Recently this blog series has been exploring the question of what happened to Peter D and Sarah’s farm after Peter passed away on 28 September 1897. We learned in the previous post (here) that the entire farm had been sold to people outside the family by 1923, but what happened to the farm during the intervening quarter century? Although we do not yet know all the details about the disposition of the farm, another piece of the puzzle fell into place today.
This puzzle piece was waiting to be discovered in the U.S. census records. As most readers know, the U.S. takes a national census every ten years. The practice began in 1790 and continues until this day. Before we look at a recent discovery relevant for our family history, it makes sense to set the stage by rehearsing the history of census taking in Hamilton County, Nebraska.
The first nonnative inhabitants of Hamilton County arrived in 1866 (Burr and Buck 1921, 1:116). The boundaries of the county were officially defined the following year (Fitzpatrick 1925, 70), the same year that Nebraska received statehood. Hamilton County officially came into existence shortly thereafter, in 1870. This was, of course, a census year, so we know the population of the county just four years after its first permanent settlers: Hamilton County was home to 42 dwellings housing 42 families, for a total population of 130.
By the time of the next census, in 1880, the population had exploded. Hamilton County was now divided into seventeen precincts, and its total population was 8,267. Peter D and Sarah Buller and children, who had arrived on these shores in 1879, were part of this population explosion. The family had settled in Farmers Valley precinct, which lay immediately to the southwest of Henderson, Nebraska. In 1880, the population of that one precinct far surpassed that for all of Hamilton County only ten years earlier: 104 dwellings housing 106 families, for a total Farmers Valley population of 621. Peter D and Sarah and family—John/Johann, Peter, Catherine/Katharina, David, Cornelius, Sarah, and Jacob—contributed nine souls to that number.
The numbers in the left-hand column have no significance other than to track and record the order in which a dwelling was counted and the order in which a family was counted, since it was not unusual for several families to occupy the same dwelling. In this case, the Buller house was the thirty-first counted, and the family was also thirty-first in the Farmers Valley census.
The U.S. is not the only governmental body that has conducted censuses; Nebraska also took a census of its population in 1885. Once again, we see population growth in Farmers Valley precinct, which had 128 dwellings housing 135 families, for a total population of 724. With the addition of Henry/Heinrich and Abraham, the Buller family now numbered eleven.
The 1885 census taker was not as careful most others, a matter to which we will return at some point. Suffice it to say for now that Sarah Siebert Buller was not three years old in 1885, as the third column after her name indicates.
Most of the records for the 1890 U.S. census were lost in a fire in 1921; none of the records for Nebraska survived. Consequently, the next census relevant for our family history is that taken in 1900, three years after Peter D’s passing. As expected, Sarah and her children still living at home—Jacob, Henry/Heinrich, and Mary/Maria—appear in the Farmers Valley census. We will return to the 1900 census in due course, but for now we turn our focus on the 1910 census.
Two things stand out in the 1910 Farmers Valley precinct census: the absence of Sarah Siebert Buller and the presence of her son Henry, his wife Mary/Maria, and their three children. The full-width scan below shows the large amount of information that was collected for each person: name, relation to head of household, sex, age race, marital status, years married, number of children born, number of children living, birthplace, father’s birthplace, mother’s birthplace, immigration year, naturalization status, occupation, industry, employment type, out-of-work status, weeks out of work, ability to read, ability to write, attendance at school, whether one owned or rented, mortgage status, type of household, whether farm or house, farm schedule, veteran status, whether a person was blind and/or deaf and dumb.
The extract immediately below is a little (!) easier to read.
Henry is listed as the head of the household, a male, white, twenty-eight, and married for eight years. His wife Mary (Maria Janzen) is female and, like Henry, white, twenty-eight, and married for eight years. They have a daughter named Mary/Maria, age seven; a daughter Anna, age two; and a son Henry less than a year old.
All that enough is interesting enough, but one additional observation is the real point of this post. First, although the numbers in the left-hand columns do not tell us anything definitive on their own, where Henry and family appear among the other families listed can. That is, if we assume that the census taker proceeded through the precinct in a relatively systematic way, moving from one dwelling to the next closest one, we may be able to determine an approximate location for Henry’s dwelling by seeing who is listed before and after him, which should indicate who his closest neighbors were. The list below, taken from the 1910 census, does precisely that:
88: John Klippenstein
89: Henry D. Rempel*
90: John J. Friesen*
91: John Penner*
92: Henry P. Buller
93: Henry Pankratz*
94: George K. Friesen
95: Isaac Braun*
96: Leana (Helena) Penner*
The names marked with an asterisk are directly attested in other censuses or plat maps as living close to the Peter D and Sarah farm. Given the fact that six out of the eight names listed before and after Henry are known to have lived in the same vicinity as the Buller farm, it is safe to conclude that, at least by 1910, Peter D and Sarah’s original farm was still inhabited by a family member, namely, their son Henry, his wife Mary/Maria, and their three children.
This leaves unanswered the question of who owned the farm. The 1900 and 1910 censuses offer further evidence on that topic, but that is the matter for another post.
Works Cited
Burr, George L, and O. O. Buck, eds. 1921. History of Hamilton and Clay Counties Nebraska. 2 vols. Clarke. Available online here.
Fitzpatrick, Lilian Linder A. M. 1925. Nebraska Place-Names. University of Nebraska Studies in Language, Literature, and Criticism. Available online here.
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