Bullers Registered for the Draft 2

No matter what trail we take, there are always side paths begging to be explored. Although such jaunts off the beaten path usually expand and enrich our understanding of the topic at hand, they do slow down the rate of blogging. I note that to explain why it has taken several weeks to return to the topic of Bullers who registered for the World War I draft.

Discoveries made on these side trips include an explanation why the B and C registrations cards (see the earlier post here) no longer had a place for registrants to document their claim to exemption and a fairly lengthy history of York County’s support for and participation in the U.S. war effort, including Selective Service registration. Those matters deserve their own posts; today our focus is on the individual Bullers who registered for the World War I draft.

As mentioned before, fifteen Bullers registered for the draft in York County; to that fifteen we can add another five who registered in Hamilton County, which borders York County to the west. If you recall, Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller first settled on the east edge of Hamilton County, approximately a mile outside of Henderson. In light of this close connection, in what follows we will consider all twenty registrants from both counties.

All twenty men who registered can be grouped into one or another Buller family. For example, six of the registrants—Andrew (Andreas), David Adam, Frank (Franz) P., Jacob P., Peter Henry, and John Jacob—were brothers, sons of Peter J. Buller, who had immigrated from Friedensdorf in Molotschna Colony. As the map here shows, Friedensdorf was among the villages where most Molotschna Bullers settled, so this family was no doubt related to us in some way. However, the exact connection to us is unknown at this time. One thing we do learn from the GRANDMA database is that most of the information for this family comes from the Henderson Mennonite Brethren church book; this is supported by the statement on David Adam Buller’s registration that he was a member of the MB church. Three of the six used the first (A) registration card that asked about a claim of exemption; all three claimed exemption from the draft on religious grounds.

A second family group includes three brothers: Frank (Franz) D., Geo (George), and Henry F. Buller. They were the sons of a David P. Buller, who also immigrated from Molotschna Colony. David’s village, named Friedensruh (not to be confused with Friedensdorf), was on the south edge of Molotschna near Alexanderkrone and Kleefeld, where Peter D and Sarah had lived. As before, this family was certainly related to ours in some way, although we cannot say how. Only Frank completed the A registration card, and he claimed an exemption because he had had two operations; there is no mention of exemption due to religious convictions. George’s registration card lists his present occupation as “insane patient” at the Ingleside State Hospital near Hastings, Nebraska; the card was signed by a Dr. Christie, presumably from the hospital. Sadly, George never left the hospital; he died on 24 May 1929 and was buried on the grounds (see here; for additional background on the hospital, see here).

A third family consists of brothers Peter C. and Jacob, sons of Peter Buller, originally of Landskrone in Molotschna Colony. Once again we can say that this family is related to us in some way, but we do not yet know how. Neither of these Bullers completed registration card A, so we do not know whether or not they claimed a religious exemption. According to GRANDMA, information about them can be found in the Bethesda church book.

Yet a fourth family also included two brothers: Heinrich and John (Johann) D. They were sons of a Peter Buller from Friedensdorf in Molotschna Colony, though not the Peter J. Buller from Friedensdorf listed in the first family group. Both men used registration card A, and both claimed a religious exemption. According to GRANDMA, they were members of the Henderson MB church and are recorded in the church book. How they are related to us remains unknown.

The seven remaining Bullers who registered for the World War I draft are all members of our family line. We begin with the two most distant: Peter B and Henry (Heinrich) B. Both were born in Inman, Kansas, but the family moved to Oklahoma sometime between 1900 and 1910, after which at least the brothers relocated to the Henderson area between 1910 and 1917, when they registered for the draft. The B in their names stood for their father Benjamin, who was David and Helena Zielke Buller’s sixth child. In other words, Peter B and Henry B were our ancestor Peter D’s nephews (Peter D was David and Helena’s second child). Both completed registration card A and claimed an exemption on religious grounds.

Four sons of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller registered for the draft in York County: David S, Cornelius P, Jacob P (aka J. P.; see here), and Abraham P. All four registered on the third and final date, after the range had been expanded to include all men ages eighteen to forty-five. Because of this we do not know if they claimed a religious exemption, although that was presumably the case.

Finally, Benjamin P Buller, the son of Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller, registered in York County on 24 August 1918. As noted in the first post in this series (here), this registration supplemented the second  one for men who turned twenty-one between 5 June and 24 August 1918. In fact, Benjamin was born 5 July 1897, so he did turn twenty-one within that time frame.

As far as I can tell, all the Bullers who were required to register did so; in all likelihood, all of them also asked for an exemption from the actual draft. One final observation: seventeen of the twenty Bullers who registered listed their occupation as either farmer or farmhand. This is not surprising, but it does show just how unusual it was for Bullers such as J. P. (and later Henry) to pursue a different career.

Buller Time at Ten

Ten years ago today, on 15 June 2014, Father’s Day that year, Buller Time published its first and second posts. The first (here) consisted of a photograph of a Mennonite barn in Molotschna Colony and forty-eight words:

Mennonite barn located in the former Molotschna Colony, Ukraine. Chris Buller’s father, Peter P Buller, lived in the villages of Alexanderkrone and Kleefeld before coming to the United States with the rest of his family when he was ten. To read further about the Molotschna Colony, see here.

The second post (here), which showed a photo of a windmill outside of Alexanderkrone, Molotschna Colony, was two words longer:

This windmill stands outside of the Ukranian village of Hrushivka, the former Alexanderkrone, where Peter P Buller (father of Chris) was born in 1869. According to one report, the windmill was erected in 1852; if true, both Peter P and his father Peter D were well acquainted with this structure.

Buller Time—whose name was inspired by the “It’s Miller Time!” advertising campaign (in case you ever wondered)—was conceived as a place to connect with my closest relatives, “the family of Cornelius (Chris) Buller and Malinda Franz,” as the masthead explains. It was also a way to connect with and give back to my own dad, whose love for our family and its history created the same passion in me.

Countless words have followed those initial brief posts. Well, technically they are not countless, but I am too lazy to get an accurate tally. We can, however, make a reasonable guess about the total output of Buller Time blog.

Over the course of the past ten years, Buller Time has published 755 posts (counting this one):

2014:	116
2015:	90
2016:	200
2017:	107
2018:	128
2019:	38
2020:	10
2021:	0
2022:	4
2023:	23
2024:	39

A post published six years ago today observed that the average length of a post in 2016 (200 posts) was 860 words. I think that average length remains reasonable for the posts since then. For example, the first six posts published this month range from 440 to 1,386 words and average 963 words.

If we multiply the 755 posts published to date by the 860 word average, we arrive at a total of 649,300 words published on the blog during its first ten years. In book publishing terms, that is the equivalent of five 325-page books. 

That is a fair amount of content for any blog, and generating that content would not have been possible without the support and contributions of countless (there’s that word again) family members near and distant, friends of the blog more expert in matters of Mennonite history than I, and researchers and the resources they produced that inform and enlighten our different chapters of our family story.

Lord willing, Buller Time blog will continue to uncover and recover unknown chapters of our family story for another ten years (and beyond). I look forward to the family and friends I will meet, as well as the many things I will learn. along the way

Bullers Registered for the Draft 1

A recent post examined J. P. Buller’s World War I draft registration card (here), but that was only one of fifteen such cards for Bullers in the York County section of the Ancestry.com collection of World War I draft registration cards. This post will begin to survey those registration cards to see what we can learn both about our relatives near and distant as well as how they—and, by extension, other Mennonites—navigated the Selective Service System and its demand for military service at that time.

As mentioned in the earlier post, there were three distinct registrations. The first one was on 5 June 1917 and included all males ages twenty-one to thirty-one. The second registration was held a year later, on 5 June 1918, for males who had turned twenty-one since the first registration. The second registration was also supplemented by one on 24 August 1918 for men who turned twenty-one between 5 June and 24 August 1918. A third and final registration on 12 September 1918 expanded the age range significantly by requiring all males between ages eighteen and forty-five who had not previously registered to do so now.

Each of the three registration dates had its own form:

• 5 June 1917: Form 26-2-38-A
• 5 June 1918 and 24 August 1918: Form 26.2-38-B
• 12 September 1918: Form 26-2-38-C

We viewed the third form when we worked through J. P. Buller’s registration (see the form here), so we will show only the first two in this post. (You can view larger versions of all three here.)

The top card, which is an example of the A card from the 5 June 1917 registration, was for a twenty-two-year-old named Andrew Buller; he is a distant relative of unknown connection (i.e., no one knows where in the Buller line his father, Jacob P. Buller, fits). The bottom card, a B card from the second registration, was signed by Benjamin P Buller, Peter P and Margaretha’s oldest living son (i.e., Grandpa Chris’s older brother). Note that he signed the card on 24 August 1918, which was the date of the supplement to the second registration. He did so because he turned twenty-one on 5 July of that year.

The A, B, and C registration forms are generally similar, although several key differences are worth noting. The front of card A, for example, asks for the following information:

• full name + age in years
• home address
• date of birth
• citizenship status
• place of birth
• trade, occupation, or office
• employer name and location
• marital status
• prior military service

Card A also includes two questions. Question 9 reads: “Have you a father, mother, wife, child under 12, or a sister or brother under 12, solely dependent on you for support (specify which)?” Question 12 asks: “Do you claim exemption from draft (specify grounds)?”

Card B asks for most of the same information but does not request the registrant’s trade, occupation, or office and place of birth. Card B also asks for additional information:

• father’s place of birth
• name and address of nearest relative
• race (White, Negro, Indian, Oriental)

Strangely, card A’s question 9, about a dependent family member (which was grounds for an exemption) and question 12, concerning a claim of exemption from the draft, are not included on card B, which was used exactly one year after card A.

Card C largely follows the pattern of card B, including the identification of the registrant’s race and the name and address of the nearest relative, but it does not ask for the father’s place of birth. The earlier questions about having a dependent family member and exemption from the draft are, as with card B, absent from card C.

Curiously, only card A, for the first registration, provided a place for the registrant to claim exemption from the draft. So we see on Andrew Buller’s card that he did claim an exemption, with “Mennonite conviction” given as the reason. Why were Andrew and others completing card A invited to claim an exemption but not later registrants who filled out cards B or C?

To be clear, the Selective Service Act of 18 May 1917 did allow for exemptions from the draft for various categories of individuals, including federal, state, and local government officials, those already enlisted in the armed forces, “regular or duly ordained ministers of religion [and] students who at the time of the approval of this Act are preparing for the ministry in recognized theological or divinity schools,” “persons engaged in industries, including agriculture, found to be necessary to the maintenance of the Military Establishment or the effective operation of the military forces or the maintenance of national interest during the emergency,” “those in a status with respect to persons dependent upon them for support which renders their exclusion or discharge advisable” (the interest of question 9 on form A), and “those found to be physically or morally deficient” (quotations from HR 3545, the legislative act passed by Congress and signed by the president, available here). The legislation also stated:

nothing in this Act contained shall be construed to require or compel any person to serve in any of the forces herein provided for who is found to be a member of any well-recognized religious sect or organization at present organized and existing and whose existing creed or principles forbid its members to participate in war in any form and whose religious convictions are against war or participation therein in accordance with the creed or principles of said religious organizations, but no person so exempted shall be exempted from service in any capacity that the President shall declare to be noncombatant.

To put this in simple terms, members of churches committed to nonresistance or pacifism, which obviously included Mennonites, were exempt from participation in military activity. This did not, however, exempt them from registering for the draft or from serving in whatever capacity President Wilson deemed to be noncombatant.

The promise of exemption from military activity seems simple and clear, but many of those tasked with managing the draft, including political and military leaders, disagreed with the policy and thus made it as difficult as possible for potential draftees to secure an exemption. For example, according to one report (see Hartzler 1922, 89), those who wished to be exempted from combatant service were required to complete form 174. However, that form was misfiled between forms 143 and 144 in the material given to local draft boards, with the result that the necessary form remained undiscovered by some. Beyond that, those who claimed exemption from military activity could still be drafted and called into training camp. There they were frequently pressured in various ways both physical, emotional, and psychological to abandon their religious commitment and join the regular armed forces (see Hartzler 1922, 93–96, 99; Juhnke 1989).

In short, although the Selective Service Act allowed for exemption based on religious convictions or when other family members were financially dependent on the potential recruit, both the draft apparatus and most people who worked within it sought to minimize the number of men who took advantage of the allowances. The officials’ job, after all, was to add soldiers, not dismiss them. Given this background, it is not difficult to imagine why the questions about claiming an exemption that had appeared on registration card A were removed from cards B and C: removing them made it more difficult for registrants to take advantage of the exemptions provided by the law.

Unfortunately, for our purposes, the decision to remove the exemption questions means that we cannot say how Bullers who registered with cards B or C responded to the draft. Still, five of the fifteen Bullers in York County who registered for the World War I draft did complete card A. We will turn our attention to them, and to the other ten registrants, in a subsequent post.

Works Cited

Hartzler, J. S. 1922. Mennonites in the World War: Or, Nonresistance under Test. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House. Available online here.

Juhnke, James C. 1989. “World War (1914–1918).” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Available online here.

U.S. Congress. House. 1917. “An Act To Authorize the President to Increase Temporarily the Military Establishment of the United States.” HR 3545. 65th Congress. U.S. Statutes at Large 40 (1917): 76–83. Available online here.

J. P. Buller in 1918

Several days ago I stumbled upon a reference and link to J. P. Buller’s World War I draft registration card. The allure of seeing for myself a family record finally convinced me that it was time to register for Ancestry.com, which is where a scan of the card was available. Although one would not expect to learn much from a simple draft registration, in this case the information provided does flesh out a particular moment in our family history.

Before we look at a scan of the actual card, it is worth our time to learn a little about draft registration during World War I. Although that war to end all wars is typically dated from 1914 to 1918, the U.S. did not enter the conflict until 6 April 1917, after German submarines began to target American merchant ships taking supplies to Britain. Shortly after the declaration of war, Congress passed the Selective Service Act, which authorized President Woodrow Wilson to draft men into military service.

According to the National Archives (here),

During World War I there were three registrations. The first, on June 5, 1917, was for all men between the ages of 21 and 31. The second, on June 5, 1918, registered those who attained age 21 after June 5, 1917. (A supplemental registration was held on August 24, 1918, for those becoming 21 years old after June 5, 1918. This was included in the second registration.) The third registration was held on September 12, 1918, for men age 18 through 45.

As we see in the scan of the front and back of the card below, J. P. was part of the third registration, the one held on 12 September 1918.

As we read above, the third registration included men eighteen to forty-five years olds; J. P. was thirty-nine in September 1918 and so subject to registration. He checked box 10 on the front indicating that he was a native-born citizen. If you recall, J. P. was born several months after the family had immigrated to the U.S. (see here), so he was the first of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller’s children who could claim to be native born.

Shifting to the right half of the scan (the back of the card) we see that J. P. (or whoever completed the form) describes himself as short and with a medium build. His eyes were brown, as was his hair, that is, when he had hair; note that the form indicates also that J. P. was bald at that time. Finally, in box 29 we read that J. P. did not have any obvious physical disqualifications.

What I find most interesting is what we skipped over on the front of the card (left side). In the slot asking for his present occupation, J. P.’s card lists “With Aged Mother.” A little farther down, his nearest relative is identified as Mrs. Sarah Buller of Henderson. This is, of course, J. P.’s mother, Sarah Siebert Buller.

J. P.’s father, Peter D, had died at the age of fifty-two in 1897; Sarah remained a widow the rest of her life. We do not know a great deal about where or with which of her children (or even father, Johann Siebert) she may have lived, but we can now say that, in mid-September 1918, J. P. was living with his mother. We cannot know with certainty, but it appears that he was not teaching at that time; rather, his primary “job,” we are led to think, was taking care of his seventy-one-year-old mother.

Of course, this raises the question of whether J. P. had become his mother’s primary caregiver during her later years or was simply living with her while he was between teaching jobs. We do not have enough information to offer any sort of final answer. I will note, however, that less than three years later J. P. took a job in Hawaii and spent the rest of his working life there. Sarah passed away the year following J. P.’s move, on 15 February 1922. This might imply that J. P.’s 1918 residence with his mother was more for his benefit than for hers. 

At any rate, with the armistice being signed less than two months after J. P. registered, on 11 November 1918, he was never in any real danger of seeing military action. Nevertheless, he was required to register, as were fourteen other Buller males in York County whose registration cards will be the subject of a future post.

Meanwhile Back on the Farm …

A post earlier this year featured several photographs taken while Peter P, Margaretha, Sara, and Maria were enjoying an extended visit with Peter’s brother J. P. in Hawaii (see here). Carolyn Stucky was kind enough to share an additional bit of information associated with the Hawaiian vacation, which I reproduce below.

The account, titled “Memories of Meeting John,” was written by Carolyn’s mother, Sara Quiring Peters, in March of 1993. Sara was the daughter of Dietrich C. Quiring and Katharina Buller, and Katharina was the third-born child of Peter P and Margaretha. What does any of this have with the Hawaiian vacation? Sara explains:

Times were dry, and farming still had to go on. My grandparents (Peter and Margaretha Buller) and their daughters Maria and Sara had gone to the Hawaiian Islands to visit and stay for the winter at Grandpa Buller’s brother Jacob Buller’s. They left the farm with their son Pete and his wife Elsie Buller and also Pete’s two younger siblings, Anna and Henry. My Uncle Pete needed someone to help with chores and farming, so they hired John E. Peters as a helper, and he lived with them there. Henry and Anna Buller went to high school as John was left to do chores. Then when we as the Quiring family went there to visit or help out I got to meet the new hired hand. John worked and got as much as $15.00 a month plus room and board. That $15 he gave to his parents so they had money to live on. They lived in the town of Henderson. As I said, we did our socializing in church on Sunday evening as C.E. programs and visiting afterward. There were no first dates or such going out for dinner or shows—there was no money for that.

     On one occasion my brother Diet and his girlfriend Viola Epp took me along. We picked up John at his parents’ house, and we all went riding on Sunday evening. Then after so many Sundays, he came and picked me up at my home and usually with Diet and Viola and we would all go to the C.E. (Christian Education) program at church.

While Peter P, Margaretha, Sara, and Maria enjoyed a warm Hawaiian winter, back on the farm Sara and John were enjoying the beginning of a lifelong relationship. Carolyn adds, “Mom said there was no engagement ring, but Dad bought her a watch which I have in the cedar chest!”

In addition to relating the circumstances under which seventeen-year-old Sara Quiring met twenty-year-old John Peters that winter, this brief account fills in a number of other details related to the family’a Hawaiian trip.

First, as Sara notes, “times were dry.” In fact, the years 1930, 1931, 1933, 1934 and 1936—in other words, the years before and right after the Hawaii trip—were considered severe drought years, and York County crop yields during that period were only two-thirds of normal (Cronin and Beers 1937, 4, 15). 

In spite of the tough times, Sara adds, “farming still had to go on.” To that end, Peter P and Margaretha’s son Pete and his new wife Elsie were left in charge of tending the farm. Pete and Elsie had been married just a few months earlier, on 29 August 1935, so presumably they did not yet have their own farm or perhaps even home, which made them the logical candidates to manage the family farm while Peter P was in Hawaii.

Sara recalls that Anna and Henry were still in high school, but this may be a memory lapse. Anna was twenty-two at that time, and Henry turned twenty in late December 1935, so one would expect that both had finished high school. Maybe this is a false assumption. Even so, by Henry’s own admission he had little interest in farming, so Pete no doubt would have needed help with his new responsibility.

My own memory (for whatever that is worth) is that Pete assumed responsibility for the Buller-Epp family farm when Peter P and Margaretha and their unmarried children moved to California in August 1936. If so, then I wonder if this short-term assignment while his parents were in Hawaii was intended to reveal if he was up to the task for the long haul. As always, the more we learn about our family story, the more we realize how much more we need to discover.

Work Cited

Cronin, Francis D., and Howard W. Beers. 1937. Research Bulletin: Areas of Intense Drought Distress, 1930–1936. Washington, DC: Works Progress Administration. Available online here.

Family Letters 3: J. P. Buller

In addition to a number of family photos, the box of family treasures that Carolyn (Peters) Stucky shared contains letters various family members sent to Aunt Sara. We have already read several of them (here and here), but there are many others to explore. I plan to take the remaining letters in chronological order, beginning with one from 1909, after this post focuses on two letters from Sara’s uncle J. P. Buller, whom we last encountered in a post titled Family Photos: Hawaii (here). 

The letters from J. P. date from 29 October 1922 and 18 April 1926. He had arrived in Hawaii on 24 August 1921, so these letters were from the the first years after after his move. Sara, born 30 September 1899, would have been twenty-three and twenty-six when the two letters were written.

The first letter is brief and chatty, as J. P. asks about life back home. He does not give his exact address, noting only that he is writing from Honolulu, T. H. (Territory of Hawaii). I provide a transcription of the letter below, but for those who wish to read it for themselves, see the high-resolution scan here.

Honolulu, T.H.

Oct. 29, 1922

Dear Sarah:

     How is every thing with you now-a-days? Is all corn picking done by this time? Did you do any picking this fall? I wish I had some corn here so I might exercise a little after school all every day. As it is I am taking a four or five mile hike almost every day to keep up my appetite and vigor.

     Did you can very much fruit this summer? I surely miss the cherries—I mean cherry picking.

     With best wishes, I remain

Your uncle,

J. P. Buller

There is not a great deal we can say about this letter. One senses that, after being away for over a year, J. P. longs to hear about some of the daily rhythms and routines of life on the farm. Of course, J. P. had not worked on the farm, that we know, for over a decade, as he had been teaching in schools in Nebraska, Texas, and Idaho since his graduation from the University of Nebraska in 1911. Still, I imagine that he had kept in close touch with family members who remained on the farm, and he seems nostalgic for that simpler life.

J. P.’s second letter to Sara is longer and far more interesting. Even the envelope is worth a careful look (for a high-resolution version, see here). 

The first thing to notice is J. P’s return address: 150 Kealohilani Avenue, Honolulu. Whatever structure he lived in there no longer stands, but we can tell from the address that he was living roughly 750 feet from the beach, Waikiki Beach, to be exact. One wonders how much time he spent on the beach and if this is where he did some of his hiking. Another item of (minor) interest is the postage: two Benjamin Franklin 1¢ stamps were sufficient to send the letter—by boat at this time—the 3,750 miles to the Buller farm north of Lushton.

As interesting as the envelope is, the letter far surpasses it, as you will see in the transcription below. Scans of its pages can be found here, here, and here. 

150 Kealohilani Ave.

Honolulu, Hawaii

Apr. 18, 1926.

Dear Sisters Three and couple,

     Your pictures received and also the flowers. The flowers are very pretty rivalling the hibiscus we have here for beauty, and excelling them in the fact that they do not fade. They are very lovely.

     And the pictures!! The Hawaiian beauties would compare very unfavorably. Those smiles remind me of the friendly greetings I used to receive when I came to visit you. I hope they will never wear off.

     How is every thing over there now? Do you have any more snow? This has been an ideal winter, little rain and quite cool as a rule.

     The volcano on the Island of Hawaii is now in eruption. A stream of lava 500 ft. to a 1000 ft. wide is slowly moving towards the sea. I have not seen it yet but if it keeps on, I may go over. Aside from the eruption and a fire that destroyed several buildings, there is no excitement.

     Thanking you for the flowers and pictures. We remain

With love

J. P. & Elizabeth Buller

The “Sisters Three” are presumably the three daughters of Peter P and Margaretha still living at home: Sara, Maria, and Anna. I have no idea what “couple” (if I am reading it correctly) might mean. The letter mentions both at the beginning and at the end pictures and flowers that Sara (and her sisters?) had sent. The fact that the flowers would not fade leads me to think that they must have been dried flowers, although this is merely a guess. The pictures were presumably of at least the three girls and perhaps other family members.

The fascinating part of the letter is J. P.’s description of a volcanic eruption. He says it is taking place “now” on the big island, Hawaii (J. P. was on Oahu). In fact, what he is referencing is the eruption of the Mauna Loa Volcano that began 10 April 1926. The Mauna Loa is the largest volcano on the planet and has been highly active over the past several centuries, erupting thirty-four times since 1843 (here). The 1926 event that J. P. references was one of a number of noteworthy eruptions (here). In fact, the lava flow from that eruption was even bigger than he indicates. According to one account, the flow was 1,500 feet wide and 30 feet high. By 18 April—the date of J. P.’s letter—the lava flow was “headed straight for the village of Ho‘ōpūloa…. By the next day, the lava flow had destroyed a dozen houses, a church, and the wharf, and had nearly obliterated the bay” (see the Army Air Corps photograph here; see also here). Apart from a historic volcanic eruption, J. P. observed, there was no excitement, a statement as wryly humorous today as it was nearly one hundred years ago.

One final note of great significance: J. P. was not the only signatory to the letter; his new wife, Elizabeth Gordon Buller, joined him in sending the letter. Elizabeth had moved to Hawaii a year after J. P., on 28 June 1922. They apparently met sometime after, since they were married 5 August 1925. Curiously, J. P. does not mention that Elizabeth was five months pregnant (assuming GRANDMA has their son’s date of birth correct). Perhaps he had already shared the news and thus saw no need to repeat it.

There is little more that can be wrung from these letters. I find it remarkable that J. P. took the time to write his niece Sara on more than one occasion. That is a testament to the strength of the family ties that the Bullers back then enjoyed.

Family Photos: Nursing School

Several months ago, in a post about a 1927 letter Maria wrote to her sister Sara (here), we learned that Sara was working at the Mennonite Deaconess Hospital in Beatrice, Nebraska. More recently, in the last post of the Bullers in The Mennonite series (see here), we read how two decades later, in mid-1946 (probably May), Maria graduated from the two-year Community Nurses Training Course offered at that same hospital. The photographs that feature in this post relate to Maria’s training at that hospital.

This first photo has only the date on which the picture was taken noted on the back: 21 May 1944. We do not know where the photograph was taken (although see below for a reasonable guess). All we know for certain is what we can see: Maria is standing in front of a brick building, with two lawn-type chairs sitting on a patio behind her.

The photo shows Maria wearing her nursing uniform and holding something in her left hand. Is it a wrapped box, perhaps a gift with ribbon and greenery attached? Could it be a purse? an envelope? Once again, dumb luck comes to the rescue.

Wondering how old Maria would have been at that time, I found the relevant page in the Buller Family Record and discoverd that 21 May 1944 was Maria’s thirty-sixth birthday. This information both explains what appears to be a gift box and provides a plausible explanation of why the photo was taken in the first place: to document and capture a memory of her birthday celebration.

We will come back to the significance of this later, after we consider the second photo in this set. To be clear, it is not certain that both photos were taken the same day or even at the same location. Maria is wearing the same uniform in both photos, but presumably she wore that or a similar uniform most days of her training.

The caption on the back of this photograph reads: Marie Buller, Sis Sarah Rempel. (For the life of me I do not know why she spells her name Maria sometimes and Marie other times. I use Maria consistently, since that is the form used in the Buller Family Record, which Maria helped to create.)

At least two things are important about this photograph: her reference to Sarah Rempel as sis(ter) and the location where the photograph was taken. We will deal with each of these in turn.

Maria’s reference to Sarah Rempel as sister was not a simple matter of using familial language to show fondness for another person. Rather, the term sister indicates that Sarah Rempel held a recognized position on the staff of the Mennonite Deaconess Hospital. Rich Preheim offers further background (the entire article, linked below, is well worth reading):

In 1890, American Mennonite women had few opportunities to serve the church in a formal capacity. Pastoral ministry was reserved for men, and Mennonite mission work was still in its infancy. David Goerz wanted to expand the opportunities. A minister and one of the founders of Bethel College in Kansas, Goerz introduced the concept of deaconesses to the 1890 triennial session of the General Conference Mennonite Church. Deaconesses were not a new idea. Christian congregations, including European Mennonite ones, had long had them to minister to other women. Borrowing from a growing movement in Europe and the United States, Goerz’s deaconess proposal was for single women trained as nurses and affiliated with a “mother house.” It had similarities to a Catholic convent. 

The Beatrice, Nebraska, hospital where Sara had earlier worked and where Maria was being trained was one of these deaconess hospitals. It is not surprising, then, that the caption to the 1946 graduation picture referenced above identifies the class sponsor as Sister Alice E. Epp. Members of the hospital staff, including Alice Epp and Sarah Rempel, held that status and bore that title. This leads me to wonder if Sara, when she worked at the same hospital in 1927, was a deaconess on the staff. 

Although we may never know the answer to that question, we can identify the location of the second photo with near certainty. Maria is standing in front the steps that lead up to a brick structure. The porch, for lack of a better term, has several brick columns; sitting atop the brick pedestal at the top of the steps is some sort of rounded stone. We see these same features in a circa 1910 postcard of the Mennonite Deaconess Home and Hospital in Beatrice, Nebraska. The only real difference between the two is the vines that had grown to cover the brick walls and columns over the three and a half decades from the first depiction to the second.

The first photograph above clearly was not taken in the exact same spot as the first, but I suspect that both were taken at the hospital: the first one in the back of the building and the second one at the front.

Only one question remains: Why were the photographs taken in the first place? Thinking about when the photos were taken may point us in the right direction. It seems that, by her thirty-sixth birthday, Maria had started her two-year Community Nurses Training program. At that time, her parents were far away in California. Henry and Bea had been released from German detention two months earlier and were busy sharing about the MCC’s relief work in various churches throughout the U.S.

Ironically, as we read in an earlier post (here), on 21 May 1944—Maria’s thirty-sixth birthday—Henry and Bea themselves were in Peter P and Margaretha’s (and Maria’s) church in Upland, California. 

Mr. and Mrs. Henry Buller, who carried on relief work in France and then were interned in Germany, are now visiting various Mennonite communities in the United States. They were recently at Bethel College, where they shared much that was of great interest. It is their hope to be able to continue in relief work. … The Bullers have gone to Upland, California. The First Mennonite Church there is Brother Buller’s home church. We quote the following from a recent bulletin of this church:

“We appreciate the return of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Buller. We welcome them in our midst. Next Sunday, May 21st they will have charge of the morning and evening service. Mrs. Buller will receive the sacrament of baptism. Mr. and Mrs. Buller were legally married a year and half ago but at that time lacked the privilege of a religious ceremony. Hence next Sunday morning there will be a consecration of their marriage vows.

While other members of the family were meeting Bea and spending time together, Maria was training to be a nurse in Beatrice the day she turned thirty-six. It is not too difficult to imagine that the photographs were taken so that her parents in California might see them and share in her birthday celebration, even belatedly and at a distance. All this is supposition and imagination, of course, but it does make for a good story.

*******

If you wish to read more about the Mennonite deaconness movement, I recommend the Preheim work cited below and these other resources:

Deaconesses of the Bethel Deaconess Home and Hospital. 1948. “The Deaconess and Her Ministry.” Mennonite Life 3.1:30–37. Available online here (scroll down to page 30).

Schmucker, Kristine. 2013. “Pioneer of Health Care: Sister Anna Gertrude Penner.” Harvey County Museum blog. Available online here.

Work Cited

Preheim, Rich. 2019. “History: Mennonite Sisterhood of Service.” Anabaptist World, originally published in Mennonite World Review. Available online here.

Family Photos: Ontario, California

Grouped with the small photographs of the family trip to Hawaii (see here) are two other photos of the same size. The first one, which is shown to the right, has a caption written on the back; the second one provides only the year when the photo was taken: 1938.

The caption on the back of the first photo reads: Mother and Dad in the driveway—Ontario, California. The driveway in question was at Peter P and Margaretha’s house at 426 East I Street in Ontario. A quick check on Google Maps reveals, unfortunately, that their house no longer exists, having been replaced by a two-story, six-unit mini-apartment building.

If you recall, after returning from their Hawaiian vacation in March 1936, the family moved from their farm east of Henderson to Ontario, California, later that year, in August. Ontario, which is located roughly 30 miles east of central Los Angeles, was a modest city of just under 14,000 people at that time. We currently know little more about the house in which they lived, beyond what we can see in photographs from that time.

Several things stand out in this photo. First, unlike the farm, which had a dirt or gravel road leading up to the house, here Peter P and Margaretha had a modern, paved driveway from the street to their parking spot (in a garage?). Second, if you look closely to the left of the photo, you can see a perfectly manicured hedge, something that would not be found on any farm in the late 1930s. Finally, most impressive of all are the two massive palm trees visible in the background, both of which appear to have been on their property. The differences between life on the farm and life in Ontario could not have been more stark.

I have not yet shown the second photograph mentioned above for a simple reason: when I looked at the photo I had a strong sense of having seen it before, of maybe having posted about it before. Sure enough, I had both shown and written about the photo—along with several others—on 18 November 2014. You can view the original post here, although I am also reproducing it in full below, so that all four photos appear together. The second photo that I reference above is the second one shown in the 2014 post below. Note also the link in the 2014 post to yet another Ontario post with photos. Finally, if anyone has additional photographs of or information about the Ontario home, please let me know, so we can fill out the story further in a subsequent post.

———————————————

18 November 2014 post

A post several days ago reminded us that Peter P and Margaretha left Nebraska in 1936 and relocated in California. This post picks up the story two years later, in the summer of 1938.

The first photograph was taken at Peter P and Margaretha’s house in Ontario, California. According to a note on the back of the photo, this shows the front of the house located at 426 East I Street (see here for an earlier mention of the address).

The photo includes Peter, Margaretha, and four of their eleven living children (their firstborn died at an age of eight days): Sara, Anna, Henry, and Maria (who is sitting on the lawn). Peter was sixty-nine, Margaretha sixty-seven, Sara thirty-eight, Anna, twenty-four, Henry twenty-two, and Maria thirty. The house appears to be modest but nice, the palm-tree setting perfect for retirement life.

The second photograph was taken the same day but includes one additional person (far left, next to Henry) who cannot be identified; it seems reasonable to imagine that she was a friend of Henry’s. We will return to Henry at some point in the future, to share what we can of his experience as a prisoner of the Nazis during World War II.

Since the first two photos were taken in front of the house, the third photograph (below) was probably taken in the back yard, especially since the setting resembles the earlier photos (see here) from Peter P and Margaretha’s fiftieth wedding anniversary, which we know were taken in the back yard. One thing we do know (based on a note on the back of the photo) is that the photo below was taken February 27, 1944.

The problem with this photo is that we can identify only some of the people. Margaretha and Peter are easy to spot in front, and standing between and behind them is their daughter Sara. The woman on the far right may be Maria.

The back of the photo identifies a few more people but skips most of them. On the front left is Jacob P Buller (Peter P’s younger brother); on the back left is Albert Friesen, while the curly-haired gentleman in the center-right back is John Peters. As always, please leave a comment if you can identify anyone else, and I will update the post accordingly.