Refugees in Batum 2

I started this post a long time ago but got distracted by life. It has been one day shy of a year since I last posted to the blog, so it is time to wrap this up.

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The previous post in this series (here) offered several perspectives on why, in the early 1920s, a number of Mennonite families left their Russian homes in a desperate attempt to make their way to North America. In that post we read explanations from one person writing after the fact (Henry B. Toews) and two people who lived through the ordeal (Henry D. Remple and Peter M. Janzen).

This post adds another eyewitness report, that of Anna Marie Dirks Becker Wiens. In her Memoirs of the Becker Family (1978), she offers a detailed account of her early life in the Molotschna village named Franztal.* Anna, born Anna Marie Dirks on 11 November 1911, was later orphaned and adopted by a couple with the last name Becker; eight years later, she married Jacob D. Wiens, which explains Anna’s compound name.

Anna’s memoirs begin with an account of her early years living with her parents, Gerhard and Anna Dirks, in Franztal. After giving a detailed description of her daily life in that village, Anna turns to the hardships that overtook her family and neighbors after 1917 Russian Revolution. We pick up Anna’s story at that point.

In 1917 the Russian people overthrew Czar Nicholas II, and civil war followed for three long years. The White noncommunist armies fought the Red communist armies, also called Bolsheviks. General Wrangel, the leader of the White noncommunist army, had his head­quarters in Sevastopol. He was in control of all of the Crimea and the Ukraine, north of the Crimea. In the Ukraine were the two largest Mennonite settlements, Molotschna and Chortitiza. We lived in the Molotschna.

Our first encounter with the Bolsheviks was on a Sunday afternoon in late winter of 1918. My father was bedfast with tuberculosis, having been released and sent home from his service in a tree school in Siberia during World War I. … On this particular Sunday afternoon the three of us [Anna and her parents] were taking a nap, when there was a loud persistent pounding on the front door. My parents knew whom to expect, having heard from the neighbors how the Bolsheviks were making their rounds, robbing and beating up the people. Father’s concern was the team of horses in the barn, a pair of sorrels that he had bought from a friend.… When mother opened the door, there were three bandits on the front porch and also the mayor of our village, who had to accompany them. While they were waiting for the door to open, they had decided to rob the mayor of his boots, leaving him in stock­ing feet. Now they stormed into the parlor, and, seeing father’s accordion, they grabbed it and also mother’s guitar, then left without looking at the horses in the barn. The bandits had been taking the best horses from many other people, leaving their half-dead ones in their place.

My father died in April of that year and was buried on Good Friday. … Sometime after my father’s death, we heard the tragic news of two men of a neighboring village, possibly in their early forties, who had gone on a business trip in a horse-drawn vehicle and had been murdered by some bandits. When they did not return at the expected time, people started looking for them and found their mutilated bodies with their tongues cut out in an unharvested wheat field. Naturally, the horses and vehicle had been stolen. Mother and I attended the double funeral, which was held in a huge, clean granary. From now on times were getting worse. There were rumors of fires, murders, and robbery in neighboring villages. In the area of Alexandrovsk, twelve thousand horses had been killed during the battle. Dogs roamed the countryside in large hordes and were feeding on the dead horses. There were hundreds of mounds of earth where soldiers were buried, without any markers.

There was another terror sweeping the country; it was the talented but ruthless anarchist Nestor Makhno and his band known as Makhnovtsi. They plundered, robbed, murdered, and burned homesteads and villages. Their terroristic activities were mostly centered in the Ukraine, at least in the beginning, and this is where we lived.

In the year 1919 our village was also hit by the Makhnovtsi and the Bolsheviks. … When the battle front was not far away from our village. there was many a day when we heard the cannons booming and the machine guns popping. In a distant village [Münsterberg] almost all the inhabitants were murdered within one hour: ninety-six persons. After they had robbed the village, they set it on fire and moved on to the next one. In another village [Eichendorf] eighty-one men and four women were murdered in one night.

While the Makhnovtsi plundered in one part of the country, two armies were fighting against each other in another part of the Ukraine. They were the Red Bolsheviks and the White army.

One day all of us heard the shooting and booming of cannons come closer and closer, so before dark Uncle John, Aunt Anna, and their five small children came over to spend the night with mother and me. Soon the battle was right in and around our village. We all went down in the cellar and stayed there all night. The shooting, the screaming, and the whinnying of horses lasted until dawn; then all was quiet. When we came out of the cellar. we saw the broken windows and the bullet holes in our walls. The street in front of our house was full of dead soldiers and horses. Outside our village were many dead and dying soldiers. …

One morning when mother and I returned home from having spent the night at Uncle George’s house, we found the house broken in and ransacked. All drawers and chests had been emptied and the contents scattered on the floor. Pillows had been ripped open, the feathers strewn all over the house. The bandits had trampled on everything with their dirty boots and then poured syrup over everything, but first they had taken what suited their fancy.

Another time when mother and I were spending the night with Aunt Helena and the children, a whole regiment of soldiers rode into the yard and put themselves up for the night. There were soldiers sleeping everywhere, fully dressed, dirty boots and all, with their sabres strapped to their sides. One was stretched out on top of the dresser, and the floors were covered with them. … Aunt Helena and mother had to cook all night for the whole crew. The Bolsheviks had butchered a stolen cow and brought in a quarter of it to be cooked. They dumped it in the huge iron rendering kettle in the kitchen and ordered the two women to make a stew with huge dumplings in it. One soldier stood beside the hearth and cursed, because it did not get done fast enough for him, until Aunt Helena broke into tears, then one of the officers came in and ordered him to behave. Even before the stew was done they started eating, fishing out the dumplings with sticks.

On another occasion mother and Aunt Helena had to kill and dress chickens at one o’clock in the morning and cook them for a house full of soldiers.

One bitter cold winter night a certain household was rudely awakened by a group of bandits. They ordered the women to line up against the wall and watch their father and the young husband of one of his daughters being shot. Icicles hung at the windows, and their breath was frosty on the air. The bandits were frantically pressing the triggers, but the firing pins were frozen, and the guns would not discharge. Angrily, the bandits clubbed the two men with their guns and then left, leaving the men bruised and sore but alive!

At another place eighteen bandits stormed into the house and demanded supper. There was not much food in the house any more because this family had been robbed several times, but there was still some sausage in the cellar, so the women fried the sausage, cooked potatoes, and put bread on the table. The bandits took their places at the table, but they did not eat; instead, they threw all the food on the floor and tramped on it, then they stomped out of the house. At many places the bandits came in and threw themselves on the guest bed or crept under the clean covers with their dirty, muddy boots on.

One moonlit evening mother and I were sitting by the window, with no lights on in the house. It was very still outside, and the moon lit up the street like daylight. Suddenly several soldiers on horseback came riding slowly down the street, turning in at our next door neighbors to the west. Soon we heard terrible screaming in their garden, over and over, then ail was quiet. The next day we heard that the bandits had taken the old grandmother to the garden and had beaten her with their guns and tried to strangle her until she fainted; then they left her lying there. She was black and blue but alive!

When the armies withdrew we had a few weeks or months of respite. It was during one of these times in the summer of 1920 that mother held an auction of some of our possessions. She sold all the machinery, horses, and some cattle. But by the time we decided to leave Russia, most people had been robbed so many times that nobody had money to buy our house, land, and other possessions, so we had to leave everything behind, taking only the most necessary belongings.

Soon after our sale, mother and her three brothers decided to leave Russia and start out for America. July 23, 1920, Uncle George and family left for the Crimea. They left on a Sunday, at four o’clock in the morning. About three weeks later, in August, Uncle John and family and mother and I also left the Ukraine. We loaded our possessions in wagons and headed for the Crimea. …

Anna’s reminiscences continue, but this is a good place to stop for now. We will pick up her story as her family begins the same journey through the Crimea and on to Batun and beyond that the Remple children undertook on their way to their new Henderson homes (see here). Anna’s first-hand account does help us appreciate why so many Mennonite families fled on what they knew was a dangerous journey. In 1920, war between the Bolshevik Reds and the counterrevolutionary Whites still raged throughout the Molotschna; further, bands of Makhnovist anarchists, who were (for now) allied with the Reds, roamed the colony stealing what they wanted whenever they wanted and periodically killing defenseless people without reason or restraint. In short, life in the Molotschna had become intolerable; the only rational response was to leave all that had been dear to them behind in hopes of finding a better life at the end of the road.

* If the name Franztal sounds familiar, it is because we devoted a number of posts to it, since it was where Jacob Jacob Buller, the first member of our larger family to settle in Molotschna, lived before he moved to Alexanderwohl (see the end of the post here and the series on Franztal that begins here). Also, thanks to David Wiens for providing a copy of Memoirs of the Becker Family.

Refugees in Batum 1

The previous post (here) recounted how, in the early 1920s, Peter P Buller helped a number of Russian Mennonites, including the orphans Henry, Agnes, and Agatha Remple, make their way to the United States. We will return in due course to Peter P’s service during that time, but first we need to take a step back so that we have a broader view of the situation. To do that, this post will take up a question with which the previous one ended: What circumstances led the Remples and other Mennonites to leave their homes?

John B. Toews provides one answer to this question:

The Russian Civil War which followed the October Revolution of 1917 generated a massive social upheaval characterized by anarchy, famine and disease. Hundreds of … Mennonites living in the Ukraine lost their lives. Those who survived were confronted by an array of calamities. The stage for the first great famine of the Soviet era had been set by the fall of 1921. Reserves in most of the villages were totally depleted by the requisitions of criss-crossing armies or the later confiscations of capricious officials implementing the ruinous economic policies of War Communism. Many held little hope for a Mennonite future in Russia. The most critical question in the fall of 1921 became that of survival. … Everywhere people were searching for bread. In view of the steadily worsening conditions, a number of Mennonite families fled to the Black Sea port of Batum late in 1921 and early in 1922. (Toews 1971, 117)

The Remple children named above were members of one of the families who left; sadly, of the eleven family members who set out in early 1922, only the three orphaned children survived the journey. In his account of his family’s experiences during that time, Henry Remple lends support to Toews’s explanation but also puts the October (Bolshevik) Revolution and the ensuing civil war into the broader context of World War I (1914–1918).

By … the beginning of World War I, the Mennonite villages now numbered nearly 100 and the area had become the breadbasket of Russia. The Mennonites had accepted Russia as their home and saw themselves as good citizens, loyal to the Czar. When the war began, they immediately participated with the Red Cross, collecting food, clothing, and money for needy Russian families. Young men joined the medical service of the Red Cross. As the war continued, Mennonite men worked in army hospitals and hospital trains. Others provided transportation with horses and wagons to haul government supplies to the front. In spite of their support for the war effort, Mennonites soon experienced distrust because they were German-speaking immigrants from Prussia, and Russia was at war with Germany. With the passage of time, anti-German and, therefore, anti-Mennonite sentiment increased. (Remple 2001, 26–27)

One of the outcomes of this anti-German sentiment was the passage of property liquidation laws in 1915 that “specified that German colonists were to sell their property within eight months. Fortunately,” Remple adds, “the laws were not fully enforced” (2001, 27)—at least not yet. 

After Czar Nicholas II abdicated his throne in February 1917 and the Bolsheviks seized power later that year, Russia entered into a bloody civil war between the Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik White Army. Remple recalls that

the fighting rapidly spread, engulfed the Ukraine and soon raged through the Mennonite villages. … As conditions worsened in Russia, anarchy, banditry, and civil war were accompanied by an outbreak of disease and famine. A severe crop failure in 1921, due to a drought that covered most of the Ukraine, lasted until the fall of 1922, and the earlier requisitioning, which in some areas exceeded the total harvest yield, led to massive famine. … No relief was in sight. (Remple 2001, 33, 35)

The only hope for many Molotschna Mennonites was to flee, to escape to some other place. As Remple puts it, “the possibility of immigrating to America seemed remote, but leaving the country as refugees seemed less risky” (2001, 36). So it was that the Remple family joined other refugees heading south first to Crimea and then on to Batum (now Batumi) on the shores of the Black Sea.

Peter Janzen, whom we met in the previous post as someone whom Peter P helped come to America, was part of that group of refugees in Batum. On 20 October 2022 he wrote a letter that was published as an article titled “Concerning the Mennonite Relief Efforts at Home and Abroad from the Mennonite Refugees in Batum” in the 17 January 1923 issue of Die Mennonitische Rundschau (first two paragraphs shown to the right). His recounting of the circumstances that led Mennonites from Molotschna to flee reiterates what we have already read:

The Lord has helped us this far. He will certainly continue to help us. As you are probably already aware, we are on our way to a new home because the circumstances of our past, present, and also the near future have compelled us to take the first available route that would enable us to escape the extremely difficult situation in our old home.

The storms that broke over us began, as you are well aware, with the Liquidation Act of the fallen imperial government, raged over us in an extremely devastating manner during the civil war, and, through the terrible deaths from starvation that occurred everywhere, severed all ties to home, farm, and fatherland, since life was more precious to us than our possessions, which lay destroyed and devastated. The empty barns and cellars, the many uncultivated fields, the many fresh grave mounds, and the camps of emigrants in the ports testify to the credibility of what has been said.

Many prayers rose up to God during this time, and many a guest appeared in spirit, probably also in person in the form of representatives, or in letters and magazines sent to relatives and acquaintances and fellow believers abroad, especially in America. But because help still did not arrive and the need became ever more pressing, many who had only their last morsel to eat came to the obvious conclusion: if I am facing starvation in my homeland and may soon fall into its clutches, it is better to set out immediately for a place where help is more likely to reach me and where the outstretched arms of our dear brothers abroad would be able to snatch us from this terrible specter of starvation with their help. (Janzen 1923, 9)

Janzen’s letter continues on to describe the perilous straits in which the refugees found themselves as well the types of supplies and support they so desperately needed; we will return to the letter a bit later, when we explore the Mennonites’ life in Batum. For now, it is enough that we have yet another witness to the circumstances that led many Mennonites to flee their homes in the early 1920s.

At least one more important testimony remains to be heard, that of Anna Marie Becker Wiens. However, since this post has already gone on long enough, we will need to wait until the next post to hear that voice. 

Works Cited

 

Janzen, Peter M. 1923. “An die Mennonitischen Hilfsaktionen im In- und Auslande von den Mennoniten-Flüchtlingen in Batum.” Die Mennonitische Rundschau 46.3 (17 January):10. Available online here.

Remple, Henry D. 2001. From Bolshevik Russia to America: A Mennonite Family Story. Pine Hill Press.

Toews, John B. 1971. “Flight to Batum.” Mennonite Life 26:117–22. Available online here.

Peter P, Brother in Deed 1

As promised at the end of the previous post, we are returning to a passing comment that Henry P Buller made while reminiscing about his parents. Specifically, Henry recounted that in 1936 his parents “moved to southern California, where there was a gentleman—Pete Janzen—who Dad had helped to come from Russia in the early 1920s.” There is clearly more behind a remark such as this than immediately meets the eye. Fortunately, in this instance we are able to fill in some of the background both on Pete Janzen and the broader situation.

We begin, not with Pete Janzen, but with someone Janzen knew: Henry D. Remple. In 2001, Remple authored From Bolshevik Russia to America: A Mennonite Family Story (thanks to Carolyn Stucky for alerting me to it). This book, based on Remple’s diary, recounts the following story:

In 1922, six families from a tiny village in the Ukraine began a harrowing journey to America that would pit them against disease, starvation, and physical exhaustion. Ahead of them loomed an arduous route over thousands of miles of land and sea; behind them lay the ravages of World War I, the terrors of the Russian Revolution and Civil War, and the misery of drought and famine. Among the émigrés was Henry D. Remple, who was just thirteen years old when his parents made the decision to leave their village with their nine sons and daughters. Of his eleven family members who left their village, only Henry and two sisters survived the voyage and reached their new home in America. Much of their journey to freedom is recorded in Henry’s diary, faithfully kept from 1922–1928. Captured among Henry’s diary entries and the reflections of he and his sisters are the experiences of their family and neighbors, all descendants of German-speaking Mennonites who had settled in the Ukraine years earlier. Nearly eighty-five years after it was written, the diary is a testament to the will to survive and the strength of the human spirit. (book blurb)

The book includes the text of Henry Remple’s diary, interspersed with explanations and elaborations from Henry, his sisters Agnes and Agatha, and, occasionally, Henry’s wife Mariana. Within this account of the Remple family’s experiences we encounter Pete Janzen, the man whom Peter P Buller had helped to come to the United States. More remarkably, in one of Henry’s explanatory paragraphs, we read of Peter P himself. 

Our transit visa to Constantinople was good for six months. We now eagerly awaited news from our sponsors in America. The Mennonite Central Committee routinely notified Peter Janzen when money from sponsors arrived. One day Peter Janzen told Agatha that a Peter Buller from Lushton, York County, Nebraska, had sent $600.000, i.e. $200.00 for each of us. That amount would cover our ocean and rail fare to York, Nebraska, a small clothing allowance and a reserve of $25.00 per person, which each immigrant was required to have when entering the United States. (Remple 2001, 104)

Henry’s sister Agnes adds further details: 

We learned later that Mr. Buller, a well-to-do farmer and minister, had read in church papers about the refugees in Batum and recruited relatives and church members to sponsor some of the refugees. He himself sponsored six refugees, including Peter Janzen. A George Rempel, Mr. Buller’s relative, thought the Rempel orphans [i.e., Henry, Agnes, and Agatha] might be relatives, so he sponsored Agatha. Mr Buller’s daughter, Mrs. Klaus Friesen, and her husband sponsored Henry. Mr. and Mrs. Abram Thiessen sponsored me. Mrs. Thiessen and Mr. George Rempel were sister and brother. (Remple 2001, 104–5)

The information packed into these brief accounts, as well as the background circumstances lying behind these events, will take some time to explore and explain. A number of questions come immediately to mind:

• What circumstances led the Remples and other Mennonites to leave their homes?
• Where did their journey begin, and where did it lead them on their way to the United States?
• How did the Mennonite Central Committee assist these Mennonites on their journeys?
• Who was Pete Janzen, and what role did he play in this migration to the United States?
• How did Peter P work with the Mennonite Central Committee in sponsoring immigrants?
• Who in Peter P’s circle of relatives, friends, and church members supported this effort?

No doubt additional questions will arise as we pursue answers to this initial set. In addition, Peter P and family are mentioned elsewhere in Henry Remple’s book, which will give us additional information and insights into this historically significant and personally important series of events.

Thus far we know that Peter P showed himself to be a brother in deed by sponsoring and encouraging others to sponsor Mennonites in need of assistance in making their way to the United States, where they could establish new homes and new lives. Much more waits to be discovered, I am confident, as we seek to learn more about this piece of Mennonite history and our family’s involvement in it.

Work Cited

Remple, Henry D. 2001. From Bolshevik Russia to America: A Mennonite Family Story. Pine Hill Press.

Henry P Buller, Scholar

Buller Time has alluded to Henry Buller’s academic pursuits from time to time. In what may have been the first mention of Henry, for example, a 2014 post (here) contained his and his wife Bea’s obituaries. Henry’s obituary reported, among other things:

He received a bachelor’s degree from Bethel College, North Newton, Kan., in 1941. After completing his alternative service, the Bullers moved to Newton, Kan., in 1947, where Henry taught in area public schools. He later received his graduate degree in psychology and counseling from the University of Kansas in Lawrence. In 1961 he joined the faculty of the Lamar University psychology department, where he remained until his retirement in 1982. 

A 1 June 1936 York Daily News-Times story allows us to trace Henry’s scholarly trajectory even earlier. According to this account, Henry placed third among 1,400 seniors from 406 Nebraska high schools in a University of Nebraska scholarship contest.

Although 250 of the 1,400 seniors who entered the competition won some sort of regents’ scholarship to attend the University of Nebraska, presumably the top finishers received the highest awards. The dollar amount of the awards is unknown, as is the type of competition (test?) that the seniors underwent and when it took place.

All we really know is the identify and future plans of the top three finishers. This is where it becomes curious. According to the newspaper account, Henry planned “to enter the college of arts and sciences this fall,” that is, the fall of 1936 (recall that the winners were announced in the 1 June 1936 issue). 

However, 1936 was a momentous year for the Peter P Buller family for another reason: this was the year that Peter P, Margaretha, and their unmarried children (Sara, Maria, and Henry) moved from the farm north of Lushton to California. There is a clear disconnect between the August 1936 move west and Henry’s stated plans to enter the University of Nebraska at roughly the same time. It raises the question, When did Peter P and Margaretha decide to move west? 

If they decided before the competition took place, then Henry’s plan to attend the University of Nebraska may have been more a wish than an expectation. That is, perhaps Henry hoped to convince his parents to allow him to remain in Nebraska so he could start school in the fall. If the decision took place sometime after the competition, then it seems likely that Henry’s original plans fell apart with that decision.

It does not help that we do not know when the competition took place, but presumably it was sometime during the spring term, perhaps in April or May. One thing we do know is that Peter, Margaretha, Sara, and Maria visited Peter P’s brother J. P Buller in Hawaii from early December 1935 to late March 1936 (see here). Henry stayed behind, since he was still attending high school. Is it possible that the decision was made after the four returned from their ocean cruise? One could draw this impression from Henry’s reminiscences about his early life:

Well in 1936, after having a vacation in Hawaii with Maria and Sarah, they moved to southern California, where there was a gentleman—Pete Janzen—who Dad had helped to come from Russia in the early 1920s. He convinced Dad that southern California was the place to retire, and they came home and talked about buying some orange groves and sitting under the trees, picking them and eating them. Well, they had the sale of the farm in the summer of 1936, and we took off. (see here)

Although we cannot say for certain, it seems plausible that Peter P visited with Pete Janzen, who appears to have lived in California in 1936, either prior to or after the voyage from San Francisco to Honolulu, at which time Pete Janzen encouraged Peter P to retire in southern California. Not long after, Peter P decided to do just that. In Henry’s words, “they came home and talked about buying some orange groves.”

If this proposed reconstruction of events is accurate, then it is entirely possible that Henry did plan to attend the University of Nebraska when he entered the competition. However, by the time he learned of his third-place finish, those plans had been superseded by his parents’ decision to move the entire family to California. So it was that Henry’s academic career was placed on hold—at least for a time.

But what of the report that Peter P had helped Pete Janzen to relocate from Russia to the US? Well, that intriguing detail deserves its own future post.

 

Family Letters: AI Edition

On occasion I have mentioned items from our family history that Carolyn (Peters) Stucky shared for posting on the blog. Among those items were photographs (here), a 1944 newspaper that Henry Buller had read while being held prisoner by the Nazis (here), an agricultural workbook that Henry had created years earlier (more on that later), and letters that Grandpa Chris’s sister Sara had collected over a number of years, spanning 1907 to 1931.

Most of the letters are written in English and are easy enough to read. However, seven of them, written between 1925 and 1928, all sent by Marie Siebert, are in German cursive. I have limited ability to decipher German cursive, so when I was scanning the larger batch of letters for posterity (i.e., archiving), I initially thought that I would not spend time to capture something that I would probably never read. At the last moment, however, I changed my mind and scanned the entire batch. I am happy that I did. Why?

Recently the world has been abuzz with excitement about the promise (or the dangers) of artificial intelligence (AI). Many of the claims (and fears) are way overblown, in my view: AI will neither save nor destroy the world. That being said, some AI-powered apps are quite good. Several translation programs now produce remarkably accurate and idiomatic renderings of one language into another, of German, for example, into English.

Another application that recently came to my attention is an AI-powered program that recognizes and analyzes the handwriting of the scribes of the Great Isaiah Scroll found at Qumran (see, e.g., here). This got me to thinking: if AI could be trained to recognize the Hebrew script written by scribes of the Dead Sea Scrolls over two thousand years ago, then perhaps someone had already developed an app that could read (i.e., recognize) German cursive written in the early twentieth century. It turns out that someone has.

The online app Transkribus (see here) was the the first option that came to my attention, and it turned out to be exactly what I was looking for. I uploaded a page of a letter from Marie to Sara (the one shown above), and within 15 seconds the app had worked its magic and produced a reasonably accurate transcription of the letter.

The screen shot above gives a good idea of how the app works. One uploads a .jpeg image of the text to be transcribed, then Transkribus “scans” the image multiple times and outputs the transcribed text seen. Another nice feature of the app is that holding one’s mouse over a particular line of text highlights it on both the image and the transcription. In this example, I held my mouse over the second line of the letter body, which prompted Transkribus to draw a line around the text in the image and highlight in gray the corresponding text in the transcription. This feature is helpful for making close comparisons between the original text and AI-generated transcription.

The resulting transcription is reasonably accurate but not perfect. Note, for example, that the 8 of the year at the top is missing. Further, the salutation is broken into two lines: Liebe / Consine Sara (as are several other lines), and the 3 in line 8 of the transcription is a phantom (the app is reading a blank space). Finally, in a few cases the app seems to misread a word. 

Still, with the transcription providing a head start, it is not difficult to correct the few errors and produce a serviceable text. In this case, Transkribus enabled me to recover the entire two-page letter with a fairly high degree of confidence: 

Jan 20, 1928

Liebe Cousine Sara:

Ich habe in letzter Zeit viel an dich gedacht so will ich den mal ein paar Zeilen schreiben. Ich habe ein paar mal gefragt wie es dir geht und es würde gesagt es geht dir gut. Aber freilich weiß ich aus Erfahrung das wenn man nach einer Operation auch gut tut. so fühlt man mitunter doch noch sehr sich Glecht. wünsche sehr das Du jetzt ganz gesund werden könntest und wieder mit neuem Mut in die Zukunft blicken. Ich weiß ja Erfahrung wie einem an zu Mute ist wenn die Hoffnung verschwunden ist. Aber die auf den Herrn harren kriegen neue Kraft u.s.w. 

Seit Letzten Mittwoch haben wir in der Kirche sehr schöne Abendversammlungen gehabt. Gestern abend war zum letzten mal. Rev. P. P. Wedel von Kansas war der Redner. Du wirst vieleicht gehört haben das er kommen wollte. 

Bei deinen Eltern bin ich noch nicht gewesen will aber nächtens hin zu gehen. habe aber schon mit deiner Mama in der Kirche gesprochen. Das Wetter ist eine Zeitlang sehr schön gewesen, jetzt ist es ziemlich kalt. Zum Schluß wünsche ich die Gottes Segen. 

Auf wiedersehen, 

Marie Siebert

Translated into English, the letter reads as follows:

Dear cousin Sara:

I have been thinking about you a lot lately, so I wanted to write you a few lines. I have asked a few times how you are doing, and I was told that you are doing well. But of course, I know from experience that, even if you are doing well after an operation, you still feel very weak at times. I sincerely hope that you will now be able to recover completely and look to the future with renewed courage. I know from experience how it feels when hope is gone. But those who wait on the Lord will gain new strength, etc.

Since last Wednesday, we have had very nice evening meetings at church. Last night was the last one. Rev. P. P. Wedel from Kansas was the speaker. You may have heard that he was coming. 

I haven’t been to see your parents yet, but I want to go tonight. I already spoke to your mother at church. The weather has been very nice for a while, but now it’s quite cold. Finally, I wish you God’s blessings. 

Goodbye,

Marie Siebert

And just like that, albeit with a huge assist from technology, we have a window back into our family past some ninety-seven years ago. The day the letter was written, 20 January 1928, was a Friday. As we see on the envelope below, the letter was postmarked the same day. Obviously, Marie wrote the letter early enough in the day to have it postmarked in the Lushton post office the same day (the postmark actually says “A.M.”). This also means that the evening meetings at the church, presumably Bethesda Mennonite Church in Henderson, Nebraska, had begun on “last Wednesday,” or 11 January, and had finished on the Thursday evening before, or 19 January.

What else can we glean from the letter and its envelope? The letter was mailed from Lushton and was addressed to Sara at the Mennonite Hospital in Beatrice, Nebraska. Earlier (here and here) we discovered that sometime in 1927 (we think) Sara had taken a job at the Mennonite Deaconess Home and Hospital in Beatrice. Thus it is not surprising that the letter was addressed to Sara there. However, the body of the letter indicates that in January 1928 Sara was not a worker but rather a patient at the hospital. Marie references some sort of an operation and her hopes for Sara’s continued recovery.

Who is Marie Siebert? Note first that she identifies her as Sara’s cousin, so we know she was a relative, not merely a close friend. As far as I can tell, she was the daughter of Cornelius Siebert, who was Sarah Siebert Buller’s brother. That would make her a first cousin to Peter P Buller (Sara’s father) and thus a first cousin once removed to Sara herself. If I have identified the correct Marie Siebert (I know of no other reasonable possibilities), then she was nearly seven years older than Sara: born on 24 November 1892, Marie was thirty-six when the letter was written; born 30 September 1899, Sara was twenty-nine at that time. Sadly, Marie died less than five years later, a week shy of her fortieth birthday.

One person referenced in the letter remains: P. P. Wedel. In all likelihood, this individual was the elder at the First Mennonite Church of Christian (Moundridge, Kansas). According to the GAMEO article on that church, written by none other than P. P. Wedel himself (here), Wedel served as elder from 1917 to 1951. Another GAMEO article describes Wedel as “a longtime leader in the General Conference Mennonite Church” (here). Given Wedel’s prominence in Mennonite circles and his proximity to Nebraska, the P. P. Wedel mentioned in these GAMEO articles seems almost certainly the one who led the evening meetings that Marie references.

Still, several questions remain unanswered: What operation had Sara undergone? Further, since Marie says that she knew from experience how weak one feels after an operation, what operation had she undergone and when? For now, these details must remain unknown. Perhaps another letter or document from some other time will shed light on them and allow us to fill in even more blanks in our family history. 

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 21

The previous post in this series (here) evaluated Peter D and Sarah’s level of success by comparing their farm productivity to that of their closest neighbors as reported on the agricultural schedule for the 1885 Nebraska census. That post, after considering farm size and land value, the value of farm goods produced, crop distribution, and crop yields and revenue, drew the following conclusions: In 1885, six years after settling in Nebraska, Peter D and Sarah were among the larger landholders in the immediate area, with possession of a full quarter section, 160 acres. However, a significant amount of that land was as yet undeveloped, and of the land that was available for raising crops, 11 percent was left fallow. In addition, for whatever reason, Peter D and Sarah fell somewhat below the average yields that their neighbors enjoyed. As a result of the limited amount of land available and the lower than average yields, they also reported a lower value of all farm productions.

There are, of course, other angles from which to examine their financial position. This balance of this post will explore one of those angles. This time, instead of comparing the Buller farm’s productivity to that of their neighbors, we will calculate it relative to the value of the land they owned and then compare that to twenty-first-century figures. One might loosely think of this as calculating and then comparing returns on (land) investment (ROI).

We begin with an admittedly simple-minded calculation of the ROI of a modern farm raising corn. I recognize that today’s farmers incur significant additional expenses to raise each crop; for the sake of a clean comparison, however, we will limit our focus strictly to land value, not the other costs associated with raising a crop today (e.g., machinery, fuel, fertilizer, seed corn). 

According to the AcreValue website (see here), the average value of an acre of farmland in Hamilton County, Nebraska, is $7,703; since the Buller farm was located in Hamilton County, we will use that figure (I note that the value of land in York County is somewhat less, at $6,922 an acre). 

The UNL Institute of Agriculture and Natural Resources CropWatch newsletter for 23 January 2025 (here) reports that the average Nebraska corn yield for 2024 was 188 bushels per acre. Finally, the CropWatch newsletter for 27 February 2025 reports that the average price paid per bushel of corn in 2024 was $4.45.

Based on these figures, we can calculate that an average acre of land in Nebraska would produce $836.60 in revenue (188 bushels × $4.45 a bushel). When we divide that figure by the value of the land, $7,703, we can conclude that the revenue produced by that acre would equal 10.9 percent of the value of the land ($836.60 ÷ $7,703.00). Again, these calculations do not reflect the actual costs or profits of raising corn today; they merely give us a benchmark against which we can compare the performance of Peter D and Sarah’s farm in 1885.

We discovered in an earlier post in this series (here) that the 1885 Buller farm was valued at $20 an acre ($3,200 ÷ 160 acres). In 1885 Peter D reported planting 27 acres that produced 900 bushels of corn, for an average of 33.3 bushels an acre. The price of corn that year was 25¢ a bushel, so the average revenue per acre of corn was $8.33. In other words, the revenue produced by an acre of corn equaled 41.7 percent of the value of the land ($20.00 ÷ $8.33). This is a substantially higher return than farmers in 2024 might expect.

Of course, Peter D and Sarah planted only 27 acres in corn. Another 60 acres was planted to wheat and generated $8.16 an acre, which is comparable to the average revenue per acre of corn. The rest of the 160 acres was planted to other crops (28 acres) or left fallow or undeveloped (45 acres). Perhaps, then, a more realistic comparison is the total value of the goods produced (whether for sale or consumption). In 1885, Peter D reported $652 in total farm production, or $4.08 per acre owned ($652 ÷ 160 acres). This equals 20.4 percent of the value of the land. Although this is substantially less than the corn-based ROI calculated above (40.7 percent), it is still nearly double the comparable 2024 figure.

What can we conclude from all this? According to the 1885 agricultural schedule, Peter D and Sarah’s farm produced a much higher return on their land investment than any farmer today would ever expect. If they had planted all 160 acres available to them in corn (not a realistic option at that time), they could have generated revenue equal to the value of their land in a little over two years. Even at the lower rate of return generated by the actual acres cultivated, the Buller farm was on pace to generate revenue equal to the value of the land in less than five years. Today’s corn farmers, by comparison, need at least ten years to generate revenue equal to the value of their land (and that does not account for the high costs of producing corn today).

Although we should not push this comparison too far, it is obvious that, relative to the costs incurred and revenue earned by corn farmers today, Peter D and Sarah’s farm was remarkably profitable. When one considers further (1) that they had purchased only 80 of the 160 acres that they owned (the other 80 acres becoming theirs through the Homestead Act; see here) and (2) that they had purchased those 80 acres (now valued at $20 an acre) for $900, or $11.25 an acre (see here), their success appears even greater. 

In short, Peter D and Sarah invested $900 to purchase their initial 80 acres and nothing at all for the 80 acres they were homesteading. The $652 in revenue reported for 1885 was equal to more than two-thirds of their original investment. Even if only half of each year’s revenue was applied to the loan on their land, they would have paid off the cost of their farm in less than three years. This helps us to understand how, so soon after arriving in central Nebraska, Peter D and Sarah were able to purchase yet another 80 acres northeast of Henderson (see here). For these early Bullers, the United States truly was a land of opportunity. 

The Blizzard of 1888, part 2

The first post in this two-part series concluded by observing that Peter D, Sarah, and their kids probably did not realize the severity of the 12 January 1888 Children’s Blizzard until some time later. How can we know this? The newspaper accounts of the day hint that that was the case.

The 14 January 1888 issue of the Aurora News-Register, which was published just two days after the storm, mentions the blizzard and its effects in a sort of light-hearted manner. The paper writes (page 5):

A week of sleighing. 

…

That was a regular old fashioned rip snorter of a blizzard Thursday.

…

The trains were all abandoned Thursday afternoon on the B. & M. lines here.

Five days later, on 19 January 1888, exactly one week after the storm, reports of losses were beginning to trickle in. The Aurora Republican, for example, reported (page 8):

J. B. Cain, southwest of this place, has lost 25 head of hogs on account of the blizzards of late.

…

Mr. C. Weliver reports the loss of three hogs during the blizzard, also the loss of eleven more by Mr. Ottergreen.

…

Considerable stock perished in the blizzard of January 12.

That same newspaper issue also offers the first reference to the loss of human life:

During the late blizzards a number of lives lost, have been reported from Dakota and other places.

…

In another place will be found an account of the worst blizzard that ever struck Nebraska. The blizzard of 1873 was longer in duration, but not so cold and terrific as the late blizzards—up to date, it is reported that 130 lives have been lost on account of it.

It appears that the “another place” referenced was on page 1 of the same issue, which contains the following report:

The Blizzard Fatalities.

MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. Jan. 17.—The Evening Journal’s revised list of the blizzard fatalities shows 97 dead in Dakota, 18 in Minnesota, 6 in Iowa, 17 in Nebraska, and 2 in Montana. Total, 135, besides 55 reported missing.

Specials from various portions of Wisconsin indicate that Sunday night was the coldest in years. The thermometer at Washburn observatory, in Madison, registered 30 deg. below, Eau Claire reports 48 below, Richland Center 55, Sparta 50, and Chippewa Falls 60.

The 21 January 1888 issue of the Aurora Sun offered additional details:

The late blizzard was the fiercest and most destructive of any like storm for many years. The loss of life all over the west was something appalling. Not less than 200 lives were lost, perhaps many more. Nebraska suffered rather severely. No lives were lost in this county. At Neligh five men named Stickle froze to death while four were looking for the other; a man named Gloze, a boy named Miller, at Plainview Miss Royce, schoolma’am, started home with three children and they all died on the way, while Miss Royce froze both feet so they will have to be amputated. At Foster, Henry Kreckhafer and his son froze to death 80 rods [440 yards] from the house. At Fremont two school children were froze to death. At Tekamah Chas. Gray and one other party. One at Beatrice, and here and there everywhere turns up a victim of the raging storm.

Coverage of the storm by East Coast papers demonstrate just how much a national story the blizzard was. The 15 January 1888 New York Times, for example, devoted several columns on page 1 to reports of the storm’s effects in places such as Watertown, Dakota; Minneapolis, Minnesota; Sioux Falls, Dakota; Garrison, Nebraska; and St. Joseph, Missouri. The Omaha report recounts the following:

Reports of the effects of the terrible blizzard of Thursday night throughout Nebraska are beginning to come in, and they show that the amount of suffering was something terrible. Hundreds of people were badly frozen, several got lost in the storm, and a few deaths are reported. In Gage County John Sparks, a farmer, is missing and cannot be found. He was at Beatrice, 12 miles away, and started home. His team turned up all right, and it is thought he has perished in the snow. Ed and Charley Maxwell, living in the same county, also had a narrow escape from freezing to death. They tried to go a distance of two miles, but got lost and had to camp all night in a hay stack. Charley's feet and legs were badly frozen and one horse died. Near Sutton an old man name Mathews got lost in going from his house to the stable, not over 20 rods [110 yards] distant, and perished. Frank Skinner, a railroad man, attempted to walk home from Sutton, 10 miles, where his child lay dead, but would have died himself had he not by accident fallen into a shed among a lot of calves and sheep, where he remained until morning.

About six miles from Sutton the storm overtook Mrs. Campbell and Maggie Skirving, two young women, who were driving home from town in a buggy, and they were soon hopelessly lost. Fortunately the team ran against an old sod house, in which they took shelter for the night, but suffered badly from frozen feet, hands, and faces. At Schuyler M. Cline, a farmer, started to go to the schoolhouse after his children, and has not been heard of since. John Miller, a farmer, near Columbus, got lost while trying to corral his stock, tramped the prairie in a circle all night. There are numerous reports of stock perishing and other disasters.

Contemporary accounts of the suffering inflicted and the loss exacted by the Children’s Blizzard could be multiplied. The reference to Sutton in the last account strikes particularly close to home, since that was only 10 miles south of the Buller family farm. 

However, news in late nineteenth-century Nebraska did not travel as quickly or as widely as it does today, and it is most likely that many rural residents did not learn of the severity of the storm until much later. That would explain the, once again, light-hearted tone of the “Henderson Clippings,” a report of local news by an amateur correspondent writing under the nom de plume Dulcie, in the 25 January 1888 issue of the York Republican (page 2):

Fearing you would think us snowed under I write to let you know that we are still on top of the drift.

The only thing of importance this week is a genuine old blizzard—coming down from—well we don’t now exactly where, but it came just the same, from a northwesterdly direction. Some drifts are upwards of ten feet deep, while good sleighing will be had for some time on the level. A good many farmers lost stock more or less. Some wandered away in the blinding storm and has not yet been found. Fortunately for stock and owners alike it was not very cold. The thermometer not registering much below zero, while Sunday it was down to 32 below. Trains were stopped from the 12th to the 15th, partly on account of the snow storm, and partly on account of a wreck which had occured [sic] a short distance west of Henderson. All of the train men were thrown to the ground. The engineer received slight injuries. Help came and took the wreck back on Sunday.

Supposing you have all realized that we have had a snow storm.

Although we have no evidence for what Peter D, Sarah, and their children knew about the blizzard and its deadly effects, it seems most likely that their concern was mostly local, perhaps even with the wreck on the train tracks that lay a mere half-mile north of their farmstead. Perhaps someday we will find more evidence, whether in a diary or a letter to a loved one, of their experience during the Children’s Blizzard of 1888. Until then, we can only imagine both their worries and their gratitude for having everyone, including their livestock, safe during such a terrible ordeal.

For additional reading on the Children’s Blizzard, see the Nebraska State Historical Society article here.

The Blizzard of 1888, part 1

Those of my generation who were raised and educated in Nebraska have probably heard of the 1888 Children’s Blizzard. The storm was so named because it struck during the middle of the school day, on a Thursday, 12 January 1888. At this time many children living on the prairie were gathered in one-room schoolhouses, most of which had limited fuel and no food supplies. I recall from my own school days stories of teachers setting out with children in tow, bravely attempting to lead their students through the storm to a safe haven. Although many lives were saved, tragically, over two hundred children and adults lost their lives in that storm.

What does this have to do with Buller Time? Well, the Buller Family Record devotes considerable space to that blizzard. In the first few pages, we read:

One of the most destructive blizzards on record in the northern plains occurred on Jan. 12, 1888. This blizzard has been called Omaha’s biggest news event and one of the most spectacular events in the history of Nebraska.

Many lives were lost in the blizzard and much livestock perished. It was reported that cattle were frozen to death in a standing position and to this date there is no accurate record of the number of lives lost in this blizzard. Estimates of the number of deaths range from several hundred to a thousand. Settlers in those days were few and far between and they could not be spared.

Settlers in the northern plains in 1888 were pioneers, and sod and log houses and schools were common. The blizzard came without warning and many people were caught away from shelter, especially since the weather preceding the blizzard was unusually warm.

The blizzard pushed southeastward across Montana into Dakota and Nebraska with the most destruction in the area which is now South Dakota. It caused temperature falls of from 30 to 60 degrees in 24 hours with readings down to 20 to 40 below zero. Although the snowfall was comparatively light the strong winds picked up what was on the ground and piled it into drifts which ranged from five to 20 feet deep.

Many of those who perished were school children. Some were caught going home and others left schools after all combustible material had been burned, only to be frozen before reaching nearby shelter. There were many stories of heroic actions by teachers who saved the lives of their school children. Many tales are related in a book called In All Its Fury [O’Gara 1947], an account of the blizzard of 1888. This was published in 1947 as a result of interest created after the organization of the “January 12, 1888 Blizzard Club” by survivors of the blizzard.

This account of the blizzard appears in the early pages of the Buller Family Record, following J. J. Friesen’s explanation of the Henderson Immigrant House historical marker and immediately after a a brief history of Henderson. There is no indication as to who wrote either the history of Henderson or the account of the Children’s Blizzard.

Not so with a second account of the Children’s Blizzard, which is tucked behind the page listing Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller’s family. This account was written by Maria and Sara:

On January 12, 1888, the grandparents [Peter D and Sarah] were in Henderson, and the depot agent came to the store and told the people to hurry home, for he had word that a big snowstorm was on the way. They hurried home and were able to get all their cattle into the barn before the storm arrived. It had started to snow the night before and had kept it up all day until in the afternoon. It had been a mild day, snow soft and fluffy at least 12 inches deep. There had been no wind during the snowfall, but at 3 o’clock in the afternoon the wind started from the northwest and a terrible blizzard took place. Many people were caught away from shelter and froze to death. Many of these were school children. The next day the temperature dropped down to 40° below zero.

Given the placement of this second account within a brief history of Peter P’s life, it seems relatively clear that the 1888 blizzard was considered a significant event in our family’s early years in Nebraska. Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller had settled in Nebraska in 1879, when Peter P was ten years old. The blizzard hit less than nine years later, before Peter P turned nineteen. One can easily imagine that the Children’s Blizzard was a life-defining moment for those who went through it.

Several details in Maria and Sara’s account help us to understand the likely impact on the family. Given the advance warning, we can reasonably imagine that all the school-age children in the family—which potentially included Heinrich, Jacob, Sarah, Cornelius, and David—were safe and dry at home. If these children were attending school at that time, it was probably in the “Russian School” located 3/4 mile west and 1/2 mile north of the Buller farmstead (see the plat map here). If any Buller children were in school that day, it would have been easy enough, and completely logical, for Peter D and Sarah to swing by the school and pick them up on the way home from Henderson.

Another significant detail is not left to our imagination: after arriving home, Peter D and Sarah had time to gather all the livestock into the safety of the barn. Unlike some others in the neighborhood, the Bullers did not suffer the loss of cattle or, one assumes, horses or pigs. All in all, it seems, the Buller family weathered the storm relatively well. 

One wonders how our ancestors’ lives might have differed had Peter D and Sarah not been in Henderson that day or had the railroad depot agent not warned people of the approaching blizzard. To let our imaginations run a little further, what if there had not been a Henderson to go to that day? Interestingly, the town of Henderson had been established only in the fall of 1887, and a 1918 account of the town’s history notes that, “about the time of the great blizzard, the first houses of this town were being built” (Sedgwick 1921, 1:473). If the blizzard had struck in 1887 rather than 1888, our ancestors might well have been elsewhere, perhaps on their way back from Sutton, completely unaware of the danger rolling down from the northwest.

Of course, providence preserved our ancestors that terrible day, and they apparently came through the ordeal unscathed. They may not even have appreciated the severity of the threat to their lives and their livelihood until sometime later. Why do I say this? Contemporary newspaper accounts of the Children’s Blizzard reveal that the extent of the losses inflicted by that storm were not known for quite some time. We will rehearse some of those accounts in part 2 of this series. 

Works Cited

O’Gara, W. H., comp. 1947. In All Its Fury: A History of the Blizzard of January 12, 1888. Edited by Ora A. Clement. J & L Lee Books. Available for free checkout here.

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

Matilda C Buller Klippenstein, 1928–2025

Dad received word this afternoon that his older sister Matilda passed away yesterday at the age of ninety-seven. The obituary posted by Metz Mortuary (here) rehearses the main events of her life even as it nicely captures the depth and sincerity of her faith.

Matilda appeared in several Buller Time posts throughout the years. This first photo shows the entire family in front of the Lushton farmhouse (see post here). The photo was most likely taken in 1940, when Matilda was twelve.

The following photo of just Grandma and the girls was apparently taken the same day, since everyone is wearing the same outfit as in the first photo (original post here).

In a post from 13 April 2015 (here), Matilda is shown on the far right in a photo of a wagonload of kids; the photo was probably taken in 1941, when Matilda was thirteen.

The next photograph, showing the entire family, may date to 1943. If this is correct, Matilda was fifteen at the time.

Fast forward to the twenty-first century, a 6 September 2016 post showed Matilda alongside Wayne and his wife Bev (here). Although both Matilda and Wayne are now gone, we live with the certain hope of seeing them again in the life to come.

We honor those who are no longer with us not only by remembering them at various times of their lives but also by retelling their stories, so that they live on in our memories. With that in mind, I direct you to a post from 9 May 2017 that reproduces a York News Times story about Matilda’s experiences during the blizzards of 1948–1949 (see here).

Matilda, as both the news article and her obituary attest, lived a long and full life and exhibited bravery and kindness in the face of every challenge.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 20

Viewing an object such as a painting or a sculpture from a number of different angles often provides new perspectives and, as a result, a deeper and more nuanced understanding of and appreciation for the object under examination. This principle is just as true for less tangible material such as words and numbers on the page of a census form. With that in mind, the next several posts will look at the information recorded on the agricultural schedule for the 1885 Nebraska census from various angles, so we can form a nuanced and accurate view of the Buller farm six years into our family’s life in the U.S.

The two previous posts (here and here) observed the significant progress that Peter D and Sarah had made between 1880 and 1885. However, one wonders how their experience compared with those around them, that is, with their closest neighbors whose lives are described and their livelihoods recorded on the same page of the 1885 schedule. Looking at the Buller farm’s performance from this comparative angle is the subject of this post.

1. Farm size and land value

The extract from the agricultural schedule above records three types of information for each farmer: acreage that the farmer devoted to four different types of agriculture in columns 5–8; the value of the land owned in column 9; and the value of all farm products, whether sold or consumed, in column 16 (the last column shown).

Three of the nine farmers listed owned 160 acres: Peter Dalke, Isaac Brown, and Peter D. John Sparling owned 120 acres, and four others owned 80 acres: John Dalke, Isaac Brown (both Jr. and Sr. are listed on this page), Henry Pankratz, and John Penner. Finally Peter Penfrey (name uncertain; it appears to be Penkres on the main census form) owned 20 acres. By homesteading the 80 acres south of his original (1879) farm, Peter D had joined the group of farmers with the larger land holdings.

Four of the farms, including Peter D’s, were valued at $20 an acre; two were in the $22–23 range, and the remaining three farms were valued at $25 an acre. This close grouping is pretty clear evidence of the worth of land in that immediate area in 1885. By way of comparison, in 1880 the per-acre values for the farms in Peter D’s immediate area ranged from $5 to over $21, with an average value of $12.40 an acre.

What can we conclude from this brief comparison? By 1885, Peter D and Sarah were numbered among the larger landholders in their immediate area; the value of their land, though significantly higher than in 1880, was on the low end of the range reported by their neighbors.

2. Value of farm products

Of the three largest landowners, Peter D had by far the lowest value of farm productions: $652. Peter Dalke led the way with $2,495, and Isaac Brown reported $1,195. Why did Peter D’s 160-acre farm produce so much less? That is a question to keep in mind as we consider the other areas of comparison in this post.

The picture does not improve when we consider the data from the perspective of dollars produced per acre for all nine farms. The range is $4.06 to $15.59 (Peter Dalke) an acre; Peter D’s figure of $4.08 is next to last and well below the average of $7.36. Again, one wonders about the cause of the the Buller farm’s poorer performance.

3. Crop distribution

Interestingly, the amount of acreage Peter D devoted to raising crops was proportionately smaller than nearly all the other farmers. Could this be part of the source of the lower farm production value? The two other 160-acre farms devoted 144 acres, or 88 percent of their total acreage, to the raising of crops; Peter D, on the other hand, used only 115 acres, or 72 percent, to that end. Most of the smaller farms also devoted a higher percentage of their land to raising crops, ranging from 75 to 87 percent. Only John Dalke allocated a smaller percentage to crops than Peter D.

We observe in the second column of numbers that Peter D had 40 acres set aside for “permanent meadows, permanent pastures, orchards, vineyards.” This was more than double the amount of any of the other farms listed. Was this prairie sod that had not yet been broken (plowed), or did the Buller farm actually include a permanent pasture or orchard?

Note also that Peter D had 5 acres in the category “woodland and forest.” Again, this is far more than the other farms in the immediate area. When we compare these figures with the 1880 census schedule, we discover something interesting. In 1880, Peter D reported no acreage allocated to pastures or woodland. This gives the impression that the 45 acres given to pastures and woodland in 1885 were in the new land that Peter D and Sarah had claimed through the Homestead Act on 9 August 1880. If all this is correct, then it would be reasonable to think that these 45 acres simply had not yet been developed. It is not that Peter D chose to devote more than a fourth of his land to pastures and woodlands; rather, he had not yet broken the prairie sod or cut down the trees in the wooded area. Presumably all that took place at some point in the future.

4. Crop yields and revenue

As noted above, the amount of money that Peter D generated per acre owned was far below that of his closest neighbors. Was this because his farm had a comparatively smaller amount of land given over to raising crops? because his crop yields were below those of his neighbors? because of both? due to some other factor? A close look at Peter D’s yields compared to those of his neighbors may shed light on this question.

The extract above shows the crops raised by the nine farmers on the relevant agricultural schedule. As noted before, Peter D is the eighth farmer listed. Without reproducing all the details (I am happy to send my Excel sheet to anyone who asks), we can draw certain conclusions from this report.

Comparing the tilled acres listed in the first extract above to the total acres planted for all crops reveals that five of the farmers listed planted crops in every spare acre, while two others planted, respectively, 95 and 93 percent of the available acres. Peter D, by contrast, planted crops in 89 percent of his available acreage. Presumably the rest of his land was left fallow this year. To put this in different terms, whereas the other two 160-acre farms planted crops on 140 acres, Peter D planted only 102 acres, which certainly reduced, in the end, the amount of revenue that his farm produced.

Six of the nine farmers raised at least corn, oats, and wheat, but one planted only corn and wheat, one with a small farm (20 acres) planted only wheat, and one planted only corn. Interestingly, Peter D was the only one of this group of nine who planted rye. He used less than 10 percent of his tilled acreage for this crop, so it was not a central part of his farming. Still, I find it noteworthy that he diversified his crops more than his neighbors. I also wonder: Why did he raise rye, when none of the others did?

The majority (55.2 percent) of the acres were planted to wheat, which was clearly the leading crop in this area. Corn was the second most popular crop, accounting for 36.1 of the acres planted. The remaining 8.7 percent was given mostly to oats, along with Peter D’s 7 acres of rye.

The average yields for the three crops grown by the majority of these farmers were:

• corn: 37.6 bushels an acre, ranging from 25.0 to 47.4 (whether the reported yield was for shelled corn or on the cob is unknown to me)
• oats: 44.9 bushels an acre, ranging from 25.0 to 60.0
• wheat: 14.5 an acre, ranging from 10.0 to 18.3

Peter D’s yields were below average in every case, with his corn producing 33.3 bushels an acre, his oats 25.0 bushels an acre, and his wheat 13.1 bushels an acre.

According to the 30 July 1885 Republican Register, an Aurora newspaper, local prices for the crops listed above were as follows (p. 8):

• corn: 25¢ a bushel
• oats: 22.5¢ a bushel
• rye: 42.5¢ a bushel
• wheat: 62.5¢ a bushel

By multiplying the average yields per acre by the local price for each crop, we can calculate the average revenue per acre that each crop produced:

• corn: $9.40 an acre (Peter D: $8.33)
• oats: $10.10 an acre (Peter D: $5.63)
• rye: $6.98 an acre
• wheat: $9.07 an acre (Peter D: $8.16)

Taking all these data into account helps us to form a more nuanced perspective on Peter D and Sarah’s farm six years after they set up their new life a mile outside of Henderson. By 1885, they were among the larger landholders in the immediate area, with possession of 160 acres. However, a notable amount of that land was as yet undeveloped, still in its original state as unbroken prairie sod or woods. Further, of the land that was available for raising crops, 11 percent was left fallow; unlike most of their neighbors, Peter D and Sarah did not plant crops in every available acre. In addition, for whatever reason, Peter D and Sarah fell somewhat below the average yields that their neighbors enjoyed. As a result of all these factors, they also reported a lower than average value of all farm productions.

One might think, after reading that paragraph, that Peter D and Sarah were not very successful in their farming endeavors. However, there are still other angles from which to view their performance, which is a matter we will take up in the following post.