Monday, April 29, 2019

What’s Next?

With the Franztal series at an end, the question arises: Where now? I am open to suggestions, if any come to mind; you can use the Click Here to Contact Me link in the upper right to send your ideas. Although Buller Time has been quiet the past several weeks, reading and thinking about matters Mennonite and Buller have continued.

For example, we have heard from several members of the broader family. A son of Peter E Buller (see here), who was Grandpa Chris’s younger brother, emailed to make contact and fill in some blanks on that branch of the family. His memory, since confirmed by Dad, is that Pete and his wife Elsie Fast Buller took over the family farm after Peter P and Margaretha moved to California in 1936 (see here). Dad recalls that several years later when Uncle Pete and family were preparing to move to Iowa, they held a farm sale, and he believes that a Farmall (F20?) was sold by lottery at that sale.

According to Pete’s son, the family moved to “Salix, Iowa, due to the dry years, to Chicago for Moody Bible Institute, back to Iowa because of WWII, and to Omaha for Grace Bible Institute in 1945.” Chris and Pete had a good relationship and traveled together at least once: “In February 1957, I got to go with them and Matilda (and Esther?) to visit Grandpa PP Buller and Aunts Sarah and Marie in Upland, CA.  … We traveled in Uncle Chris’ 1956 Ford sedan (six adults and me as a seven year-old boy sitting on a little folding stool).”

Many of you will recall that Pete and family owned a nursery for many years in Omaha. If anyone has memories (or photographs!) of that family branch that you would like to share, please contact me.

Buller Time was also contacted by a granddaughter of Klaas P. Buller, Grandpa Chris’s older brother (see here). I know less about this family (which means more room for readers to contribute their own memories), but Dad’s recollection is that Klaas lived south and east of Peter P and Margaretha. This is consistent with our earlier suggestion that Klaas and family lived on 120 acres of section 13 of the Henderson Township in York County (see the map here). Dad remembers that place well because he broke his leg there jumping off of a feed bunk; he still had the cast on his leg on the third birthday in 1936.

He also recalls that Klaas and family moved to Lushton for a while and had a shoe repair shop there a block west and a block south of the post office. Eventually Klaas moved to York, I believe, and one of his daughters remains there. Again, if anyone has further information about Klaas’s family, please share it with the rest of us.

In the meantime, I will continue to read and explore and think about what topics might be of interest to Buller Time and its readers.



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