Other Bullers

Every now and then a Buller from some other part of the larger family, that is, not descended from Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda, stumbles upon Buller Time and emails to add that family’s story to the larger Buller narrative that we are telling here.

Several months ago, for example, a Buller from South Dakota, emailed and shared about his family, who were descended from George and Dina Thoms Buller, but who came to the United States via the Neumark villages (see, e.g., here and related posts), Deutsch-Wymysle (see here and related posts), Molotschna, and Crimea. That family’s historical memory actually enables us to fill in one gap that remained in our Neumark investigation. More on that family later.

Similarly, in recent weeks another Buller descendant a bit more closely related has provided a number of photographs of interest not only to any descendant of David and Helena Zielke Buller but also to our specific family in particular. This post will focus on one of those photos, graciously provided by Mark Dillon, a grandson of Heinrich P (HP) Buller. HP, you may recall, was a son of Peter D and thus brother to Grandpa Chris’s father, Peter P Buller.

Some of the people on the photograph are identified on the back, but that labeling took place many years after the photo was taken. Still, we can be fairly certain about the identity of most of the people pictured. 

The young man on the far right end is Abraham P (Abe) Buller, and next to him is his older brother Jacob P (Jake); both are sons of Peter D Buller. 

Next to Jake are David S and Margaretha (Dave and Margaret) Buller; Dave was also a son of Peter D Buller. Dave and Margaret’s three children help us to date the photograph. Their first three children were born in 1900 (Katharina), 1901 (Sarah), and 1903 (Marie); their fourth child (not pictured) was born in 1907. Margaret is presumably holding Marie during her first year of life; since Marie was born 24 September 1903, we might date this photograph to mid-1904.

The couple on the far left is identified as Peter Dick (or Dycks) and Marie Buller, but presumably the listing of Marie is a mistake: Peter Dick was married to Sarah Buller, daughter of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller. It is difficult to tell which of the children are theirs; they had three at this time, the last of whom had been born in March 1903. Either that child (Agatha) is not pictured or is being held by the unidentified woman to Sarah’s right. The two boys immediately in front of Peter and Sarah are presumably Peter and Abraham, the couple’s two oldest.

The identity of the other couple—the standing man wearing the hat and the woman with the white trim on her dress next to him—is unknown. Presumably some or all of the other children are theirs, but we cannot know that with any certainty. (One wonders if this is Heinrich G. and Katharina Buller Epp; she, too, was a daughter of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller.)

This leaves the older woman standing in the center of the photograph and the even older man sitting next to her. Who are they? The man sitting is identified as Peter D Buller on the back of the photo, but that cannot be him: Peter D died at the age of fifty-two in 1897, roughly seven years before this photograph was taken. 

One can easily imagine why someone thought the old man was Peter D: the photograph contains a number of his children. That is an important clue, but not of the identity of the old man. We need to take a closer look.

If you look carefully, the woman may seem familiar, a face we have seen before. Might this be the same person as pictured here? If so, then the old man was presumably the same person as shown here. Certainty will always elude us, but it seems that we can have a high level of confidence about the identity of these two individuals: the woman standing is Sarah Siebert Buller, widow of Peter D and mother of many of the adults in the photograph; the man sitting at her side is her father Johann Siebert, grandfather and great-grandfather of most of the people pictured.

What we know about the people pictured is consistent with our identification; what we know about Sarah and Johann likewise fits. For example, Johann was born in 1822 and passed away in 1908; thus he would have been eighty-two at the time the photograph was taken. That seems to fit what we see. Sarah, for her part, was born in 1847 and lived until 1922; she would have been fifty-seven in 1904, which seems consistent with the age of the woman in the photo.

Of course, one wishes that Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller and their children were also pictured, although Grandpa Chris would not have made it anyway, since he was born two years later. But even without our immediate Buller ancestor, this photo is a treasure for showing us families who were not only closely related but also well known to Grandpa Chris, including Johann and Sarah, who made the remarkable journey from Molotschna colony to central Nebraska only twenty-five years before this photograph was taken.