Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 16

The previous post in this series introduced the agricultural schedule from the 1880 census, a supplemental census form that recorded the activity on Peter D and Sarah’s farm roughly one year after they had arrived on this continent. This post will continue the examination of the agricultural schedule by comparing the Buller farm’s crop statistics with those of its closest neighbors. For ease of reference, I repeat the relevant section of the schedule below.

As noted earlier, Peter harvested three crops in 1879: corn, oats, and wheat. Three other farmers on this page raised only the same three crops. The four larger farms, and one of the smaller farms, also raised barley, while two of the larger farms and a different one of the smaller farms also raised rye (although none of the farms devoted much land to rye).

It is also interesting to observe the crop distribution among the various farmers. On Peter D’s farm, 88.7 percent of the field was planted to wheat, 8.7 percent to oats, and 2.6 percent to corn. Only farmers 8–10 (Gerhard Dick Sr., Peter Friesen, and Henry Pankratz) devoted more than 75 percent of their fields to wheat; all the other farmers in the immediate area ranged from 35.6 to 66.2 percent wheat. Although it is tempting to attribute the dominance of wheat in the case of Peter D to his Mennonite heritage (family legend has it that Peter D and Sarah brought Turkey Red wheat with them), we must remind ourselves that Peter did not plant the wheat reported here; he only harvested it. The preference for wheat among the smaller farms may rather reflect some other dynamic: perhaps wheat was the least risky crop to grow, or maybe it was favored as a cash crop, as opposed to crops grown to feed livestock. 

Another question worth asking is how Peter’s crop yields compared to those around him. 

1. His corn (1.5 acres producing 60 bushels) averaged 40 bushels/acre, which was slightly below the average of 41.2 for all ten farms listed. However, Peter’s average was substantially higher than the six smaller farms listed; of course, this may be a statistical anomaly due to the small size of Peter’s corn field.

2. Peter’s 5 acres of oats produced 160 bushels, for an average of 32 bushels/acre. This was the highest of all ten farms listed and well above the group average of 23.1 bushels/acre.

3. Finally, Peter’s 51-acre wheat field yielded 518 bushels, for an average of 10.2 bushels/acre. This placed him right in the middle of the group, which had an average of 10.0 bushels/acre. 

One final comparison will complete the picture: How did Peter D fare in terms of crop income compared to the other farms in this group of ten? Of course, the farmers with much more land generated far more income than the smaller farms. The four largest farms, for example, had income ranging from $1,133 to $2,455. Not one of the six smaller farms, by contrast, generated more than $572 in income, and they averaged $423. Peter D was right in the middle of the group, with $426 in income from crops (sale of butter, eggs, and so on is not calculated here).

In spite of the higher total income enjoyed by the larger farms, the income earned per acre by the smaller farms compared relatively favorably. The average for all ten farms was $8.04/acre, with a high of $11.62/acre and a low of $5.81. Peter D was slightly below average, at $7.41/acre. The three highest farms in terms of income per acre were also the three farms that had the highest corn or wheat yields (or both). This only stands to reason, since higher average yields produce higher income per acre.

In the previous post we learned that Peter D and Sarah paid a fair price for the land and the already-planted crops that they harvested several months after the purchase. In this post we also discovered that their initial harvest was dominated by wheat, which accounted for nearly 90 percent of their tilled acres. Finally, by comparing Peter’s yields with those of his closest neighbors, we determined that Peter was, for the most, very much in line with those neighbors in terms of his crop yields and income per acre earned. Peter D and Sarah’s first year in the States appears to have been no worse than a modest success.

I cannot think of any additional information to wring out of this agricultural schedule. All that remains, then, is to look at a comparable agricultural schedule from 1885, five years after this one, so we can determine how Peter D and Sarah’s circumstances changed during their first five years and how they compared to their closest neighbors at that time. That will be the subject of the next post in this series.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 15

I spoke too soon. A few hours after writing that we had “explored all that we can at this time related to Peter D and Sarah’s farms,” I happened upon another historical document that relates directly to that farm. The document dates from 1880 and is a supplement to the main census from that year. Its official title is Schedule 2: Productions of Agriculture.

The full page is too large to post here, so I have uploaded it to Flickr. I suggest that you download the image to your device, then open and increase the display size as much as you need. This post will include only relevant snippets that document life on the Buller farm.

The date on which the agricultural schedule is important to note: 9 June 1880. If you recall, Peter D and Sarah and family arrived in the Henderson area late in June 1879. Within a week, according to the Buller Family Record, Peter D had purchased an 80-acre parcel a mile west of Henderson (see further here). How did the family fare in their new home? The agricultural schedule taken a little less than a year later gives us an answer.

Each page of the schedule includes four sections; each section records data for the same ten farms. We see Peter D Buller (spelled Bullar on the form) listed on row 7 of section 1 and thus know that row 7 in the other three sections will also record information for him.

After listing the name of the household head, section 1 records whether this person owned or rented his farm; the column of slashes (/) after the names indicates that everyone on this sheet owned his property. The next group of four columns records the acres of land in the farm: two columns for improved land (tilled fields and permanent meadows) and two columns for unimproved land (woodland and other unimproved land). Note that the first four listed had by far the largest farms, with total acreages of 320, 375, 399, and 240; two of these farms also included 50-acre woodland areas. By contrast, the last six, including Peter D, each had 80 acres each. Presumably those with large farms were the old-timers, relatively speaking, of the area. Of Peter’s 80 acres, 70 were tilled and 10 were unimproved.

The next group of three columns records the value of (1) the farm, including land, fences, and buildings; (2) farming implements and machinery; and (3) livestock. As expected, given their larger farms, the first four farmers show significantly higher value ($3,031; $9,900; $7,650; $3,756) than the last six, whose average was $805. Peter D fell within the center of the group of six, with a total farm value of $835. Interestingly, the value of Peter’s land is recorded as $500, which is $400 less than he had paid for it a year earlier. Below I will suggest an explanation for this apparent decrease in value.

We can skip over the next columns, which record hired laborers and grass lands, and move to the final two columns in this section, which record the number of horses and mules the farm had on 1 June 1880. Like most of the farmers in the group of six, Peter had two horses.

Section 2 continues the livestock record by listing relevant statistics for cattle, sheep, pigs, and chickens. Cattle are divided into three groups: working oxen, milch cows, other. Peter D had one dairy cow whose milk led to the production of 150 pounds of butter in 1879 (i.e., the last half of that year). This was in line with the other farmers in his group of six. Peter owned no sheep but kept six pigs, which was slightly above the average of his closest neighbors. Finally, Peter kept twenty-five chickens (average for the group of six) who produced fifty dozen (six hundred) eggs during 1879; for some unknown reason, Peter’s egg production was well below the average of his neighbors.

Section 3 turns from livestock to crops, recording six types of cereals (barley, buckwheat, Indian corn, oats, rye, wheat), pulse (Canada peas, dry beans), fiber (flax, hemp), sugar (sorghum, maple), and broom corn. Not unexpectedly, crops in Farmers Valley precinct were primarily in the cereals category.

We see in row 7, which records Peter D’s agricultural activity, that his crops for 1879 included corn*, oats, and wheat. Each crop section contains two columns: the first records the acreage given to that crop, the second the bushels produced in 1879. The Buller farm’s entries are as follows:

• Corn: 1.5 acres producing 60 bushels
• Oats: 5 acres producing 160 bushels
• Wheat: 51 acres producing 518 bushels

As noted earlier, Peter D purchased the farm in late June 1879, at which time all the crops would have been planted. Why is this important? First, the distribution of land to the three crops—with nearly 90 percent of the tilled acres devoted to wheat—was the previous owner’s decision, not Peter’s. Whether or not Peter continued this crop distribution will become evident in later reports, such as the 1885 Nebraska census, which will we consider in a subsequent post. 

Second, since the purchase was made after the crops were in the ground, the purchase price presumably reflected the value of the land itself plus the crops that Peter would harvest in several months. This likely explains why Peter paid more for the 80 acres than the value reported on this form. In fact, based on the market prices reported for late 1879 and early 1880, we can calculate the value of the crops that Peter harvested:

• corn: 60 bushels @ 39¢/bushel = $23.40
• oats: 160 bushels @ 25¢/bushel = $40.00
• wheat: 518 bushels @ 70¢/bushel = $362.60

The total value of the crops harvested was $426, which was slightly more than the difference between Peter’s purchase price and the stated value of the land in 1880. In short, we can reasonably conclude that Peter purchased the land plus the crops already planted at a price that was fair to both seller and buyer.

There is more to glean from this agricultural schedule, as well as from the 1885 Nebraska agricultural census and from a comparison between the two. All that to come in subsequent posts about Peter D and Sarah’s farm.

*The schedule’s reference to Indian corn does not have in view the multicolored ears of corn known by that name today (see here) but rather what we refer to as field corn. In the 1880s, the term Indian corn referred to the broad category of maize (Zea mays), which included many varieties. See further the full report of the 1880 agricultural census on Indian corn here.

Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller

Now that we have explored all that we can at this time related to Peter D and Sarah’s farms, we can circle back and examine several documents that came to my attention over the past few months. The first one, the subject of this post, dates to February 1890, a little more than a decade after Peter D, Sarah, and their children arrived on the Nebraska plains. That early document, shown below, is the marriage record for Peter and Sarah’s second child (and my great-grandfather): Peter P Buller  (for a full-size version, see here).

The record was filed in York County, as indicated by the heading at the top. Year after year, the marriage records for the county were recorded in a series of books. This particular record was entered on page 559 (see upper right corner) of book C, which spanned 1886 to 1890.

The record consists of three parts: (1) an application for a marriage license, (2) the license itself, and (3) a record of the marriage ceremony.

1. We see in the upper portion of this record that Peter Buller and Maggie Epp applied for a marriage license on 22 February 1890. The application was made before the York County judge, whom we learn further on was named Edward Bates. Peter was twenty years old, Maggie nineteen. Apparently the law at that time required a groom under the age of twenty-one to have the consent of at least one parent; the bride required no such consent. In this instance, the affidavit states “that his father gives consent to such marriage.” Another York County record from this time states that the groom’s father gave his consent in open court. Whether Peter D did the same is unknown.

Curiously, the affidavit begins with Peter Buller, age twenty (i.e., Peter P) attesting that he is “acquainted with Mr. Peter Buller and Miss Maggie Epp, who are parties for the marriage” and that they “may lawfully contract and be joined in marriage.” In other words, Peter P was acting as his own witness in the matter. Although one would expect that this role was intended to be filled by some other party (a friend or a family member), a quick perusal of the York County records for this time period reveals that at least half of the time the groom served as his own witness. Thus, what seems curious to us was rather common in 1890.

The application also includes a section for recording the age, color, place of birth, residence, father’s name, and mother’s maiden name for the groom and the bride. Below this we see a statement that the preceding information was “subscribed and sworn to,” followed by the signature of applicant, that is, the groom, and the signature and title of the person to whom the application was made: Edward Bates, York County judge.

2. The marriage license, which was issued the same day, 22 February 1890, confirmed the acceptance of the application: “License is hereby granted to any person authorized to solemnize marriages according to the laws of said State [i.e., Nebraska], to join in marriage” Peter Buller and Maggie Epp. After repeating the age, color, place of birth, residence, father’s name, and mother’s maiden name for the groom and the bride, the license continues: “And the person joining them in marriage is required to make due return of the Annexed Certificate to the County Judge of said County, within ninety days, of the names of the parties, time and place of marriage, and by whom solemnized.” Once again, Judge Edward Bates affixed his signature.

3. The last part of the marriage record, the certificate of marriage, documented key details concerning the marriage ceremony. First, the marriage between Peter and Margaret, as the certificate has it, took place on 27 February 1890, five days after the license had been issued. The ceremony took place at “Cornelius Epps,” that is, the bride’s home—and later the home of Peter P, Margaretha, and their children. Two witnesses are listed, but I am uncertain who they were: the first appears to be Johann Bon (a last name unfamiliar to me), and the second seems to be Jacob Kroeker. At the bottom of the certificate we find the name of the person who conducted the ceremony: Peter J Friesen, minister. Friesen was a minister in the Bethesda Mennonite Church from 1883 until his death in 1909 (see here).

To be honest, our examination of Peter P and Margaretha’s record has not revealed anything surprising. We already knew from the Buller Family Record when Peter P married and whom he married. Still, we have filled in a few details: they were married at the bride’s house by the Bethesda minister, Peter J Friesen, who also (according to GRANDMA) baptized both Peter and Margaretha.

Beyond that, the marriage record does provide us an increased sense of familiarity with our distant ancestors. The person whom we identify as Margaretha, for example, was known more formally as Margaret (very much an American form of her name) and was simply Maggie to her husband-to-be. It is a small insight into their relationship, I admit, but knowing my great-grandmother’s nickname makes her seem a little less distant than she was before, now some 135 years after her wedding day.

The Brown Township Property 4

The last post ended with the 1900 census locating Peter and Sarah Buller Dick on the north half of the northeast quarter of section 16 in Brown township of York County, the 80 acres that Peter D Buller leased and his surviving family members purchased shortly after his death in 1897. This leaves, for all practical purposes, only one question: Who lived on the Brown farm in the years between 1900 and the sale of the property in April 1920? Exploring the answer to this question will guide the course of this post.

We begin with the next available record: the 1910 census. What we discover here is that no member of our family lived in Brown township at that time. To be specific, not one of the 129 families listed in the 126 dwellings of Brown township was a member of our family. The names of neighbors we would expect still appear, such as Jacob and Henry Mireau and the Wiens family, but the only Buller in the immediate vicinity is one David F, who was a hired hand for Jacob Schmidt.

Clearly, Peter and Sarah Buller Dick left the Brown property sometime between 1900 and 1910, but when and why they did must remain a mystery. We do find them listed in the 1910 census, but they are now in the Henderson township. In fact, they are listed only three families away from Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller, so they must have lived nearby. 

By coordinating the listings of the families in the 1910 census with the 1911 plat map shown to the right, we can even venture a reasonable guess about where exactly Peter and Sarah Dick lived. The three names listed before them were Gerhard Rempel, Ludwig Rich, and Peter Siebert. This corresponds to the sequence of names in sections 13 and, moving north, 12.

Following Peter and Sarah Dick in the census were Johann Epp, John Epp, Peter P Buller, and Jacob Epp, which fits a path from section 11 to the east side of section 10 and then back to section 11. The only name on the map not mentioned in the census is John Critel, in the northwest corner of section 12. In fact, the 1910 and 1920 censuses list no one by that name in all of York County, which implies to me that Critel may have been an absentee landlord. His tenants, in my view, were none other than Peter and Sarah Dick. If this is correct, then by 1910 Peter and Sarah Dick were living within a mile of Sarah’s older brother, Peter P.

The 1910 census also allows us to correct an earlier misstatement that was based on an error in GRANDMA. According to the GRANDMA database, Peter and Sarah’s second child, Abraham, was born near Mountain Lake, Minnesota. From this we deduced that Peter and Sarah must have moved there and back sometime between 1900 and 1910. However, the 1910 and the 1920 censuses list Abraham’s place of birth as Nebraska; in fact, all of the children in that family are recorded as born in Nebraska. In addition, further research reveals that GRANDMA’s listing of Minnesota as the place of birth confuses our Abraham Dick with another Abraham Dick who was born several days later. The names listed on the second Abraham’s birth record proves beyond doubt that he was not a member of our family. All that to say, at present we have no reason to think that Peter and Sarah Dick moved to Minnesota in the early 1900s.

To summarize, Peter and Sarah Dick married in March 1898 and apparently moved to the Brown property. The 1900 census indicates that they were still living on that farm at that time. Sometime between 1900 and 1910, they left the Brown property and moved to Henderson township, where they rented 80 acres less than a mile from Sarah’s brother, Peter P Buller. In 1907 (we do not know where they were living at that time), Peter and Sarah Dick lost their seven-month-old son (see here). In late 1917 or early 1918, Peter and Sarah moved from their farm north of Lushton (i.e., the one they rented from John Critel) to another farm near Henderson, which we discovered earlier was none other than Peter D and Sarah’s original family farm (see here). Presumably they lived there until the farm was sold at auction in 1922 (see here).

We have, I admit, wandered a bit from our question about the Brown township farm, so let me recap. According to the 1900 census, Peter and Sarah Buller Dick lived on the property at that time. The following census, in 1910, indicates beyond any doubt that no family member was living there ten years later. Moving ahead yet another decade, the 1920 census offers us a similar picture.

According to the 1920 census, Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller’s son Abraham and his family now lived in Brown township. However, their neighbors are not at all the ones we would expect if they lived on the Buller property there. That is, there are no Mireau or Wiens families listed nearby; those families still lived in Brown township, but they appear to be quite distant from Abraham and his family. This is really not surprising, since the land was sold to Heinrich E. Mireau in April 1920 (see here).

What are we to conclude? After Peter and Sarah Buller Dick moved from the Brown property sometime between 1900 and 1910, no other family member lived there. Apparently Peter D’s widow Sarah rented the land to someone outside of the family instead, until she finally sold the land only a few years before her own death.

To my knowledge, nothing remains of the farmstead that once housed members of our family on the Brown township property. Still, I think it will be worth a visit, even if only to look on the land where our ancestors walked and worked and lived.

Wayne C Buller, 1936–2025

Dad received word yesterday afternoon that his younger brother, Wayne, has passed away. We mourn our loss but honor and celebrate a life lived well and to the full. 

Wayne was born on 22 March 1936 at home on the Buller farm south of Lushton. From these humble circumstances Wayne grew to be a record-setting track star (see here), a successful business person, and a much-loved family man. Wayne’s obituary (here) contains the details of his interesting and productive life. 

A number of years back Wayne produced annual calendars that listed every family member’s birthday and anniversary. He also included family photos as he was able. The photo below appeared in the 2004 calendar. Wayne captioned it “Three Old Geezers on the Ranch Porch,” referring to himself, Dad, and Daniel. A happier day indeed. 

The Brown Township Property 3

The previous post in this series ended with two questions: When did Peter D first began to lease the property? Why did he lease a parcel of land so far from his Farmers Valley home? This post begins with an admission: I have no answers to those questions. I did have a hypothesis when I posed the questions, but it turns out to be untenable when we look at the evidence before us.

The hypothesis was that Peter D and Sarah leased the land to give one of their children the opportunity and the means to establish an independent life of their own. The hypothesis made sense in terms of what parents of that day often did (Peter P, for example, provided his children with land of their own) and in recognition of the fact that the Brown township property was 8 miles away from the Farmers Valley home. That might not be an unworkable distance today, but it would, I think, have presented significant challenges in the late nineteenth century.

So why do I now think the hypothesis unlikely? A lack of positive evidence from various censuses and substantial negative evidence from the Buller Family Record (BF). We will start with the latter, since it is the clearest.

The BFR records the marriage dates of each of Peter D and Sarah’s children. Given the fact that Peter D apparently leased the Brown property prior to 1894 (when he as lease holder requested an appraisal so he could purchase the land), we can focus our attention on the children who married before that time. There were three: Johann, Peter P, and Katharina.

(1) In 1889, Johann/John married a young woman from Mountain Lake, Minnesota, Anna Thieszen, and they lived with Anna’s parents for the first few years of their marriage (this last information from GRANDMA). Clearly, the Brown township parcel was not procured for Johann. (2) Peter P, of course, married Margaretha Epp in 1890, and they immediately (we think) moved to the Epp family farm 4 miles east of Henderson. Presumably the Brown property was not meant for Peter P either. (3) This leaves Katharina, who married Heinrich Epp in 1892. Considering that both Johann and Peter P took up residence with their new wives (matrilocality; see here), we might imagine that the Brown 80 acres was meant for Katharina and her new husband. However, there is no evidence supporting this notion, and by the 1900 census Heinrich and Katharian were living in Henderson township. In light of this, it is difficult to imagine that the Brown property was secured for them.

All the other children were married in 1898 or later, so Peter D probably did not lease the land with the thought of transferring it to one of his children that far in advance. Considering the 1894 or earlier leasing of the land and the evidence from the BFR that none of the children who married prior to 1894 gave any hint of establishing a home on that property, we have no alternative but to conclude that we do not know when Peter D leased the property (only that it was apparently before 1894) and why he first leased it and then decided to buy it (a decision that fell to his family to carry out after his death). In short, we cannot offer a reasonable, evidence-based answer to the questions with which this post is concerned.

We can, however, fill in a few more blanks of our family history in the years following Peter D’s death. We learned in the previous post that, after Peter D passed away in September 1897, the family followed through with the requested purchase of the Brown property, buying 40 acres in 1898 and the remaining 40 acres in 1899. Why, one might wonder, did they continue with the sale even after Peter D was dead?

Here the hypothesis of the 80 acres serving as a starter homestead for one of the children finds support. Before we examine the evidence, a few words about censuses of that period. As is well known, the U.S. conducts a decennial census, that is, a census every ten years. The U.S. censuses relevant to the early decades of our family’s life in this country were thus 1880 (a year after Peter D, Sarah, and the children arrived), 1890, 1900, 1910, and 1920. Unfortunately, nearly all the records of the 1890 census were destroyed in a fire in the Commerce Department Building in Washington, DC (see here); all of the Nebraska records were lost in the blaze. Fortunately, the gap between the 1880 and 1900 censuses was closed somewhat by a state-level census conducted in 1885.* This fifteen-year gap in our records limits somewhat our ability to trace our family history between 1885 and 1900.

With that background, we are ready to see what we can learn. First, the 1885 Nebraska census gives no evidence that any of our family lived on the Brown property. This is not surprising, since we know not only that Peter D and Sarah lived in Farmers Valley at that time but also that the first child who married (Johann) did so in 1889, four years after that census. In short, the 1885 census has nothing to contribute to the question before us.

The 1900 census, on the other hand, contributes a great deal. As expected, it lists Johann, Anna, and their two children near Mountain Lake, Minnesota. Three of Peter D and Sarah’s children were living in Henderson township: (1) Peter P, Margaretha, and their four children; (2) Katharina and Heinrich Epp and their four children; and (3) David S. and Margaretha Epp Buller (married in 1898). Cornelius, who had married Maria Goosen in 1898, was living near Enid, Oklahoma. The four youngest children—J. P., Henry, Abraham, and Mary—were all living with Sarah on the Farmers Valley home place.

That leaves one child: Sarah. She had married Peter Dick on 13 March 1898, which was the same month and year that Peter D’s heirs (probably the widow Sarah) exercised the right to purchase the first 40 acres of the property in Brown township (see here). The timing of the marriage and the land purchase seems a little too convenient to be mere coincidence. The 1900 census leads me to think that it was no coincidence at all.

In that census, Peter and Sarah Buller Dick are living on and renting a farm in Brown township, which certainly raises the possibility that they had moved to the family property. Among their neighbors were a number of families named Mierau, including John Mierau. According to the census, Jacob Wiens also lived nearby. In short, many of the names that we see surrounding the Peter D Buller 80 in the 1911 plat map below are listed in close proximity to Peter and Sarah Buller Dick in the 1900 Brown township census. The only reasonable conclusion is that they were indeed living on the Brown property at that time.

We will probably never know if Peter D leased the 80 acres in Brown township in order to give one of his children a start on establishing their own farmstead. It does seem likely, however, that his widow Sarah did just that when she purchased the two halves of the leased property in 1898 and 1899. That is, she apparently purchased the land so that her newly wed daughter, also named Sarah, could live and work there with her husband, Peter Dick.

In 1900, we can conclude, one of Peter D and Sarah’s children was living on the Brown township property. How long did this continue, and what happened after that? These are questions for a future post.

* On 3 March 1879 the Forty-Fifth U.S. Congress passed an “act to provide for taking the tenth and subsequent censuses,” which included a provision encouraging state governments to conduct their own censuses midway between the federal censuses, that is, in 1885, 1895, 1905, and so on. See section 22 of the final legislation here. Few states actually took up the federal government’s offer to reimburse half the cost, and Nebraska did so only once, in 1885. Read more about the 1885 Nebraska census here.