Peter P and Margaretha’s House 2

When it began, this post was not meant to offer anything profound or revelatory. It was to be simply a collection of several photos, a visual walk through one slice of our immediate family’s history: the farmstead and house where Grandpa Chris spent the earliest years of his life. However, as happens more often than not, a little digging and some serendipitous searching uncovered something that was previously unknown to me (others may have already known this).

It all concerns when the Peter P and Margaretha house pictured in the previous post was built. If you recall, Peter P and Margaretha moved to her family farm in 1890, the year they were married (see here and here). Margaretha and her parents Cornelius and Katharina Tieszen Epp and the rest of the family lived on this farm after settling there in 1877, the year of their immigration from Molotschna. This raises the question whether Margaretha’s parents built this house sometime between 1877 and 1890.

Thinking that a clue might be found in the Epp family book Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers: Five Branches from the Family Tree of Heinrich Epp: Heinrich, Cornelius, Peter, Johann, Gerhard, which is where we found the house photo in the first place, I decided to thumb through its pages once again. Looking back at the photo in the book, I suddenly realized that the answer was apparently staring me right in the face. The first line of the caption reads: The Peter P. Buller Family — New house in 1905.

I had earlier imagined that the caption was dating the photo and that it was mistaken, since Grandpa Chris, who was born in 1906, appears in the photo. On second thought, however, it seems more likely that the caption is dating the building of the house, not the photograph. If this is true, then the photo takes on greater significance: it visually captures and celebrates the building of the new house sometime within its first year.

One question answered, another raised: Where is the house in which Cornelius and Katharina Epp lived when they farmed the quarter section, which is presumably the same house where Peter P and Margaretha lived for the first fifteen years of their marriage, the one in which they lived before they built a new house in 1905? Again, Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers provides the answer. A section titled “A Family Project” begins as follows:

When Don and Margaret Huebert became fascinated with their Mennonite heritage, little did they realize how it would eventually affect their lifestyle in the future. The couple planned to build a new house with a workshop for Don. They looked at houses and visited with people in Canada and in Kansas but could not come up with a favorable plan.

One day Margaret asked Don, “Do you remember that old granary on my home place where Fred lives? That building was the first house my great-grandfather, Cornelius Epp, built in 1877.” Ideas started to develop. It was at the next family gathering when Don purchased the old building for fifty dollars. (1991, 20)

Several bells went off in my head when I read these paragraphs. The obvious one is reference to Cornelius Epp. That was the name of Margaretha Epp Buller’s father. Could this be the same person? Mention of Fred also caught my eye, since I recall my dad telling me that Fred Regier had lived on the Peter P Buller farm for a number of years before turning it over to the next generation. This was a clue that had to be pursued.

Thanks to GRANDMA, I quickly confirmed that this was Don and Margaret Regier Huebert and that Fred Regier was indeed her brother and that Cornelius Epp, father of Margaretha Epp, was Margaret Regier Huebert’s great-grandfather. The identification was certain: the Cornelius Epp–Peter P Buller farmstead is the subject of this story, which continues:

In 1970 an old barn was dismantled. Then it was taken to an acreage near Beaver Creek where the boards were scrubbed clean and reassembled. This also became a temporary dwelling until the entire project was completed.

The next phase was to dismantle the house which had a Dutch-Flemish architectural design. The sturdy 6" x 10" ceiling joists were placed close together since the attics in Holland were used for storing grain to keep it dry. Square nails had been used for building the house.

The bricks from the cellar walls were taken apart and cleaned. In the new house they would be used to build the fireplace. A zinc pipe had been laid to connect the cellar with the well. This made it possible to fill a barrel with water in the cellar without having to carry the water across the yard.

In the rebuilding process most of the windows were replaced with new ones the same size. New clapboard siding and shingles gave the house a new look. Now the structure has the appearance of a house at one end and a barn at the other end. Don’s dream was fulfilled by having his workshop off the kitchen. The workshop is part of a double garage.

The family moved into the house in 1981. When visitors come to take a look at the house, Margaret tells them how they found much of the original pieces of furniture on the old home place.

The account continues on to detail how Don and Margaret Huebert filled their house with historical pieces that tell the story of their, and our, Mennonite past. Although interesting, those details are not crucial to our immediate interests, which is the history of the original Cornelius Epp house.

Back in the late 1970s when I still lived in the Henderson area, I recall hearing bits and pieces about a house barn that Don and Margaret were building, but I had no idea that it had a connection to our family. 

Before we wrap up, we need to add one final piece of information from the Epp family book. After noting that the Cornelius Epp family arrived in Sutton (the closest train station) on 4 July 1877, Elsie Helen Epp reports:

After spending several nights with relatives, Cornelius Epp made the proper legal arrangements for the future home of his family. This site was located three miles north of Lushton and was within the neighborhood not very far from his four brothers. A dugout was built into the hillside which served as temporary housing until the new house was finished. (1991, 19)

Putting all the pieces together produces the following sequence of accommodations:

1. Cornelius and Margaretha Epp arrived in early July 1877  and moved the family into a dugout until a frame house could be constructed. For a brief description of dugout construction, see here. 

2. Sometime in late 1877 or early 1878 Cornelius and Margaretha and their children who still lived at home moved into the new house. Where on the farmstead that house was located is unknown to me, although I suspect there are a number of people who do know. The parents lived in that house for the rest of their lives, Cornelius until 1894 and Margaretha until 1896. Both are buried in the Buller (or Mennonite) cemetery that adjoins their farm on the south. 

In 1890 Cornelius and Margaretha were joined by their daughter Margaretha and her husband, Peter P Buller, who began raising their family there. (For discussion why Margaretha, the eleventh child born in the family, took over the family farm, rather than one of her older siblings, see here and here.)

3. In 1905, it seems, Peter P and Margaretha built a new house for their growing family. If the house was completed in 1905, then Grandpa Chris was the first of their children born there, on 17 April 1906. Over a century later, that house still serves as a home and has even had at least one extension added to the north.

The original house was left standing and put to different purposes. By the late 1960s, if not earlier, the old house was used as a granary. Again, I suspect that some of Grandpa’s children remember the building and how it was used. During the 1970s the original house was disassembled and repurposed in Don and Margaret Huebert’s new house barn, where presumably the old home lives on even today.

If anyone has additional photographs of the Epp–Buller houses and farm, I am certain that Buller Time readers would love to see them. In the interim, I offer this visual walk through the photographs that we do have.

Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller family and house, 1906

The corner of the house can be seen in the right of this photograph from circa 1913

Both the original structure and the addition to the north (right) are visible in this 2015 photograph

The south side of the house in 2015, the same side as shown in the 1905 photo

Work Cited

Epp, Elsie Helen. 1991. Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers: Five Branches from the Family Tree of Heinrich Epp: Heinrich, Cornelius, Peter, Johann, Gerhard. Privately published.