In the News: Peter D as Witness

A post several days ago (here) mentioned that there is at least one certain newspaper reference to a Peter Buller from our family line. That reference, from the 18 February 1886 Republican Register out of Aurora, Nebraska, appears in the notice to the right. 

The notice was issued by the Land Office in Lincoln on 23 January 1886. It was one of several notices published in that issue of the paper (see the top of the following notice at the bottom of the extract), all of which began with the same legal language:

Notice is hereby given that the following named settler has filed notice of his intention to make final proof in support of his claim and that said proof will be made before the Judge and in his absence before the Clerk of the District Court of Aurora, the county seat, on March 8, 1886, viz: Abraham Dalke. H. A. No. 16798 for the e hf of se qr [i.e., east half of the southeast quarter] section 12. town 9. N range 5 west.

     He names the following witnesses to prove his continuous residence upon, and cultivation of, said land, viz:

The notice then lists four witnesses who attest that the person meets the requirements to make a valid homestead claim: Peter Buller, Johann Penner, Johann Friesen, and Bernhard Friesen.

How do we know this Peter Buller is from our family line? Several clues make it almost certain. First, all four witnesses are from Farmers Valley, which is the precinct in which Peter D established his own farm. The “other” Peter Buller from the earlier post lived in Beaver precinct. Second, all four witnesses lived in close proximity to Abraham Dalke: Peter Buller directly to the north, Johann Penner to the northeast, Johann Friesen to the northeast of him, and Bernhard Friesen directly to the south. In fact, Peter Buller and Johann Penner lived on the same section 12 on which Dalke staked his claim.

Given this evidence, and in light of the fact that Peter P was only sixteen at this time, there is little doubt that the witness listed for this homestead claim was none other than Peter D Buller. Peter D would himself file a homestead claim within a few years after serving as witness. Although we have already explored Peter D’s homestead claim (here), I have since discovered additional resources that will flesh out our understanding of the process involved in homesteading the land.

In the News: Peter Bullers

The fact that we have two Peter Bullers in our immediate family line sometimes creates complications, as it is not always clear whether someone is talking about Peter D (the father) or Peter P (the son). This problem becomes especially acute when we have little context to point us in one direction in the other.

Consider, for example, the extract from the 14 December 1895 Hamilton County Register to the right. This is a list of expenses that the Hamilton County commissioners approved for payment at a meeting three days earlier. Note that the name Peter Buller appears twice, once for payment of $8.00 for searching Russian thistles* and once for payment of $3.00 of labor related to the bridge fund. What are we to make of this?

Careful readers will notice, no doubt, that the names have one slight difference between them: the first one is simply Peter Buller, and the second one has a middle initial: Peter D Buller. One might reasonably deduce from this that the first reference is to twenty-six-year-old Peter P, while the second is to his father, Peter D. Although that would be a logical explanation of the information before us, it is not the only logical explanation we can offer.

It turns out that Peter D and Peter P were not the only Peter Bullers in the area. Another Peter Buller lived 2 miles west and 2 miles north of our ancestor Peter D. The two Peters were both born in Molotschna and only a year apart: our Peter in 1845 and the other in 1846. Like our forebear, this other Peter Buller also farmed and had a son named Peter. Clearly, this sort of name overlap demands that we take care not to attribute to our own Peter Bullers actions and events that probably involved the other Peter Bullers who lived nearby (or any other Peter Bullers we may encounter).

So, for example, when we read in the 14 August 1884 Republican Register (published out of Aurora) that Peter Buller purchased the east half of the southeast quarter of section 27 in the Beaver Township of Hamilton County from the CB&Q Railroad Company, we should not jump to the conclusion that our ancestor purchased a farm in addition to the one we already know about (the northeast quarter of section 12 in the Farmers Valley Township). Rather, this is almost certainly the other Peter Buller.

So, was the Peter Buller who searched for Russian thistles our own Peter P or the other Peter Buller who lived several miles away? We really cannot say. However, there is another interesting newspaper notice from 1886 that almost certainly relates to one of our ancestors. That will be the subject of a subsequent post.

* The Nebraska legislature declared the Russian thistle (aka tumbleweed) a “public nuisance” in early 1895 and required county officials to inspect farms and roadways for infestations of Russian thistles. See further here.

Bullers Registered for the Draft 6

In the last post in this series we saw that, beginning in late 1917, the Selective Service required all men potentially eligible to be drafted to complete a questionnaire so that draft boards could assign them to one of five classes. The classes determined the order in which men would be called up: those in class 1, which included mostly single, nonessential workers, would be the first to be drafted; men in classes 2 and 3 would follow when class 1 was depleted; class 4 registrants could follow after that but were not expected to be called up, unless the war went on longer than anticipated; class 5 men were permanently exempt and would never be drafted.

On paper, the classification system was simple and straightforward; however, putting even a simple policy into action rarely goes exactly as planned. This post will explore several aspects of the implementation of the classification system, again with an emphasis on how this affected several Bullers in York County.

By June of 2018, Selective Service authorities realized that they did not have enough men assigned to class 1 to meet their expected manpower demands. Instead of simply moving on to draft men assigned to classes 2 and 3, they first reconsidered the classifications already made to those classes to identify men who should have been, so it was claimed, assigned to class 1 in the first place. A brief note in the 20 June 1918 York Republican (right) explains:

Sheriff Miller, County Clerk Beck, Dr. McKinley and T. W. Smith are this week engaged in going over all the questionnaires canvassed during the winter for the purpose of advancing from deferred classes to class number one about 168 or 169 men. The government needs the men, and it has been found that there is a large number of men placed in deferred classes by the state board through exemption claims of varied kinds who will be compelled to go up higher. Many of these had been originally placed by the local board in class one but were overruled when the questionnaires went to the state board. Now comes the necessity for more men from York county for class one, hence the reconsideration and revision of the questionnaires by the local board, under orders from higher authority.

The announcement carefully absolves the local authorities from responsibility, as it claims that many misclassifications were the fault of the state board and notes that the York County officials are reclassifying men now “under orders from higher authority.” Of course, the announcement also admits at the outset the real motivation for the reclassification: “The government needs the men.” The 168 or 169 additional men from York County would form part of a larger group of 4,000 men called up from Nebraska, which itself was part of a nationwide call-up of 220,000 soldiers (“Four Thousand from Nebraaska,” The York Republican, 27 June 1918, p. 8).

Several weeks after the initial announcement, the local board reported the reclassification of seventy-one men from classes 2, 3, and 4 to class 1 (The York Republican, 11 July 1918, p. 1). The board also noted that ninety-two men had appealed their reclassifications to the district board that oversaw York County and a number of other local boards.* One week later the paper reported the disposition of seventy-seven of these appeals (what happened with the other fifteen is unknown at this point): seventy-three of the men were assigned to class 1, which implies to me that their appeals did not lead to the desired outcome. 

Among this group of seventy-seven was one Henry B. Buller, son of Benjamin and grandson of David and Helena Zielke Buller (thus a nephew of Peter D and a cousin to Peter P). As shown in the extract to the right, Henry’s classification was changed from an original 2-C to a 1-I. These more specific designations (a number plus a letter) reflect the categories of the questionnaire that all the first registrants had completed in late 1917 and early 1918.

Comparing Henry’s reclassification with the questionnaire, we discover that his original 2-C label designated him a “necessary skilled farm laborer in [a] necessary agricultural enterprise.” However, his new classification, 1-I, indicated that Henry, the registrant, was “not deferred and not included in any of above divisions” (i.e., the specific situations listed above). In short, Henry, along with the other York County men who were reclassified to one or another of the class 1 designations, was moved to the front of the line for the anticipated call-up.

From one perspective, this reclassification was warranted: Henry was a single man who worked for John Goossen; he was not, in other words, indispensable to a family farming operation or even to the support of his family. However, it is difficult to understand why Henry was assigned to 2-C in the first place. His draft registration card states explicitly that he claimed a religious exemption from the draft due to his “Mennonite conviction.” We saw earlier that Frank D. Buller, likewise a single man who worked for someone else (his brother), was assigned to class 5 and given a permanent exemption. Why did Henry not receive the same classification? 

I cannot answer that question but wonder if the two men completed their questionnaires differently, which produced their different outcomes. Without seeing the documents themselves, we have no way of knowing with certainty, but I wonder if Frank claimed the exemption on his questionnaire, while Henry, for whatever reason, claimed to be an essential farm worker and did not claim a religious exemption on the questionnaire. If the local and district boards looked only at the questionnaires, not the registration cards, they would have had no reason to grant a religious exemption to those who claimed it on the registration card but not on the questionnaire.

In any event, we read in the 10 October 1918 York Republican (p. 1) that Henry was among a group of 102 men called up to service. The announcement reads:

Called to Colors

——————

Group of 102 Eligibles Called to Service

They will report for entrainment for Fort Kearney, Linda Vista, Cal., between October 21 and 25 being part of Nebraska’s October quota of 6,000 men.

Henry was not the only Buller called up in the second half of 1918. Since the previous post (here), I have discovered that Andrew Buller was also called up. The 5 September 1918 York Republican (p. 1) reports that Andrew was among a group of call-ups in early September. 

Camp Grant at Rockford, Ill., is the destination of twenty-four stalwart sons of York county who leave tomorrow (Friday [= 6 September]) to enter upon their service for the government. They will leave on train No. 40 in the afternoon over the Burlington.

With this final piece of information in hand, we can summarize the experiences of the five Bullers of York County who were part of the first (5 June 1917) registration of potential draftees.

• Andrew Buller: claimed religious exemption on his registration card; classification unknown; called up to service in September 1918
• David Adam Buller: claimed religious exemption on his registration card; assigned to class 4 (due to support of wife and three children); not called up
• Frank D. Buller: claimed exemption due to operations; classification unknown; called up to service in May 1918
• Frank P. Buller: claimed religious exemption on his registration card; assigned to class 5 (permanent exemption); not called up
• Henry B. Buller: claimed religious exemption on his registration card; assigned first to class 2-C, then reclassified as 1-I; called up to service in October 1918

Of the five Bullers who were part of the first registration, four initially claimed a religious exemption, but only one (Frank P.) was permanently exempted. Two (Andrew, Henry B.) who claimed an exemption were assigned to class 1 and called up in September–October 1918. The one Buller who did not claim a religious exemption (Frank D.) was the first to be called up.

In the end, it appears that a claim of religious exemption on a registration card counted for little. The real determinative factor was, I think, how a registrant completed the questionnaire. Although we cannot say for certain, it seems that those who made a clear claim of religious exemption on the questionnaire (e.g., presumably Frank P.) had it granted, while those who sought exemption on some other grounds (e.g., Henry B. and Frank D.) faced the very real danger of having all exemption denied and being moved to the front of the mobilization line. 

* The Selective Service system within each state had three levels: (1) the local (generally county) boards registered potential draftees, processed their questionnaires, issued call-up orders for individuals, and oversaw the transport of draftees to their training camps; (2) district boards had charge of, on average, thirty local boards and reviewed their decisions; (3) the state headquarters, operating under the authority and oversight of the governor, coordinated the work of the various boards within the state, including the apportionment of call-up quotas. For further details, see Center of Military History 1937, 370–72.

Work Cited

Center of Military History. 1937. Zone of the Interior: Organization and Activities of the War Department. Vol. 3.1 of Order of Battle of the United States Land Forces in the World War. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army. Reprint, 1988. Available online here.

In the News: Who’s a Good Speller?

Another of York County’s newspapers was The New Teller, which published a weekly edition for over fifty years, from 1897 through the early part of 1949. Like most local, especially rural, newspapers of that time, the news reports included the daily events of average citizens.

As we saw earlier in the post about a visit to Uncle Pete (here), the small towns surrounding York often had their own regular columns. In The New Teller, the Lushton column was titled “Round-about Lushton.” That column for the 17 March 1943 issue includes several items of interest.

Paragraph 2, for example, reported that “Daniel, Darlene and Carl Buller were Sunday guests of Robert and Roxanna Schaldecker.” After another six paragraphs tell of various in-town and out-of-town visits, the column turns to happenings at the Lushton school (pictured to the right).  The report begins with the upper grades.

The upper classmen are beginning work on the three-act comedy “Me and My Shadow” which they expect to present on the sixteenth of April. Save the date, please.

     With the smell of spring in the air, there is talk of including horseshoe pitching … and tennis as spring sports.

Then follow reports from the Grammar Room (fifth to seventh grades) and the Primary Room (first to fourth grades). Darlene and Daniel are mentioned in the former, Carl in the latter. The school reports are as follows (I transcribe the newspaper account at the end of this post).

Several details catch my eye. First, the seventh-grade first-aid training was almost certainly part of the broader national war effort. Although the article does not mention the Victory Corps, many schools around the country included first-aid training in the Victory Corps programs (see here), so Lushton was right in step with those sorts of initiatives.

Second, the Lushton school also promoted the purchase of defense stamps. The stamps, which sold for 10¢, 25¢, or 50¢ (perhaps other amounts as well), were collected in booklets; once a booklet was filled, it could be turned in for a $25 war bond (for photographs, see here and scroll down). The defense stamps were created to give children an affordable way to participate in the war-bond effort.

Finally, the answer to the question posed in the title of the post? See the last sentence of the newspaper report!

Grammar Room: Of the seven pupils in the grammar room, three girls, Joan Snider, Darlene Buller and Shirley Lloyd are in the fifth grade, and four boys, Teddy Snider, Robert Schaldecker, Daniel Buller, and Thomas Klundt are in the seven grade. Each Thursday afternoon the seventh grade and their teacher meet with the First Aid class. They are learning how to bandage different parts of the body, care for wounds and administer artificial respiration. All enjoy helping Uncle Sam by buying defense stamps. When a total of one dollar of stamps is purchased by all the members of the room a white star is placed on a large blue V. Educational films are enjoyed by all each week. Miss Roma Bellows is the teacher.

Primary Room: The enrollment in the primary room is eleven. There are six boys in the first grade, three in the second grade, one in the third grade and one in fourth grade. The first grade includes a pair of twins, Richard and Ronald Battreall. The first six weeks in the second semester ended Tuesday of this week. Those in the primary room having perfect attendance for this period are Eugene Carter and Floyd Ondrak. Our last reading race was in trying to see whose snow man would stand the longest. A poor lesson melted the snowman away. Kent Parsons was the winner of this contest. Max Ronne has been absent the past week due to illness. Carl Buller is ahead on our spelling honor roll.

Bullers Registered for the Draft 5

The previous post ended with a report that, by early October 1917, York County had met its initial quota of 129 draftees. The initial registration and call-up had gone well enough, but federal authorities recognized that the process needed to be refined. Sedgwick’s history of York County offers a helpful explanation:

Following the drawing on July 20th [the national drawing of numbers], the local selective board had proceeded during the summer and fall months to call in groups of registrants as their numbers were reached, give them a physical examination, and receive and determine upon their claims for exemption upon the various grounds designated. That method of calling all men as their numbers were reached and discharging or accepting rested upon the general assumption that a specific number of men were known to be needed for military service at a given time, and, therefore, enough registrants should be called by the county board in the sequence of their order numbers and selected according to the laws and regulations, until a number of qualified men has been obtained equal to the board’s current quota, and the remainder discharged or exempted.

     That was necessarily adopted for the early stage of the war, and proved effective for the purpose whether in all instances absolutely fair to all concerned or not. But experience was showing that it was wasteful, and would grow more ineffective as the quotas grew larger and speed became more necessary in meeting the quotas. So, late in the year of 1917 a new method was worked out by the authorities of the War Department. This became effective on December 15, 1917, at which time the first call for 687,000 men had been more than filled by local boards and a lull in the work presented the opportunity for changing the plan.

     The essential change was this: First, that the physical examination followed, instead of preceding, the determination of the claim for discharge or exemption; second, the registrant was required to fill out a document that will always occupy a historical place in American life hereafter—the questionnaire. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:832, here)

We covered the draft questionnaire in a previous post (here), so here we need only to supplement and clarify that earlier discussion. First, the questionnaire was mailed to men who had registered during the initial registration, on 5 June 1917. Presumably it was not sent to those who had already been mustered into service or even to those who had already gone through the physical examination and interview at the local draft board; I have not read that anywhere, but it stands to reason. Second, earlier I wondered about the resources available to registrants who would have found the sixteen-page questionnaire daunting. Once again, Sedgwick supplies an answer.

The attorneys of York met with the legal advisory board in December and arrangements were made for handling the work incident to the making out of the questionnaires which were then being mailed to the registered men at regular intervals. The legal advisory hoard consisted of Judge Corcoran, Judge Spurlock, and Senator Sandall. There were twelve lawyers, besides these gentlemen, and two attorneys who sat with a member of the hoard each day to attend to the business as it was required.

     Each registrant was required to make out his own statement unless he was unable to write. But the two assistants did what was permissible in giving advice and assistance subject to the rules as interpreted by the member of the legal advisory hoard and the provost marshal. They met in the juryroom of the District Court room at the courthouse regularly each day at 9 o’clock until the close of the specified time. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:833, here)

As earlier with the list of registrants and their assigned numbers, the information was communicated to those affected through newspapers. The 14 December 1918 York Republican, for example, included a substantial article explaining what registrants could expect from the questionnaire (for a larger version, see here).

The questionnaire was designed, above all, to collect the information needed for local draft boards to determine which registrants were exempt and which were subject to call-up and service. Beyond that, the questionnaire also provided a classification system for draft boards to identify which registrants were to be called up first, which second, and so on. A previous post covered the five classes, but the summary quoted there bears repeating.

Those in Class I were eligible for immediate military service. They included unskilled workers and those engaged in industrial or agricultural enterprises not considered essential. Class I also included bachelors, and husbands and fathers who either habitually failed to support their wives and families or who were not usefully employed. … Those temporarily deferred until after Class I men had been drafted, Classes II and III, included married men usefully employed, and skilled industrial and agricultural workers engaged in necessary enterprises.… Class IV, not to be drafted until after the other classes, included married men whose dependents had no other means of support and the heads of necessary business or agrarian enterprises. (Chambers 1987, 191)

As noted earlier, anyone assigned to class V was permanently exempt. With that background, we are now ready to examine how this worked out in practice, with a particular focus on how it affected Bullers in York County.

We see in the 25 January 1918 announcement in the York Republican to the right the beginning of a list of men deemed eligible for war service, that is, eligible to be drafted. The full list includes roughly 325 men, with each name accompanied by a number and a class designation.* Each group of names is led by a date (e.g., December 26 here), which seems to reflect the date that the local draft board decided on the registrants listed.

What is of most interest to us is the classification assignments. The six men shown to the right are all assigned to class 5, meaning they were permanently exempt. Not all men were so fortunate. The list for 29 December, for example, includes eight names, six of whom were assigned to class 1, meaning they were among the first who would be called up. 

Only one Buller appeared in this list: David Adam Buller. As we noted earlier (here), he was a distant relative with an unknown connection to our family. He was assigned to class 4, which as we read above was reserved for married men who were the sole support of their families. In fact, David Adam Buller’s draft registration card notes that he was married with three children, which justified this classification. What is a little curious is that David also claimed an exemption on religious grounds, namely, that he was a member of a Mennonite Brethren church. Why was he not granted a religious exemption? Did the local draft board not fully understand how to classify religious exemptions? Or was assigning someone to class 4 perhaps a practical approach based on the assumption that class 4 men would never be called up? For the moment, we must leave those questions unanswered.

New listings of men eligible for the draft continued to be published during the first months of 1918. On 15 February, the list included Frank P. Buller, the brother of David Adam Buller. He was assigned to class 5, permanent exemption. Frank’s classification may give us a clue as to how the system worked for Mennonites and other nonresistant groups. According to his registration card, Frank (Franz) was a single man who worked for his brother. Clearly, he did not meet any of the class 4 conditions. Like his brother David, he claimed a religious exemption, with the explanation that he was Mennonite. It is reasonable to deduce from this (at least for the time being) that most religious exemptions were assigned to class 5, which ensured that the registrant would never be called up. However, registrants who claimed a religious exemption but who had other reasons for exemption might be assigned to another class, as in the case of David Adam Buller. To be clear, we do not know this for certain, but it seems reasonable.

Frank D. Buller was not so lucky. Frank was from another Buller family distantly related to us. On his registration card he claimed an exemption, but it was not based on his religious commitment. Rather, he asked for an exemption because he had had two operations. Apparently the draft board did not find his claim justified. Thus the 3 May 1918 York Republican reported that Frank and thirteen other men left that day for basic training at Fort Logan in Denver. Since this was still early in the draft, it is reasonable to think that Frank had been assigned to class 1.

Fifteen Bullers in York County registered for the World War I draft. Five of those fifteen were part of the initial registration, on 5 June 1917; the others registered in June–September 1918. Of these first five Bullers, we know that one (Frank P.) was permanently exempted, presumably on religious grounds; one (David Adam) was assigned to class 4 and thus was never called up; one (Frank D.) was drafted and sent off to basic training in May of 1918; and two (Andrew and Henry B.) were included among the list of registrants (see here). We hear nothing further about Andrew (at least as far as I can discover), but Henry B., like us a member of the broader David and Helena Zielke Buller family, does appear on the pages of The York Republican. His situation introduces another complexity into our story of Bullers (and Mennonites and men more generally) in the World War I draft. Of course, that wrinkle merits its own post, which will follow in due course.

* The lists of men eligible for conscription contain several curiosities. First, some of the names included here do not appear in the earlier list of York County’s 1,594 registrants. Most notably, David Adam Buller appears in the 3 January 1918 list of eligibles, but he was not listed in what was billed earlier as the comprehensive list of registrants. It is unclear why some registrants appear only now.

Second, the numbers given in the lists of eligibles are not the random numbers assigned in anticipation of the national drawing. Rather, they are the registration card numbers. David Adam Buller’s registration card was numbered 769, and that is his number in the list of eligibles. Likewise, his brother Frank’s registration card was numbered 1391, and that is his number in the 15 February 1918 list of eligibles.

Works Cited

Chambers, John Whiteclay, II. 1987. To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America. New York: Free Press.

Sedgwick, T. E., ed. 1921. York County Nebraska and Its People. 2 vols. Chicago: Clarke. Available online here and here.

Bullers Registered for the Draft 4

The first three posts in this series explored the World War I draft registration cards that certain members of our family were required to complete (here), the various Bullers, both closely and distantly related, in York and Hamilton Counties who registered for the draft (here), and the policies and processes of both the registration and the draft (here). At the end of the third post I mentioned that a final post would look back to how the registration and draft were implemented in York County, where our immediate family lived. As it turns out, there is more information available than can be included in a single post, so this post will not be the last word on the matter.

For the most part, when the United States’ entered World War I on 6 April 1917, its citizens responded with enthusiastic support. The people of York County typified the spirit of the day. Even before the draft was implemented, the York-based Company M of the Nebraska National Guard issued a call for twenty volunteers in preparation for their mobilization (Sedgwick 1921, 2:801–2, here). The recruits were added in short order. The real push, however, would come with the first draft registration and subsequent call-up.

The first registration took place less than two months later, on 5 June 1917. T. E. Sedgwick’s history of York County, written in 1921, only a few years after World War I, when memories were still fresh, offers a fulsome account.

In common with every other county in the state, or community in the country, June 5, 1917, will stand out as a red-letter day in the history of York County. Since the foundation of the Republic, the American people had inherited a deep-seated prejudice against anything akin to universal compulsory military service. To ask almost ten millions of men, between the ages of twenty-one and thirty-one, reared and educated to the idea of absolute freedom from any form of military service except such as they might voluntarily assume, to register for possible military service, seemed to many almost a dangerous risk for the federal Government to run. But it proved decisively that this tradition was more than offset by a popular will to win the war, and so imbued were the American people with the determination to perpetuate their democratic ideals, and so deeply impressed were they with the knowledge that it was not only necessary to raise an army, but to do it quickly, that the whole nation registered 9,586,508 men on that notable June 5th. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:805, here)

The York County registration took place in twenty-one precincts spread across the county, each one staffed with two registrars. Sedgwick continues:

York County responded on June 5th without a protest, and there was not a sign of ill feeling, not a bit of display of disloyalty, nor a single disturbance. On the contrary, there were evidences of patriotism on every hand. The twenty-one registration precincts in the county were appropriately decorated, and while the young men who gathered to register were not at all hilarious, they were registering with the air of young men willing to do their bit in whatever capacity they might be called to serve. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:805–6, here)

The York County Commercial Club toured the registration points around the county. As a measure of the patriotic fervor of the day, Sedgwick comments as follows about the Club’s visit to the Brown precinct (located north of the Henderson Township): “while Brown is a Mennonite settlement it had registered the largest percentage of the eligibles of any of them. The registration at 3:30 was forty-nine out of a possible fifty-three” (Sedgwick 1921, 2:806, here). 

Sedgwick also lists the names of all 1,500+ registrants in York County (1921, 2:807–18), including Henry B. and Andrew Buller in the Brown precinct and Frank P. and Frank D. Buller in the Henderson B precinct. Only Henry B. is a close relatives of ours; he was the son of Benjamin, who was the son of David and Helena Zielke Buller (see the earlier discussion here). 

With the registration complete, the next step was to decide which of the registrants would be called up first. Once again, Sedgwick offers an informative explanation:

After York County’s sons registered on June 5th, the next step in the selection of those who should be called into actual military service was undertaken by assigning to each registrant a number, proceeding serially from one upwards, the series being separate and independent for each local board area in the country. Thus each registrant in York County could be identified by citing his York County local board number and his York County serial number. The local board, by which name the Selective Service Board for the county has been commonly designated, proceeded to number the cards with red ink numbers, consecutively, without regard to alphabetical arrangement. Five lists were then prepared, one retained for the records of the local board, one copy posted in a conspicuous place in the courthouse, one copy given out for publication by the press, and the two remaining copies furnished to the state authorities at Lincoln and the office of the provost marshal general at Washington. In order then to designate with the utmost impartiality the sequence in which the registrants qualified for military service should be called as needed, a single national drawing was held on July 20, 1917, for those who had registered on June 5th. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:827, here)

The national lottery, held in Washington, D.C., consisted of a random drawing of 10,500 numbers. The order of the numbers drawn determined the order in which the registrants, who had been assigned corresponding numbers by their local (county) boards, would be called up. So, for example, when the number 258 was drawn first, it meant that all those registrants who had been assigned that number by a local board would be the first within that area to be called to service. The fact that the numbers had been assigned randomly by local boards before the drawing took place, coupled with the randomness of the drawing itself, ensured that the call-up would be as fair to all as possible. For a fuller account of the drawing, see the 21 July 1917 Washington Post report available here and the more recent description given in Lundeberg 2017.

The 20 July 1917 issue of the The York Republican offers us a concrete example of how the registration numbering system worked. In the extract of page 2 to the right, one sees that each registrant in York County was assigned a number, starting with the first name in the first precinct and proceeding consecutively through to the last name in the last precinct, one Elmer D. Wendell of York’s Fourth Ward, who was number 1594 in York County.

All four Bullers mentioned above are included in the full list: Andrew was 844, Henry B. was 845, Frank P. was 937, and Frank D. was 938.

The registrants and their numbers were listed in the paper, of course, because this was the most efficient means of informing registrants of their status. The newspaper account also provides us additional information about the initial draft. It begins by stating: “The following is the official list of those liable to conscription in York county and the serial number by which they will be drawn. 129 of these will be called upon by the government to serve in one way or another.” Based on this information, we can calculate that the initial call-up was for roughly 8 percent of all the registrants in York County (129 is 8 percent of 1,594). 

As we learn from Sedgwick, however, filling the quota of 129 draftees was not so simple.

Physical examination under the draft for the purpose of securing 129 soldiers from York County began at the courthouse last Monday morning. Under the direction of Doctor McKinley, assisted by Doctor King, an average of about fifty men a day have been physically examined. The board proper consists of Sheriff Miller, County Clerk Beck, and Doctor McKinley. Nearly fifty per cent of those examined are disqualified for physical reasons, and the claims of exemption are running well above that figure. Some of the dependency claims are far fetched, and the closest examination will be given all claims.

     It is now quite certain that the second call for 245 men will be pretty well exhausted before the required 129 men are secured. All claims for exemption on occupational grounds will have to be submitted to the district board, and appeal lies from exemption allowances. If appeal on dependency grounds is denied, then the man so denied has the right of appeal to the district board. Also, if anyone believes that an exemption has been wrongfully allowed, the one so aggrieved may appeal. It is a common expression that the County Council of Defense should be represented when exemptions are allowed on claims of dependency and see to it that all such claims are well founded. (Sedgwick 1921, 2:829, quoting an unnamed August 1917 source; see here)

Slowly but steadily the York County draft board collected its quota of draftees. By 6 September the first six men left the York train terminal for Camp Fulston in Fort Riley, Kansas. Eight days later a group of fifty-two followed, and on 6 October the final seventy-one left to join their comrades at the camp.

We do not know how many registrants were examined and interviewed in order to fill the county’s quota. If 50 percent were disqualified for physical reasons and more than that claimed exemption (not that all of them were granted an exemption), it would not be unreasonable to imagine that roughly five hundred men were summoned before the draft board. Perhaps this is what is meant by the phrase “second call for 245 men”: the local board issued two separate calls for 245 men in order to meet the assigned quota of 129 draftees.

So ended the first registration and its call-up. As we learned in an earlier post, the Selective Service System changed the registration and classification process after the first registrations. There is much to say about those changes and additional information about Bullers in the draft, all of which will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Works Cited

Lundeberg, Annika. 2017. “Tiny Capsules, National Service: The Draft during World War I.” National Museum of American History. Available online here.

Sedgwick, T. E., ed. 1921. York County Nebraska and Its People. 2 vols. Chicago: Clarke. Available online here and here.

In the News: Visiting Uncle Pete

Although I often worry that someday Buller Time will run out of material to explore or stories to share, I am comforted by the fact that historical resources relevant to our family are becoming accessible more quickly than I am able to discover, digest, and share them. The real danger is not that we will run out of material but that we will not have time to explore all the information that is available to us today.

Tonight’s post offers a good example of the fascinating resources waiting to be discovered. I have been aware for some time of Newspapers.com, which is a resource of Ancestry.com, but until several weeks ago I had never paid the money or taken the time to explore it. Newspapers.com, according to its promotional materials, “is an online database of historical newspapers from around the world.… It’s the largest online newspaper archive, with over 300 million pages from more than 11,100 newspapers” (see here).

Obviously, not all of the 11,000+ newspapers will be of interest to us, but we will, I am happy to report, find intriguing pieces of our family history tucked away in one or another of the thirty-four York County papers (308,218 pages) and the twenty-six Hamilton County papers (114,358 pages) included in the archive. This will, of course, provide us with a great deal of material for the months and years to come.

We kick off this informal series of posts, titled “In the News,” with a taste of one kind of information that we will find in papers of the first half of the twentieth century. Although the York County papers of this time frame did report on national and international news, they also had a decidedly local focus. Thus these papers typically included brief reports of the activities of the people in various communities within the primary subscription area. So, for example, one finds reports from McCool Junction, Bradshaw, Benedict, Arborville, Henderson, and even Lushton.

One of York County’s leading newspapers during this time was The York Republican, which published from 1875 through 1955. For the purposes of this post, we turn our attention first to the 12 August 1943 issue (page 7). I have uploaded a scan of the full page here, but I include the section of greatest interest below: the report of the activities of people living in and around Lushton at that time.

In case you missed it, the third paragraph of the right-hand column reads:

Rev. and Mrs. Carter and Eugene and Mathilda, Esther, Darlene and Carl Buller left Sunday afternoon for Iowa to visit relatives. The Buller children will visit their uncle and aunt, Mr. and Mrs. Pete Buller. 

A related report appears in the 19 August 1943 issue (The York Republican was a weekly newspaper):

Reverend Carter was pastor of the United Brethren church in Lushton, which is where Chris and Malinda and family worshiped at that time. The Carters were obviously trustworthy, since Grandpa and Grandma allowed them to take four of their children to another state for nearly two weeks. My best guess is that the travelers left on Sunday, 1 August 1943, and returned on Friday, 13 August. If we subtract one day for the drive there and one day for the return drive, this would mean a visit of eleven days, which fits well enough with the newspaper report of “about ten days.” Later in the 19 August issue we read that Lushton schools were to open “next Monday,” which was presumably 23 August. 

Who could have imagined that we would know exactly what these four Buller kids were doing in August 1943? The newspaper reports are admittedly minor, but they do give us a small glimpse of life in the Chris Buller family in the early 1940s. There are many more glimpses to come, some of which are minor and mundane, but some of which are both significant and surprising. 

Sarah Siebert Buller in 1900

In a previous post (here) I noted that Peter D Buller’s obituary located him “near Lushton” at the time of his death, which led to several questions: Where were Peter and family living at that time? When did the family leave their original farm in Hamilton County? Why did they move? Unfortunately, my additional research into the situation muddies the waters even more.

Lushton, if you recall, is located in the southeast corner of Henderson Township in York County. If Peter D lived near Lushton when he passed away, he would have been in York County and in either Henderson Township or perhaps Hays Township farther east. However, the 1900 U.S. Census, taken three years after Peter D’s death, has his widow Sarah Siebert Buller living in Farmers Valley Township of Hamilton County, as seen in the top portion of the census page below: Sarah and children and a servant are listed toward the bottom of the figure. (For a larger version of the complete page, see here.)

This is the same township of the same county where Peter D and Sarah first established their farm after moving from Molotschna to the United States. This raises several important question: Did Peter D and family actually leave the farm to live near Lushton? If so, did Sarah and the children return to the family farm after his death, or where they living someplace else in the same township?  

Although we (or at least I) cannot determine exactly where they lived within Farmers Valley Township, we can make a reasonably good case that they were not back on the farm. We begin by noting all of Peter D and Sarah’s neighbors on a portion of an 1888 plat map for Farmers Valley Township.

The Peter Buller farm is middle right. Surrounding him are, among others, Isaac Brown (or Braun), John Sparling, Henry Pankratz, Albert Williams, John Penner, Klas Friesen, Abram Dalke, and Bernhard Friesen. When we compare these names to the 1885 census sheet containing Peter and Sarah, we find nearly all of them listed before or after Peter’s entry. In other words, the list of names on the 1895 census roughly matches the names listed on the 1888 plat map.

This is not surprising, when we consider that census takers during that time traveled from house to house and farm to farm entering the names and other information for all the residents living there. The order of the names in the census reveals the census taker’s journey to record the information. Thus in the 1885 census, Henry Pankratz, who lived across the road to the north of Peter and Sarah, appears before them, while John Penner, who lived immediately to the west, is listed immediately after them. Then follow Abram Dalke, Bernhard Friesen, and so on. 

How does this help us interpret the 1900 census in which, three years after Peter’s death, Sarah is now the head of household? By and large, the names clustered around Sarah and the children are different from what they were in the 1895 census. Henry Pankratz, I should note, appears immediately after her, which might imply that Sarah was back on the original Buller farm. However, this appears to be nothing more than a coincidence, since many of the names we saw clustered in the 1885 census—John Sparling, Issac Braun, John Penner, and Bernhard Friesen—are clustered together again but appear four pages earlier than Sarah in the census, which would imply some geographical distance between them and Sarah. If they still lived close to each other, we would expect them to appear close to each other in the census.

It is possible, of course, that Sarah and family were living on the original Buller farm and that the census taker recorded their names and those of the Henry Pankratz family out of order. However, the simpler explanation is that they were now living somewhere else in Farmers Valley Township. Given the fact that two of the names listed before Sarah (Peter Griess and Fred Sigrist) lived in the extreme southeast corner of the township, it seems most likely that she lived in that vicinity, somewhere near Hamilton County’s earliest settlement: Farmers Valley (see here).

Whether that notion proves true remains to be seen. For now all we can say with reasonable certainty is that Peter D and family did leave the farm sometime prior to his death in 1897, that they were living near Lushton when he passed away, and that Sarah and her children moved yet again before the 1900 census to an unknown location in Farmers Valley Township of Hamilton County. As often, the more we learn, the more questions we have.

Bullers Registered for the Draft 3

Unlike the first two posts in this series, this one will not deal with any particular Buller; rather, this post will take a step back to describe the registration and draft process as it evolved from the first registration through to the third. In so doing, it will help us appreciate what the various Bullers who did register went through during this interesting time.

The U.S. did not have much experience organizing a military draft; in fact, the country had previously conducted a draft only once, during the Civil War of the 1860s. That draft had been “widely denounced as tyrannical, oppressive and un-American” (Chambers 1987, 41). The draft provision permitted wealthy individuals to “purchase” substitutes or to pay a $300 commutation fee that allowed them to avoid service (52). So it was that the Civil War, at least in the North, became regarded as “a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight” (41). In other words, the country’s only experience with military conscription had been negative.

This brief background sheds important light on the U.S.’s next organization of a military draft, after the country’s 1917 entry into World War I. The driving goal of the draft, of course, was to raise an adequate number of troops so that the U.S. could contribute to an Allied victory over the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire, and Bulgaria). Its guiding principles were to conduct the draft fairly, with no privileging of one class over another, and intelligently, with minimal disruption to the economic health or social fabric of the nation.

So, for example, workers in industries vital to the war effort and the economy at large were exempt from the draft, provided that they remained with their current jobs. In addition, husbands who were essential to the financial well-being of a family could also be exempted from the draft. Certain local and federal governmental officials were also excused, as were ministers and students at theological schools and, of course, members of churches who historically had committed themselves to nonresistance.

It is important to distinguish between the registration and the actual draft. All men within the specified age range were required, without exception and under threat of a year in prison, to register. However, some who registered had a legitimate claim of exemption from being drafted (see the earlier discussion toward the end of the post here). Determining whether or not someone was exempt or subject to the draft was the job of a local (e.g., county) draft board, which typically included three individuals: “the local sheriff as executive officer, the county clerk as custodian of records, and the county medical officer as the person in charge of physical examinations” (Chambers 1987, 41). That board was given the dual task of ruling on claims of exemption and meeting its government-imposed quota of potential draftees.

Complications and confusion arose after the first registration, on 5 June 1917. Some local boards granted more exemptions than were warranted, while other boards granted too few (e.g., denial of exemptions to African American men because they were not thought vital to the financial well-being of their families; see further Geva 2011).

To bring order to the chaos, the Selective Service developed both a classification system for organizing registered men and a sixteen-page questionnaire designed to provide the information necessary for the local boards to assign men to the correct class. The classification system was reasonably straightforward.

Those in Class I were eligible for immediate military service. They included unskilled workers and those engaged in industrial or agricultural enterprises not considered essential. Class I also included bachelors, and husbands and fathers who either habitually failed to support their wives and families or who were not usefully employed. … Those temporarily deferred until after Class I men had been drafted, Classes II and III, included married men usefully employed, and skilled industrial and agricultural workers engaged in necessary enterprises.… Class IV, not to be drafted until after the other classes, included married men whose dependents had no other means of support and the heads of necessary business or agrarian enterprises. (Chambers 1987, 191)

Men assigned to Class V (e.g., federal or state officials, ministers, seminary students, those physically or morally unfit to serve) were permanently exempt from the draft. One would think that Mennonites and other men claiming a religious exemption would have been assigned to Class V, but it seems that they were treated differently. This becomes evident when we look carefully at the questionnaire mentioned above.

As noted, the questionnaire was designed primarily to gather the information needed for the local board to make an informed decision about a registrant’s proper classification (for the full questionnaire, see here). To that end, the first page immediately asks the registrant to choose the correct classification based on his circumstances. So, for example, a “single man without dependent relatives” was to put an X in line A of Class I, whereas a “necessary skilled farm laborer in necessary agricultural enterprise” was to mark line C of Class II. What I find interesting is that religious exemption is not included in any of the classes but appears in its own section beneath the other five (see the very bottom of the figure below). 

Why were religious exemptions not included in Class V? Because, although they were exempted from participation in military activity, they were not “exempted from service in any capacity that the President shall declare to be noncombatant” (HR 3545, §4; see here). That is, they could be drafted, as it were, into any noncombatant role that the president so designated. If I understand correctly, some Mennonites were assigned to farms in need of labor under the terms of this law (see Hartzler 1922, 105–9).

In addition to making the claim on page 1, those seeking an exemption on religious grounds also were required to complete a section on page 7 documenting the validity of their claim.

Some of the information requested, such as the number of adherents of the registrant’s church in the U.S. and when the church adopted a policy of opposition to war, would not have been common knowledge. One wonders how much help local congregations provided to members completing the questionnaire.

Although we cannot say for certain, it seems likely that all of the Bullers who registered for the draft in York or Hamilton Counties were spared induction into the army. Nevertheless, they, along with all other men eligible for the World War I draft, had to invest considerable time and effort in order to comply with the demands of the Selective Service Act of 18 May 1917.

In a final post in this series, we will turn our attention back toward York County and read a contemporary account of how the conduct of the World War I draft proceeded there.

Works Cited

Chambers, John Whiteclay, II. 1987. To Raise an Army: The Draft Comes to Modern America. New York: Free Press. Available for checkout here.

Geva, Dorit. 2011. “Different and Unequal? Breadwinning, Dependency Deferments, and the Gendered Origins of the U.S. Selective Service System.” Armed Forces and Society 37:598–618.

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

Peter D Buller’s Obituary

From time to time in our wanderings through our family history, we have had been confronted with the fact that sometimes the story remembered does not match the story as it happened. If my own memory can be trusted, we first encountered this phenomenon when considering the name of the ship on which Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller traveled across the Atlantic to the shores of the U.S. The Buller Family Record is quite clear that they, along with Johann Siebert and others of his family, crossed on the S.S. Vaderland. However, that family memory was incorrect, as we learned in a September 2014 post (here). In fact, the entire group crossed the Atlantic on the S.S. Switzerland.

I recount that story as background to the subject of this post: the death of Peter D Buller. I have been told, and I believe this to be the current family memory, that Peter D died at the young age of fifty-two of a heart attack. However, several days ago I stumbled on his obituary in the 21 October 1897 issue of the Christlicher Bundesbote (p. 8), which calls into question the notion that he died suddenly (one would think) of a heart attack.

The published obituary appears below to the right (a transcription of the German is included at the end of this post; for the original scan of the entire page, see here). Peter’s obituary, preceded by the heading “Gestorben” (died), is the second item in a section titled “Familien-Nachrichten,” family news. (The first item reports happier news, the marriage of Heinrich Peters and Anna Dyck.) Peter’s obituary reads as follows:

Buller—On 28 September, near Lushton, Nebraska, after a long illness, Brother Peter Buller, aged fifty-two years, eight months, and eighteen days. The deceased leaves a deeply bereaved widow and ten children to mourn the death of their father. The funeral took place on 1 October. Elder Peter Friesen delivered the funeral oration, on Job 16:22, to a large gathering in the home of the deceased, to which Elder Isaac Peters gave an introduction on Isa 57:2.

The phrase “nach langem Leiden” can be translated “after a long illness” (as above) or “after a long suffering,” but they both mean roughly the same thing. Peter D’s death was not quick, as one might expect from a heart attack. It is possible, of course, that he experienced a heart attack and then suffered for some time until he finally expired. However, the obituary on its own does not give that impression. The question thus remains: What exactly was the cause of Peter D Buller’s death at age fifty-two? For the present, we cannot say.

Several other details warrant attention. 

1. According to the obituary, Peter D and family were living near (bei) Lushton at that time. This raises several important questions. First, where were they living at that time? Second, why did the family leave their original farm in Hamilton County? In a September 2016 post (here) we learned that, under the terms of the Homestead Act, Peter D had been granted ownership of 80 acres in section 12 of the Farmer’s Valley Township on 21 January 1893 (he purchased the other 80 acres of that quarter). A little more than four years later, at the time of his death, he was living near Lushton. When did he move? Why did he move? These questions merit further exploration, but one wonders if Peter D’s sudden move from the Hamilton County farm was somehow connected to his “long illness.” Perhaps someday we will learn the answer to this question.

2. Peter’s funeral was held at his home, which was not unusual. What catches my eye is that the service was led by two elders from different churches. Peter Friesen was elder at the Bethesda Church; Isaac Peters had been an elder at Bethesda but had left that church, taking a significant number of members with him, to found, on 5 November 1882, the Ebenezer Mennonite Church a mile south of Henderson. (If you recall, Isaac Peters was Grandma Malinda’s great-grandfather; see here.) Why did both elders conduct Peter D’s service. The simplest explanation would be that Peter D had been a member of the Bethesda Church (thus the involvement of Elder Friesen) but had transferred to the church founded by Elder Peters (thus his presence). Of course, this is nothing more than conjecture that awaits confirmation or correction through the discovery of additional contemporary evidence.

We began this post by noting that sometimes the family story remembered does not match the story as it happened. Peter D’s obituary seems to be another case of this kind of disconnect. Beyond that, when we consider all the questions that arose from a one-paragraph obituary, we must also admit that we know a lot less than we might think. Although we will never construct a final, unalterable version of our family story, we should continue to fill in pieces as they come to light. Doing so honors the memories of all our ancestors who have gone before.

German original of Peter D Buller’s obituary

Am 28. September bei Lushton, Nebr., nach langem Leiden, Br. Peter Buller im Alter von 52 Jahren, 8 Monaten und 18 Tagen. Der Verstorbene hinterläßt eine tiefbetrübte Witwe und 10 Kinder, die den Tod des Vaters beweinen. Das Leichenbegängnis fand am 1. Okt. statt. Der Aelteste Peter Friesen hielt die Leichenrede in der Wohnung des Dahingeschiedenen zu einer zahlreichen Versammlung über Hiob 16, 22 wozu der Aelteste Isaak Peters die Einleitung machte über Jes. 57, 2.