports the idea that electricity came to the farm in 1947. According to the Trading Economics website (here), corn did not reach $2.50 at all in 1946, but it did hover at or above that price for the last half of 1947 and the first half of 1948. The price did not reach $2.50 a bushel again until 1973. If the $2.50 price is remembered accurately, then we can probably date at least the furnace purchase to late 1947—and likely the refrigerator to earlier that year.

U.S. farm economics 3

An earlier post (here) surveyed in broad terms some key events of the first four decades of the twentieth century, with particular attention to how world events shaped and influenced the lives of Nebraska’s farmers. This post will focus more narrowly on what was happening with our family members during these crucial times and pivotal events.

Before the War

As is well known, Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller arrived in the U.S. in 1879 and promptly bought 80 acres a mile west of Henderson. We assume this was virgin prairie purchased from the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad Company (see here and here).

Roughly eight years later Peter D and Sarah filed a claim to homestead an additional 80 acres, which became fully theirs in 1893. Unfortunately, Peter D died in 1897, leaving his 160 acres (see the 1888 map to the right) equally (or so we think) to his widow Sarah and his ten living children.

Of greater interest for this series is Peter D’s son Peter P and his wife Margaretha Epp Buller. They were married in 1890 and moved in with her parents on a farm 4 miles east of Henderson (as shown in the 1911 map immediately below).

The bottom arrow points to the 160 acres of the original Epp farm. The top arrow points to another 80-acre tract to the north. The fact that the two parcels of land are labeled separately (unlike the Peter Epp land in section 10 to the west) implies that they were acquired at different times. In all likelihood Peter P and Margaretha received the 160 acres to the south from her parents but bought the north 80 acres on their own.

The War Years

This is not all the land that Peter P and Margaretha owned and farmed at this time. In fact, a 1916 map of  Farmers Valley Township in Hamilton County shows that Peter P now owned the entire quarter that had previously belonged to his father Peter D (compare the map to the right with the first one in this post; Peter D is the owner in the top one, Peter P in the bottom one).

Thus, by the midway point of the War, when wheat and corn prices were at their peak (see the price chart here), Peter P owned and presumably farmed 400 acres: the 160 of the Peter D Buller farm west of Henderson, the 160 acres of the original Epp farm, and the 80 acres to the north of the Epp farm that Peter P and Margaretha had purchased. In other words, Peter P did not need to purchase land to take advantage of the startling rise in crop prices; he already owned more land than most farmers of his day, so he was well positioned to enjoy the bounty of the 1916–1920 farm economy.

Postwar Collapse

As noted in the previous post, the high prices fueled by World War I fell sharply after 1920, and many farmers suffered foreclosure or were forced to abandon farming when they were unable to earn enough to make payments on the loans for their land purchases. Peter P was one of those who bought land after the boom years of World War I, but, unlike many, he apparently bought from a position of strength and stability. He does not seem to have been at the same risk as so many of that day.

How can we say this? The maps of the day make it clear. First, a 1923 map of Farmers Valley Township (not shown here) reveals that the original Peter D Buller farm west of Henderson was under different ownership at that time. Peter P obviously sold it sometime between 1916 and 1923. Knowing what we know now about the postwar land boom, we can assume that Peter P found a motivated buyer.

Second, the 1924 map below makes it clear what Peter P did with the proceeds of his sale: he bought more land. Notice the following. Arrow 1 points to the original Epp-Buller farm, which now encompasses a full half-section, 320 acres; Peter P purchased the remaining 80 acres sometime after 1911 and before 1924 (I would guess that it was in the early 1920s). Arrows 2 and 3 point to other of Peter P’s land holdings: a 40-acre field (2) and an 80-acre parcel (3) in section 13 to the southeast. Whereas earlier Peter P and Margaretha farmed 400 acres (a good portion of it 5 miles away), now they farmed at least 440 acres, all within essentially a mile radius from their house. But that is not all.

Arrow 4 is also important to notice, since it presumably reflects more of Peter P’s land purchases. We see on the 1911 map above (second map in the post) that the southeast quarter of section 2 was owned by Abraham Thieszen; now, in 1924, the quarter is owned by D. C. Quiring. Why should this matter to us? The answer is found in the Buller Family Record. Peter P and Margaretha’s second daughter Katharina married Dietrich C. Quiring in 1915. Given what we know about Peter P and Margaretha’s practices, one might safely assume that they bought the newly married couple at least 40 acres of that quarter, just as they did for Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda in 1928. If so, then this is another land purchase that we can attribute to Peter P, although this one probably took place during the middle of the Great War. But that is not all.

The 1924 map of Hays Township of York County (to the east of Henderson Township) adds two final pieces to the puzzle. The bottom arrow is pointing to an 80-acre plot owned by Klaas and Margaretha Friesen. Margaretha was, of course, Peter P and Margaretha’s firstborn daughter. The fact that this couple owned 80 acres of section 6 is no doubt due to her parents buying 40 acres for them and the couple buying 40 acres of their own, just as happened with Grandpa and Grandma in 1928.

Note further that Peter P owns the 80 acres to the north and another 40 acres across the road to the east—still more land that Peter P purchased in the period surrounding World War I (in this case probably a year or two before the outbreak of war).

It is time to take stock. In 1911, three years before the Great War began, Peter P owned and farmed 400 acres. Thirteen years later, in 1924, during the collapse of the farming economy, he owned 560 acres (320 on the home place + 40 and 80 to the southeast + 80 and 40 to the northeast), and he had likely bought an additional 80 acres (40 for Katharina, 40 for Margaretha) and perhaps even financed an additional 80 acres that his daughters and their husbands purchased from him. (I assume that the same practice was followed with Benjamin, who married in 1924, and the other children who married after that, but I do not have documentation of that.)

To sum up the account thus far, it seems reasonable to draw two conclusions. First, Peter P owned a larger than average amount of farmland before World War I even began, so he was able to enjoy to the fullest the benefits of the high crop prices associated with the war. Second, Peter P was able to use his wartime profits to expand his land holdings during the postwar collapse. While others were overextended with crushing debt, Peter’s financial situation was apparently stable and secure, which allowed him to take advantage of the soft real-estate market and add to his own land holdings as well as set up his oldest children with farms of their own. While others were going bankrupt or at least limiting their risk, Peter P and Margaretha were able to expand their operations far more than one would have expected in a depressed economy.

This is not the end of the story. We still need to contextualize Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda, who started their farm and their family during a related but somewhat different situation. That story will be told in the next post in this series.

Ice harvesting 2

An earlier post described the early twentieth-century harvest, storage, and use of blocks of river and lake ice for refrigeration (here). The post ended with a series of questions about the Buller family’s practices with respect to ice harvesting. Thanks to Dad (Carl) and Daniel (I hope I am not missing anyone), we have answers to some of the questions.

1. Was the ice cut with a hand saw or with a horse-drawn saw? Did Grandpa have his own ice saw like the one pictured here? something else?

Grandpa had a saw like the one shown. This was not the same as a tree saw, since the teeth on an ice saw were set farther apart than a wood saw.

2. Did the family use tongs like the pair shown in the original post? something else?

In addition to the saw, Grandpa also had a pair of ice tongs that were used to grab the blocks of ice for easier moving. I am told that hay hooks (probably like that pictured to the right) were used to grab the ice blocks.

3. Where did the family store its harvested ice: in an above-ground icehouse? in a pit or silo? something else?

The ice pit was located north of the house (how far north I am not sure). If I understand correctly, the pit was about 8 feet deep and large enough to be covered by a roof (imagine a roof-shaped cover) roughly 12 feet square. Ground temperature at that depth in Nebraska is around 55 degrees, so straw was placed on top as insulation.

4. How long did the ice harvested in the winter last during the following spring and summer?

Memories on this are not absolutely certain, but it seems that the best estimate is that the ice lasted until sometime in July. I would guess that the family purchased ice from one of the commercial ice houses from then until they could next harvest ice, but I do not know that for certain.

5. Did the family have an icebox like that pictured in the first post? something else? Where in the house was the icebox kept? What food items were kept in the icebox?

The Buller family had an icebox very much like the one pictured in the earlier post. The ice blocks were housed in a bottom compartment, the food above. The primary food item kept in the icebox was milk, although fruits and vegetables were also stored depending on the season.

Grandpa and Grandma had several iceboxes in their Friend house that many of us remember. They were used as storage chests at that time. When the iceboxes were sold at auction, each one brought $40–50, presumably due to their antique value.

The earlier post ended with a bonus question on electricity coming to the farm, but the information gathered in response to that query deserves its own separate post.

U.S. farm economics 2

As we have seen a number of times, our family history has always been a part of a larger story, a broader historical context. Presumably our earliest Mennonite ancestors moved to the Vistula River area of Poland not on a whim but to escape or avoid religious persecution. Later our family relocated farther east, to Volhynia and then to Molotschna, for political and economic reasons, to avoid any possibility of military service and (mostly) to secure the farm land necessary for economic self-sufficiency. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century our family once again reacted to both local and world events: a lack of access to farm land and the threat of military service and Russification in their Molotschna home. In response, our ancestors joined the throngs of immigrants heading to the North American continent, there to build a new life in a new context.

Even after our family became tucked away in their new little corner of the world in the Henderson–Lushton area, they did not suddenly become immune from the influences and effects of world events. That is why, in addition to discovering all that we can about our family story in the early twentieth century (when Peter P was well established and Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda were just starting out), we also need to learn about the larger historical and economic context in which they lived.

For farmers like our forebears, this entails exploring both history and farm economics, which will be the focus of this series of posts. We will begin with a brief historical overview of the times that will provide the context into which we can then locate Peter P and Chris. The chart below (from Filley and Hauke 1933, 1) points us in the right direction by showing how world events affected Nebraska farmers in the first three decades of twentieth century.

1. A World at War

Although World War I (1914–1918) never touched our shores, it had a profound effect on U.S. life, even on the lives of noncombatants such as our Mennonite ancestors. Dorothy Weyer Creigh writes:

World War I erupted; the world needed food—food which Nebraska farms could produce. Prices spiraled; wheat, which was eighty cents a bushel in 1910, was a dollar sixty in 1916, and by 1918, almost two dollars. Corn leapt from thirty-six cents in 1910 to more than a dollar and a quarter in 1918. The Council of Defense … kept crying, “Wheat Will Win the War!” The farmers saw their duty. They plowed up their pastures, and planted them to wheat; they stretched out into the southwestern parts of the state.… Almost three million acres of land were added to production during the war years, almost forty percent of it in the wheat-lands of the west. (Creigh 1977, 184)

The chart above shows the spike in prices that Creigh references and demonstrates fairly clearly that war was good for farm prices. Why? World War I disrupted European food production significantly, which created a higher demand for other sources of food, that is, food produced in the U.S. Further, the millions of men now waging war were not producing food or any other economic goods, which increased the demand placed on those who were. It is simple economics that a reduction in supplies and an increase in demand inevitably leads to an increase in the price of the commodity, and this is precisely what we see in the World War I period.

2. The Postwar Collapse

The end of World War I in 1918 did not lead to an immediate drop in crop prices, but the writing was on the wall (or at least it should have been). With the end of hostilities, Europe once again began to produce grain, and by 1920 overall world production of wheat was up (Filley and Hauke 1933, 14). In addition, the 1917 U.S. price stabilization program, which set a minimum price on wheat, ended in the spring of 1920, which led to wheat once again being subject to the law of supply and demand. Within a year the prices of wheat and corn had fallen to half their 1920 levels; by 1921 corn was selling for the same price as it had in 1905.

Unfortunately, many farmers did not believe that the prosperity of the war years would end. Creigh explains:

When the war ended and prices continued to soar [through 1920], farmers assumed that a new era of farming had arrived; they bought whatever land they could find, at whatever price, mortgaging what they already had. From 1910 to 1920, mortgage debt on Nebraska farms increased one hundred seventy percent. And then the bottom dropped out; from 1921 to 1923, one-fourth of the farmers failed. Although for townspeople, the 1920s were a period of prosperity, for most Nebraska farmers the decade was one of struggle to pay off debt, high-interest loans for high-priced land with low-priced wheat and corn. Although from 1923 to 1926 there was a brief period of recovery [see the spike at 1925 in the chart above], prices collapsed again. Six hundred fifty Nebraska banks, most of them country banks, closed their doors during the 1920s, too far extended on credit to farmers. (Creigh 1977, 185)

The decade after the War, which began with a boom in land sales, ended for many as a financial bust that forced them to leave farming for good.

3. Great Depression

The U.S. farm economy had suffered hard times for nearly a decade before the rest of the population followed suit. The crash of the New York Stock Exchange in October 1929 signaled the start of the Great Depression, which lasted through 1941. The Great Depression was not limited to the U.S. but was a worldwide crisis that led to a decrease in manufacturing, an increase in unemployment, and an increase in bank failure, to name just a few.

All these factors contributed to the worsening of an already-difficult situation for farmers. Those who were at the mercy of the banks were less likely to be shown grace, given the pressures of the financial markets across the nation and around the world. Even worse, the economic downturn prompted a significant decrease in demand (people without money are unable to buy much), which inevitably led to further erosion of crop and commodity prices.

4. Drought and Dust

The final blow was weather-related: a period of drought and dust and wind. According to Creigh,

The farmers’ financial condition was precarious to begin with. When the unrelenting heat and dryness and wind seared the crops in the field, there was no produce to sell, no feed for livestock, mighty little food for human consumption. As the winds blew day after day, eventually the topsoil went with them, the soil that was the lifeblood, the means of existence, for Nebraskans. At that moment, then, and for most of the decade of the 1930s, Nebraska became truly the Great American Desert.  (Creigh 1977, 185–86)

What is worse than continued depressed crop prices (see the chart above)? Having the drought, heat, and wind combine to devastate yields, so that farmers had few crops to sell even at the low prices of the 1930s.

The period covered during this short survey, from roughly 1915 through the 1930s, was a crucial time in our family’s history. The next post will locate our family, especially in the persons of Peter P and his son Chris, within this historical framework. The goal of all this is to understand our family story better by appreciating the challenges that our ancestors faced in the first four decades of the twentieth century.

Sources Cited

Creigh, Dorothy Weyer. 1977. Nebraska: A Bicentennial History. The States and the Nation Series. New York: Norton; Nashville: American Association for State and Local History.

Filley, H. C., and Arthur M. Hauke. 1933. Local Prices of Farm Products in Nebraska, 1895–1932. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 284. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.

Questions about the Lushton farm

Research for several more “substantive” posts continues, but already several questions about our family history have come to mind. I invite anyone who can provide information to use the email address at the top right of the page (or the phone) to share it with the rest of us.

The central topic of interest is the farm economy through which our family lived in the 1920s and 1930 (and maybe beyond). For U.S. agricuture as a whole, the first four decades of the twentieth century were a remarkable time marked by both highs and lows, feast and famine, bounty and bare cupboards. We can document those trends in a variety of ways, but they really do not interest all that much unless we can particularize them to our own family.

In order to flesh out the Buller family history from before World War I through, I hope, the end of the Great Depression, we need collectively to remember as much as we can about the Lushton farm on which Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda raised their eight kids. Specifically, the questions that I would like answered to some degree are the following.

1. What crops do you recall being raised on the Lushton farm:

• corn?
• wheat?
• oats?
• barley?
• alfalfa/hay?
• rye?
• grain sorghum/milo?
• other (maybe potatoes)? 

2. We know that Grandpa and Grandma owned 80 acres and rented 80 acres from Grandpa’s brother and sister. Roughly how many acres were taken up by the house, barn, and other buildings? To ask the question differently, how many acres were available for agricultural purposes?

3. Of the remaining acres, how much acreage was devoted to:

• crop land?
• pasture?
• other?

4. Of the crop land, approximately how much was devoted to each of the crops raised?

5. What large livestock did the Buller farm typically raise:

• dairy cattle?
• beef cattle?
• hogs?
• horses?
• mules?
• sheep?

6. Not including dogs and cats, what small animals were raised:

• chickens?
• rabbits?
• turkeys?

It may well be that the Lushton farm did not have a typical distribution of crops and livestock, that the agricultural profile of the farm varied from decade to decade or even year to year. If so, that will in and of itself be an interesting discovery and helpful perspective.

Once we have a sense of the answers to these general questions, additional ones will focus in on as many specific topics as possible (e.g., farm products consumed versus those that were sold). Through it all, we should be able to fill in a few more details about our shared family history.

Nebraska history for 1¢

A little while back I purchased a book online for 1¢ (+ $3.99 shipping): Dorothy Weyer Creigh’s Nebraska: A Bicentennial History (1977). There being no time or brainpower to write a thought-provoking post this evening, I thought I would share several paragraphs from the book instead. In chapter 13, “The Immigrants,” Creigh writes:

The Germans from Russia, generally called “Rooshans” by the scornful native whites of the Plains, spoke no Russian, considered themselves German, and from a long tradition of nonassimilation in a strange country, kept to themselves after they arrived in Nebraska. …

Many of them, particularly the Mennonites who came with Peter Jansen into Jefferson County, bought farmland and farmed in the American style—that is, living on the farms they tilled, rather than going out from the village each day. In their luggage and pockets they brought surreptitiously from Russia the Turkey-red wheat seed, a winter-growing grain, which was to revolutionize wheat farming in the whole Great Plains area. They established Mennonite villages to provide services: implement shops, blacksmithies, general stores, but no lawyers—for Mennonites settle their own differences and to have lawyers implies lack of trust—and churches. For many years some Mennonites in Nebraska wore drab clothing, the women wearing black bonnets, plain, long black dresses. The Jansen community, established in 1874, is dissipated now, as are many other Mennonite villages which thrived for perhaps a half century; the town of Henderson in York County is the single sparkling purely Mennonite community left, and when the fertile fields surrounding it change hands, they are sold only to other Mennonites. With a population of less than a thousand, Henderson has four churches, all of them Mennonite, the largest one, Bethesda, having the largest sanctuary of any church structure in the state. (155–56)

I was unaware that Bethesda’s sanctuary was the largest in the state, at least in 1977; I doubt that that is the case any longer.

We will return to Creigh’s book shortly, when we explore further the topic of 1920s farm economics (that was the whole purpose for buying the book in the first place). Information for that series is still being gathered, but it will soon be ready to appear in post form.

Source Cited

 Creigh, Dorothy Weyer. 1977. Nebraska: A Bicentennial History. The States and the Nation Series. New York: Norton; Nashville: American Association for State and Local History.

Scene from a church

I recently became aware that the Rijksmuseum, the Dutch national museum in Amsterdam, has made available online over 300,000 images of different artifacts, objects, and documents held within the museum. Curious, I went to their website (here) and searched the word Mennonite to see what might be on offer. Most of the results were of little interest, but one print caught my eye.

This print, which appeared in an unknown book, was likely created between 1780 and 1790. The caption can be translated into English as follows: “Baptism ceremony of the Mennonites.” According to the Rijksmuseum website, the print shows the interior of the Lamist Mennonite Church (Kerk bij ’t Lam) in Amsterdam.

Clearly, this was a large and important church, which is not surprising, given Mennonitism’s origins within and ties to the Netherlands. What is striking about the print are some of the details that may be overlooked if one gets caught up in the immensity of the church and the size of the crowd.

Focus first on the primary subject matter of the print and the service: a baptism ceremony. Those of us who grew up in a certain church or tradition may have specific expectations of a baptism service, complete with a large pool or body of water and special clothing appropriate for someone about to be completely immersed; the Dutch Mennonite ceremony was quite different.

The three baptismal candidates appear to be dressed likely every other male, and instead of a pool of water we see a large pan—all that was needed to pour water over the head of a baptizand. Of course, what was important was not the mode of baptism but the time of baptism: Mennonites did not baptize infants but only adults who professed faith in Christ. That was what set them (and other Anabaptists) apart from both the Catholic Church and other groups within the Protestant Reformation.

Although the baptism of these three men is the center of the ceremony and the focus of the print, several other details are worth noting.

Above and behind the baptismal area is the pulpit, which in European churches of that era was raised above the rest of the congregation and accessed, generally, via stairs. Note also the stand for the Bible or other books from which the speaker could read.

Above the pulpit one sees a pipe organ (reminiscent of Bethesda Church in Henderson). Apparently this organ was added to the Lamist Church in 1777, which helps one date the print to sometime after that.

This print has little to do with Bullers per se, except to remind us that our family stands in a tradition that preceded our family and extended far beyond the regions where our ancestors lived, a tradition that defined who they were and thus remains a part of our own history even today.

U.S. farm economics 1

A more accurate title to this post might be: Midwest U.S. farm economics in the early twentieth century. We will go with the shorter version, for the sake of simplicity

Our family’s fortunes have long been tied to the farm economy, since our earliest-known ancestors were tenant farmers, and each generation after them had some relation to the land. Thus it makes sense to try to understand the context in which Grandpa Chris and his family lived in terms of farm economy.

The thought to explore this question came to mind while reading Dorothy Schwieder and Deborah Fink’s article “Plains Women: Rural Life in the 1930s,” published in the Great Plains Quarterly. They wrote:

The 1930s did not bring the first hint of depression to these counties [Boone County, Nebraska and Lyman County, South Dakota]. While South Dakota  and Nebraska farm families did well
during World War I, realizing profit from both farming and livestock production, the 1920s brought a drastic deflation of farm prices, which forced many farms and rural banks into insolvency. In Nebraska between 1921 and 1923, one-quarter of the state’s farms failed, and by the end of the decade, 650 banks had closed. South Dakotans experienced a similar situation. Only one state bank failed in 1921, but by 1925 the number had risen to more than 175. By the 1930s, farms in Nebraska and South Dakota were already in the midst of a severe economic dislocation. (1988, 80)

In other words, the farm economy was weak for nearly a decade before the depression, which only exacerbated an already-difficult situation. Schwieder and Fink continue:

Many Depression-era farmers were forced to sell off
all their property and to give up farming completely. 

Drought hit South Dakota in the early 1930s and Nebraska a few years later. Both states were particularly hard hit in 1934 and 1936. … In Lyman County, drought-stunted crops were 51 percent of normal and pasture conditions were 57 percent of normal. In Boone County, the percentages were 62 and 58 respectively. … By 1936, Boone County faced even greater drought than before. with rainfall declining to 12.63 inches. The following year, Boone County pastures and crops were reduced to 5 percent of normal production. In 1938, the local newspaper, The Albion News, carried notices of thirty-eight sheriff’s sales while dozens of other families voluntarily liquidated their assets. Along with drought, both South Dakota and Nebraska experienced infestations of grasshoppers in the 1930s. (1988, 81)

Clearly, life was hard for farmers throughout the Midwest in 1920s and 1930s, presumably no less so for those in the Lushton–Henderson area than for those in Boone County, Nebraska. Interestingly, this is also the precise time frame when Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda established their farm and raised their large family. It seems amazing that they succeeded when so many around them apparently did not.

To appreciate their achievements fully, we need to understand more clearly the historical context in which they lived and worked and grew. We will attempt to flesh out that context in a variety of ways, drawing upon both historical data and, I hope, family reminiscences so that we gain a more precise perspective on what our immediate ancestors were able to accomplish in the first part of the twentieth century.

The next post in the series (length undetermined) will begin with the Great War, that is, World War I. One might not think that a war on the other side of the world would significantly affect nonresistant (i.e., conscientious objector) Mennonite farmers in central Nebraska, but it actually did—in a significant and positive way.

* We are not through with the GM series; we have a long way to go with that, and we will continue that series alongside this briefer one on the farm economy.


Sources

Schwieder, Dorothy, and Deborah Fink. 1988. Plains Women: Rural Life in the 1930s. Great Plains Quarterly 8:79–88.

Molotschna farm economics

Sometimes the best we can do is post a rerun. An upcoming post will deal with U.S. farm economics during the 1920s and 1930s, so in the meantime we revisit a post from over two years ago on Russian (Molotschnan) farm economics and how it explains Peter D’s motivation to emigrate to the U.S.

*****

As enjoyable as the personal elements of our family history may be—the photographs and stories of our ancestors recent and distant—sometimes there is no substitute for doing the math. For example, why was Peter D unable to buy a farm in Molotschna? Jeffrey Longhofer explains:

For many, buying land was not an option. The amount required to purchase the rights to a Wirtschaft reached unaffordable levels: 6,000 to 7,000 rubles in 1860. Farm workers, on the other hand, could expect to earn only 80 rubles per year; harvest hands earned no more than 20 kopecks for one day’s work. (Longhofer 1993, 396)

With the help of some historical background and a little math, we can fill in a number of details of our Molotschna family picture.

1877 Russian 1 ruble coin

1. As a part of the Russian Empire, the Molotschna colony used the standard Russian currencies: the ruble and kopek. Think of the two as analogous to the U.S. dollar and penny, since 1 ruble equals 100 kopeks.


2. In 1860, 1 Russian ruble was equal to about 80¢ U.S.


3. Given the historical rate of inflation, $1 U.S. in 1860 would be equivalent to approximately $28.90 today.


4. It follows, then, that 1 1860 Russian ruble would be worth approximately $23.12 today and that 1 kopek would be worth 1 percent of that: $2.31.

With those simple facts as a foundation, let’s translate Peter’s situation in 1860 Molotschna into our own terms.

1. According to Longhofer’s figures, we can calculate that the typical Molotschna farm worker earned roughly $1,849.60 a year in today’s dollars (80 rubles x $23.12).


2. Looking at things differently, a harvest worker earned approximately $46.20 a day. Someone working six days a week for fifty-two weeks a year would earn a total of $14,414 at this rate, so it is clear that Molotschna laborers were only occasionally employed, perhaps as little as 13 percent of the time. (This does not imply that they were indolent the rest of the time; they probably used that time to work in their own gardens, engage in cottage industry, and the like.)


3. If a Wirtschaft cost even 6,000 rubles, that would equal $138,720 in today’s terms, or a little more than $788 an acre.

Of course, one can see the dire straits of Peter and other landless Mennonites even without doing the currency conversion. For example, if an 1860 laborer in Molotschna had been able to save half of his annual income of 80 rubles (a pipe dream), it still would have taken him 150 years to accumulate the 6,000 rubles needed to buy his own Wirtschaft.

Doing the math helps us appreciate how daunting were the obstacles to financial security that Peter D and others like him faced in Molotschna. Trying to raise a family of eight (two adults, six children) on $1,850 a year was no doubt challenge enough. Trying to raise funds to buy a farm was downright impossible. It is no wonder that Peter D and many others left Molotschna colony for North America; it was the only sane financial decision to make.

Source

Longhofer, Jeffrey. 1993. Specifying the Commons: Mennonites, Intensive Agriculture, and Landlessness in Nineteenth-Century Russia. Ethnohistory 40:384–409.

Ice harvesting 1

A passing comment in a recent post deserves further exploration. The comment? That Grandpa Chris, Daniel, and Diet Quiring were cutting ice on the Big Blue River when Ruth was born 16 February 1937. This is not something that those of us born in the generations following are likely to have experienced, but learning about it will give us a better sense of life in the 1930s. This post will attempt to lay out some basic facts about ice cutting, then end with questions for those who know to answer, to clarify the details of our family’s situation.

Although a refrigerator for home use was invented in 1913, this technology was not widely adopted until the 1930s, after the development of a Freon-based cooling unit. Of course, one could not operate a refrigerator without electricity, and that convenience did not arrive on the Lushton farm until 1946 (see here). So how did Bullers cool food items before then?

 People of a certain age probably have heard a refrigerator occasionally referred to as an icebox. Use of this term is not a case of modern slang or sloppy language; rather, it reflects the historical reality that, before refrigerators came into wide use, most families cooled their food with an item aptly named an icebox.

The outside design could range from simple and utilitarian, like the icebox pictured here, all the way to the ornate and elegant, such as one shown in the DeForsest, Wisconsin, Historical Society article on iceboxes (here).

The technology and interior design were simple: one put a block of ice in one part of an enclosed area and kept the food in the other parts of the enclosed area. Think of the insulated coolers that campers take with them these days.

The key interior design element was related to sealing and insulation. To be effective, an icebox had to keep the cool in and warm air out. One website explains that iceboxes were “lined with tin or zinc and insulated with various materials including cork, sawdust, and seaweed were used to hold blocks of ice and ‘refrigerate’ food. A drip pan collected the melt water - and had to be emptied daily” (see here).

Obviously, an icebox worked only if one had a steady supply of ice. But how does one get all that ice when there is no freezer to supply it? We return to the story of Ruth’s birth. Grandpa and crew were not cutting river ice just for grins; they were harvesting ice that would supply the family’s cooling needs during the upcoming months.

With a river nearby, our family did not need to rely (much? at all?) on companies that harvested ice commercially, stored it in icehouses, and sold it throughout the year. They could cut the ice for themselves, and so they did. (To read more about the ice industry in Nebraska, see the Nebraska State Historical Society entry on the topic here.)

Presumably Grandpa had all the necessary tools to harvest ice blocks from the river: at least an ice saw and a pair of tongs for grabbing the blocks. I would imagine that the blocks were hauled back to the house in a wagon (horse-drawn? tractor-drawn?), then packed tightly in straw in whatever place the Bullers used to store ice.

Albert Friesen reminisces about the process of cutting, storing, and using ice on the Wessels Living History Farm website:

During the winter when that pond would freeze solid, we’d go and cut ice and they had ice saws. You did it by hand, just like wood. Saw it like that… You’d slide that, put tongs around it and pull it up along the skid way, up into that wagon … and then haul it to the ice house. That would be a sort of silo, a deep hole, and they’d pack this ice in there and then with straw. You had to have straw around it or else it would melt in the summertime. And we went to ice houses in the summertime and got ice to make ice cream. (here)

With all that as background, we are ready to pose particular questions about our family’s cutting, storage, and use of ice back in the 1930s.

• Was the ice cut with a hand saw or with a horse-drawn saw as pictured here?


• Did Grandpa have his own ice saw like the one pictured above? something else?


• Did the family use tongs like the pair pictured above? something else?


• Where did the family store its harvested ice: in an above-ground icehouse? in a pit or silo? something else?


• How much ice could be harvested each winter and stored away for later use?


• How long did the ice harvested in the winter last during the following spring and summer?


• Did the family provide all its own ice, or was there also need to purchase ice to use?


• Did the family have an icebox like that pictured above? something else?


• Where in the house was the icebox kept?


• What food items were kept in the icebox?


• After the farm was electrified, how long was it before the family got an electric refrigerator?


• Special bonus question: What was the first electricity-driven household item that the family owned?

Send Buller Time your answers and other memories so they can be shared with one and all!

GM 5c, David Buller, 11303

As noted in the previous post, several important facts of David Buller’s life were omitted. This post thus not only supplies those facts but also links to the sources on which they are based.

Sources

Two Molotschna colony school rosters mention David:

• 1861–8162 Molotschna School Register


• 1873–1874 Molotschna School Register

Family Facts

The two school rosters are arranged the same way. The family name is listed first, followed by the father’s name in parentheses, then each child and his or her age. Following that is the village name and, for those families who owned a land allotment, the number of the Wirtschaft.

Scrolling down to the Waldheim listings in the 1861–1862 register, one discovers the following entry:

• Buller (David) Benjamin 9, David 6     Waldheim

The identity of the three people named clearly corresponds to David our ancestor and his youngest sons by Helena Zielke (see also the post here).

This confirms something that we already knew: David and family were in Waldheim before 1861. In fact, we think he had been back in Waldheim six to eight years by now; we also suspect that Helena had died before the 1861–1862 school year, so sons Benjamin and David either had no mother at all or lived with a stepmother (David’s second wife).

The 1873–1874 school register in the second link also pertains to David, although his situation has changed significantly.

• Buller (David) Jacob 9 Waldheim 48

Neither Benjamin nor David is listed this time; this roster is from twelve years later, and they were both long past school age. A new son is listed here: Jacob, the nine-year-old son of David’s second marriage.

The other important fact is revealed by the number 48, which identifies David’s Wirtschaft. In 1861–1862 David did not own any land. We should add here that David did not own land during his first residence in Waldheim in the 1840s. His father Benjamin and his older brother Benjamin had a land allotment, but David did not. Sometime before 1873, however, David became a landowner.

The Buller Time post that first discussed this discussed this school roster (here) suggested that David was granted this land in 1869 or thereabouts, when additional half-Wirtschaften were distributed in order to address the landlessness crisis (see also here). This remains a reasonable explanation, and it seems safe to conclude that David was a Molotschna landowner from the late 1860s until his death over thirty years later. This fact is an important part of David’s story and deserves to be included in any account of his life.

GM intermission

Before we press on with the GRANDMA series, we should stop, catch our collective breath, take a step back, and review the Bullers covered up to this point.

In terms of the bigger chronological picture, the posts thus far have touched parts of three centuries: the latter part of the 1700s, all through the 1800s, and ending with ???? Ratzlaff Buller sometime in the 1920s or 1930s.

Another way to look at this is generationally: we began our series with Grandpa Chris’s great-great-great-grandfather Benjamin 1, moved forward in time to his son Benjamin 2, and most recently covered his son and our ancestor David, the father of Peter D, the father of Peter P, the father of Grandpa Chris.

We have explored our family both vertically (Benjamin > Benjamin > David) and horizontally (all four sons of Benjamin 2). We will take up a vertical investigation of all the children of David Buller (including Peter D) shortly, but before we do we should briefly survey all the Bullers covered thus far.

GM 1: Benjamin Buller 1 (here)
Our earliest known direct answer, Benjamin 1 lived in the last half of the eighteenth century. In all likelihood, he and his family (wife unknown) lived in the Schwetz vicinity in Poland. We know only his name, and that only because his son is identified as Benjamin Benjamin.

GM 2: Benjamin Buller 2, 402138 (here)
Benjamin 2 and family emigrated from Poland to Volhynia in 1817, from Volhynia to Waldheim in Molotschna colony in 1839, from Waldeim to Heinrichsdorf in Volhynia around 1849, and, finally, from Heinrichsdorf back to Waldheim sometime in the 1860s. We assume he died and was buried in Waldheim.

GM 3: Helena ????? Buller, 402139 (here)
We know little about Benjamin 2’s wife Helena, apart from the fact that she was the mother of four sons and perhaps as many as five daughters. She was younger than Benjamin 2, but her birth year is not known with certainty; it was likely sometime in the 1793–1799 range.

GM 4: Benjamin Buller 3 (here)
Benjamin 2 and Helena’s oldest son Benjamin 3 was born around 1816, so probably before the family emigrated from Poland to Volhynia. He was granted a Wirtschaft in Waldheim the year after his father, and he and his wife and children stayed in Waldheim when the rest of the family moved to Heinrichsdorf. Benjamin 3 disappears from view after 1845; he no longer owned a Wirtschaft in Waldheim, and we do not even know if he remained in the village.

GM 5: David Buller, 11303 (here, here, and here)
Our ancestor David was born 25 January 1818 in Volhynia, emigrated with his family to Waldheim in 1839, married Helena Zielke within the next few years, moved back to Volhynia (Heinrichsdorf) with most of the family around 1849, then returned to Waldheim in the early 1850s, where he lived out his days, passing away 25 November 1904. David was married twice: first to Helena Zielke, then to one of the daughters of Jacob and Lehncke Schmidten Ratzlaff. He fathered four daughters and five sons. (Writing this summary led me to realize that important information about David was omitted from the earlier posts; it will be added in a GM5c post in the near future.)

GM 6: Helena Zielke Buller, 11304 (here and here)
Helena Zielke was younger than husband David by perhaps a year, so she was born in 1818 or 1819; like David, she was born in Volhynia. We do not know when Helena’s family moved to Waldheim, only that it was there that she and David were married. Helena bore David’s first six children: Helena (1844), Peter (1845), Elisabeth (1847), Benjamin (1851), Maria (1853), David (1855). She apparently passed away shortly after the birth of her last son.

GM 7: ???? Ratzlaff Buller (here and here)
The first name of David Buller’s second wife is unknown, but we can now be certain that she was a daughter of Jacob and Lehncke Schmidten Ratzlaff. She was born sometime between 1825 and 1836 and married David probably shortly after the 1855 (?) death of his first wife Helena. Ratzlaff Buller bore David three children: Heinrich (about 1860), Jacob (1864), Sarah (unknown). In 1908 she and son Heinrich and his family emigrated several thousand miles east to Kazakhstan. She died there at the age of ninety-eight.

***

The next post will list all the changes suggested for the GRANDMA database, in light of all that we have discovered, followed by a third post on David, to fill out all that we know about him. After that we will move forward with the series, working vertically into the next generation, specifically all of the children of David, including our own ancestor Peter D Buller.

GM 7b, ???? Ratzlaff Buller

The GM 7a post (here) turned out to be quite a bit of fun, as we first doubted an unsubstantiated GM claim about the identity of David Buller’s second wife, but checked it against the sources available to us just the same, and turned up evidence that apparently confirms the GM-suggested identity: David’s second wife was born a Ratzlaff—hence the addition of that fact to this post title.

We now turn to the other facts of this woman’s life, many of which are unclear or unknown. Once again we begin with her official GM entry, followed by the GM entry for her birth family, which is a more accurate guide to her life events.

As we discovered, David’s second wife was a child of Jacob Ratzlaff and Lehncke Schmidten, both of whom came from the Przechowka church in the Schwetz area of Poland, whose church book we have examined on a number of occasions. We do not know which child was David’s wife, only that she was likely one of the first five born.

We include both GM entries so we can compare the information in the first with that in the second. Unlike our usual practice, we begin with the date of death, since it affects other central facts in the entry.

Death

The year and place of death in the top entry (1904, south Russia) are both incorrect, as proven by the 25 February 1907 letter that son Heinrich wrote to Die Mennonitische Rundschau (link 4 in the first post). Heinrich wrote “Mother is often sick this winter; she frequently has headaches,” so Heinrich’s mother (David’s second wife) clearly was still alive at that date.

In fact, Heinrich’s mother was still alive when the family moved several thousand miles east to the Kazakhstan (aka Siberia) region. The Buller Family Records states, “After David Buller died, Mrs. Buller together with son Heinrich and family, moved to Siberia, Russia, where both also died. Mrs. Buller reached an age of 98 years.”

According to a letter written to the Odessaer Zeitung newspaper in April 1908 (see here), the group of Waldheimers who made this journey left that very month for the Pavlodar area of Kazakhstan (see the post here). We have every reason to think that Mrs. Buller, son Heinrich, and his family were part of the group that emigrated at that time.

The GM information is thus incorrect in two important respects: Mrs. Ratzlaff Buller died sometime after 1908 (not 1904) in Kazakhstan (not south Russia). We should also note at this point that the mistaken date of death has led GM to suggest an incorrect year of birth, which we will now address, before summing up when Ratzlaff Buller died.

Birth

GM and the Buller Family Record agree that Mrs. Ratzlaff Buller lived to the age of ninety-eight (I suspect that GM is relying on the BFR on this matter). Because GM thought for some reason that Mrs. Ratzlaff Buller died in 1904, GM calculated that she was born ninety-eight years before that, about 1806.

This is highly unlikely for several reasons, not least the fact that her last datable birth was in 1864, when she would have been fifty-eight by GM’s reckoning. In fact, we must take the opposite tack in calculating Ratzlaff Buller’s dates. Because she was almost certainly a daughter of Jacob Ratzlaff and Lehncke Schmidten, we can deduce from the GM information for that family that she was born sometime between 1825 (the approximate birth year of Helena) and 1836 (the suggested birth year of Sara). In other words, GM’s year of birth is significantly mistaken—by two to three decades. Ratzlaff Buller was born sometime between 1825 and 1836. She was thus younger than David, not ten years older than he was.

Based on this information, we can calculate the range during which Ratzlaff Buller is likely to have died: 1923–1934.

Family, Spouse

Obviously, our interest in Ratzlaff Buller is because of her marriage to David Buller. Whether this was her first marriage is unknown. There is no mention of children other than those fathered by David, which might tilt us to think that he was her first husband.

If David was her first husband, the perhaps she was one of the younger Ratzlaff daughters. We might suppose that this Buller–Ratzlaff wedding took place around 1856 (if David’s first wife Helena Zielke died in 1855), which would mean that the five daughters listed were the following ages at that time:

• Helena: 30
• Maria: 26
• Anna: 24
• Catarina: 24
• Sara: 20

Of course, all this is nothing more than guesswork, so we dare not form any firm conclusions on the matter.

Family, Children

There is no need to repeat the earlier discussions of David’s children (see here). Suffice it to say that Ratzlaff Buller was the mother of at least two, and probably three, children. The GM entry should be corrected to reflect that. According to the Buller Family Record, Ratzlaff Buller had three children:

• Heinrich: about 1860
• Jacob: 1864
• Sarah: unknown

Sarah poses an interesting problem. The Buller Family Record lists her as the last-born child of David and his second wife but does not know her year of birth. GM gives her year of birth as 1850 but does not provide evidence for that. Because so much of what GM has correct originates with the BFR and because where GM does not follow the BFR it is frequently in error, it seems reasonable to trust the BFR slightly more in its assignment of Sarah to David Buller’s second wife.

But there is even more to notice. Why was the girl named Sarah? Might this be a hint at her mother’s name? We certainly cannot draw any firm conclusions, but it seems more than coincidental that one of the daughters to whom David was married was also named Sarah. One cannot ignore the fact that the two older brothers of these Ratzlaff daughters were named Heinrich and Jacob, just like the two sons of David and his second wife.

None of these observations proves anything, but together they are perhaps suggestive that David and Sarah Ratzlaff were married around 1856, when she was twenty, and that she bore three children to him and named her sons after members of her own family and her daughter after herself: Heinrich, Jacob, Sarah. (Of course, Heinrich was also a Buller name.)

Family, Parents and Siblings

As noted several times, David’s second wife was the daughter of Jacob Ratzlaff (47841) and Lehncke Schmidten (58542). Both originally were members of the Przechowka church in the Schwetz area of Poland, the same area along the Vistula River where, we believe, our direct ancestors lived. However, Jacob and Lehncke Ratzlaff, like many other Mennonites of the Schwetz area, eventually ended up in Molotschna. They and their family settled in the village of Friedensdorf, which was three villages to the west of Waldheim, a mere 5 miles away from David’s village.

GM Number

We generally do not suggest a change to a GM number, but in this case we can be fairly certain that David Buller’s second wife was one of the five oldest daughters of Jacob and Lehncke Ratzlaff. We do not know which daughter David married (though Sarah, 106031, seems an intriguing candidate), so we cannot say which number should be linked to David. What we do know is that the current GM number (326615) will need to be retired if ever we identify the name of David’s Ratzlaff wife.

Questions of birth 3

Little by little we fill out our family story. The earlier posts in this series (here and here) explored the birth practices of Mennonite families of days gone by way of background and then inquired about the experience of our family in the early twentieth century (1920s and 1930s). This post clarifies a detail left hanging and reveals an important family fact in the process.

The previous post in the series noted, “all eight [of Grandma Malinda’s] children were born at home, although there is a minor question about which home was the setting for the first child born: Grandma and Grandpa’s house or the home of one of their parents.”

Dad has now spoken with Matilda, and we have further clarity on that issue. In fact, Grandma gave birth to Matilda at her parents’ house, that is, the home of Isaac G. and Sarah Epp Franz. The Franz farm was located in section 15 of Henderson Township, marked by the arrow in the center of the plat map below. For reference, the Peter P Buller farm is also marked: to the east and north of the Franz farm.

So why was Matilda born at Grandpa and Grandma Franz’s home instead of her parents’ own house? As was common in Mennonite communities of that day, when Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda were married, they lived with one set of parents. Young couples often did not immediately establish their own homes but rather began their married lives in the home of one set of parents.

Three weeks after Matilda was born, the new family moved to the farm south of Lushton (arrow at the bottom right of the map). Based on this new information, we can identify when the John Runnalls farm became the Buller farm: March 1928.

As has been reported several times in this blog, Grandpa Chris’s father Peter P gave the couple 40 acres, and they bought another 40 acres (the south half of the quarter). The north half of the quarter was owned by Grandpa’s brother Pete and sister Anna (?), but Grandpa rented that land and farmed the entire quarter. More important, all seven children who came after Matilda were born at home on that farm.

GM 7a, ???? ???? Buller

This post begins with an admission of ignorance. There is really no doubt that Grandpa Chris’s great-grandfather David was married twice (see here), but beyond that we can say very little, at least at the beginning of the post. Who knows what we might be able to say at the end?

David’s second wife is represented in the Buller chart below (and in the title to the post) with mostly question marks. We know she existed, but we do not know her first or last name or her date of birth.

To complicate matters further, some of what the GRANDMA database tells us about David’s second wife is apparently mistaken.

Sources: The main sources of information about David’s second wife are the Buller Family Record and several letters written to Die Mennonitische Rundschau in the early 1900s.

1. Buller Family Record


2. 22 March 1905 Mennonitische Rundschau


3. 2 May 1906 Mennonitische Rundschau


4. 25 February 1907 Mennonitische Rundschau

Name: The Buller Family Record has no knowledge of this woman’s name, but GM claims that she was a Ratzlaff.

This is the biggest question mark of all. It is troubling that the GM entry offers no source for David’s second wife being a Ratzlaff. The Notes section of the David Buller GM entry simply states: He may have married twice. His second wife may have been a Ratzlaff.

As we will shortly see, there is no doubt that David Buller was related to Ratzlaffs, but the question remains: How was David related to Ratzlaffs? Was it through his second wife? The closest thing to evidence that we have appears to be a 22 March 1905 letter (link 2) that David’s son Heinrich wrote to Die Mennonitische Rundschau. There he included the following sentence:

Ich habe noch mehrere Vetter und Richten in Amerika: Johann Ratzlaffs kinder, deren Mutter Vaters Schwester war und Jakob Ratzlaffs Kinder, welcher der Mutter Bruder war.

I have several cousins and direct relatives in America: Johann Ratzlaff’s children, whose mother was father’s sister, and Jacob Ratzlaff’s children, which the mother’s brother was.

Two Ratzlaffs are in view here. (1) According to Heinrich, the mother of Johann Ratzlaff’s children was his father’s (David Buller’s) sister. Thus, from this we can conclude that David Buller had a sister who married Johann Ratzlaff. (2) Heinrich also mentions Jacob Ratzlaff’s children, “which the mother’s brother was.” This last phrase is difficult, but it obviously is clarifying who Jacob Raztlaff was. One might translate the last part as: “the children of Jacob Ratzlaff, who was the mother’s brother.”

This prompts us to ask: Whose mother was the mother? In my first reading I assumed that Heinrich was referring to some unnamed Ratzlaff woman whose brother was Jacob Ratzlaff. However, upon closer inspection, it seems more likely that Heinrich Buller is referring to his own mother as having Jacob Ratzlaff as a brother. This would mean, of course, that Heinrich’s mother was born a Ratzlaff.

Although one might expect a reference to one’s own mother to use the phrase “meine Mutter” (my mother), we have evidence to the contrary from Heinrich himself. The 25 February 1907 letter (link 4) includes the following sentence:

Die Mutter ist diesen Winter schon oftmals kränklich, sie hat oft Kopfschmerzen.

Mother is often sick this winter; she frequently has headaches.

Here “die Mutter” is clearly Heinrich’s mother, which lends credence to the view that “der Mutter” in the 22 March 1905 letter may well refer to his own mother as well. (The words die and der both mean “the”; the two forms are different cases of the same word.) If this is correct—and I believe that it is—one might properly translate the last part of the sentence in question as follows: “the children of Jacob Ratzlaff, who was Mother’s brother.”

According to this understanding of Heinrich’s sentence, David Buller was related to Ratzlaffs in at least two ways: (1) David’s sister (name unknown) married Johann Ratzlaff, and (2) David”s second wife was herself a Ratzlaff, a sister to Jacob Ratzlaff. If this latter statement is true, then we can also determine from which family David’s second/Ratzlaff wife originated.

The Jacob Ratzlaff listed below had a son also named Jacob; the son is the Jacob Ratzlaff mentioned by Heinrich Buller (for the evidence allowing us to identify the son Jacob via his wife Eva Voth, see further here).

This presumably means that one of the female children listed here with no husband identified may have been David’s second wife; that list would include the first five daughters: Helena, Maria, Anna, Catarina, Sara. Little is known of any of these women; of all the daughters recorded here, only the youngest, Nelcke, has a husband listed. All of the other five would have been of child-bearing age at the time of David’s second marriage and thus are plausible candidates for being his second wife.

This seems a good place to stop with David’s second wife, but only after we recap. GM states that David Buller’s second wife was a Ratzlaff. Several of his son Heinrich’s letters to Die Mennonitische Rundschau lend credence to that claim. In fact, if our reading of Heinrich’s letters is correct, we can identify into which Ratzlaff family David’s second wife was born. Finally, based on all this we might also plausibly suggest that her name was Helena, Maria, Anna, Catarina, or Sara.

The next post will take up the other matters known and unknown about ???? Ratzlaff Buller; the title of that post will also reflect our current identification of her.