What a long, strange trip

The world today seems incredibly mobile, as children grow up and move from the family home to locales far away. However, none of us or our kids can really compare with the mobility that one of Grandpa’s uncles experienced.

If you check in the Buller Family Record, you will be reminded that Jacob P Buller was the younger brother of Peter P. In fact, you will see that Jacob was born 2 August 1879, around a month after the family had arrived and settled in Nebraska. He was the first member of the family born in the U.S.

Of course, we should not forget that Sarah Siebert Buller was six months pregnant when the family emigrated, so Jacob actually began his life’s journey (in utero) in Kleefeld, Molotschna colony. Why is this worth noting? Because Jacob’s journey did not merely take him from Kleefeld to Henderson but all the way to Honolulu.

Thanks to this photo provided by Abe and Alice Buller, we have occasion to focus on Jacob P Buller, brother to Peter P and uncle to Grandpa Chris.

As already mentioned, Jacob was born shortly after the family arrived in Nebraska. The Buller Family Record provides more information about his life: “J.P. Buller attended Fremont Normal School and graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1911. He was a teacher in the public schools of Nebraska, Texas and Idaho until 1921. He taught in the Hawaiian public schools until 1928. He was then appointed high school principal and served as such in several schools until his retirement in 1942.” That date was, of course, one year after the attack on Pearl Harbor.

Online sources fill in a few other details. According to the Hawaiian Genealogy Indexes website (see here), on 4 August 1925 Jacob married Elizabeth C. Gordon in Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. Whether Jacob and Elizabeth met in Hawaii or met earlier and decided to relocate together is unclear. Jacob was eighteen years older than Elizabeth, who was born in Philadelphia on 1 April 1897. The Buller Family Record also reports that Jacob and Elizabeth had one son together, Jospeh Gordon Buller, a year after they married.

The 1930 United States Census Report confirms that Jacob was a high school principal. Little more is known of his life, but online records document at least one trip back to the States (Hawaii was still a territory at that time). The ship manifest below lists the passengers of a voyage from Vancouver, British Columbia, to Honolulu in August 1934.

The page detail below uncovers additional information. For example, we confirm that Elizabeth was born in Philadelphia. Further, we learn (apparently) where Jacob was principal. Looking closely, we see that Elizabeth and Joseph list Leilahua School Wahiawa, Hawaii, as their U.S. address. (Jacob’s is given as “Department of Public Instruction.”) Presumably the school in view is today’s Leilehua High School, a public, co-educational, college preparatory high school northwest of Honululu in the center of the island.

Jacob died in 1957, and Elizabeth followed five years later, in 1962. The Buller Family Record also states that their son Joseph married Joan Marie Schneider in 1966.

Apparently the entire family moved to California at some point, since Jacob is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale, California (see here). There is also a record of a 2001 real-estate transaction for Joseph and Joan in Los Angeles-Lake Balboa. It appears that Joseph and Marie are both still alive.

These bits and pieces from another branch of the Buller tree are of no direct relevance for us except as a reminder of how far our family has come and how far we all will continue to go. Jacob was a bridge between the Old World (Kleefeld) and the New World (Henderson), but he continued his journey all the way to the island of Oahu and then back to California, where his brother Peter P had lived since 1936. That was a long way for both to travel to wind up in the same place.