Farm life in the early 1900s

In celebration of the Henderson, Nebraska, centennial in 1974, the Henderson Centennial Committee commissioned the publication of a substantial volume titled Henderson Mennonites: From Holland to Henderson (Voth 1975). Thumbing through the work recently, I happened upon a few Buller family photos. The photos are not of the same line as Grandpa Chris’s family, but they are reasonably close relatives just the same.

As we all know well by now, our first known Buller ancestor was David, who had nine children, one of whom was named Peter D. Following on, Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller had eleven children. Of this couple’s seven sons, one was named Peter P, and another was named David S (for Siebert). Peter P, of course, was Grandpa Chris’s father. The subjects of our interest in this post are David S and at least two of his children: David E and Margaret. The relation between this Buller line and our own can be presented schematically as follows.

		David
		|
	—	Peter D	—
Peter P				David S
|				|
Chris				David E
				Margaret

In other words, David S was Grandpa Chris’s uncle, and David E and Maragret were his cousins. All that provides the background for several photos discovered in Henderson Mennonites. The first photo shows David E feeding the family hogs while his sister (probably Margaret) and a dog look on. Since David E was born in 1907, one might guess that this photograph was taken in 1913 or 1914. Notice that David appears to be barefoot, which I imagine was not at all unusual.

This photograph and the one immediately below from Voth 1975, 56.

David E also appears in our second photograph, but this time along with his father David S. According to Henderson Mennonites, the photograph shows their harvest of a “bumper crop of grapes.” People today may not equate central Nebraska with grape production,  but Nebraska farmers of the early 1900s often cultivated grapes. For example, an 1899 collection of biographical sketches writes of Henderson’s Jacob Friesen (GRANDMA 64984) as follows: “The orchard upon his home place contains over two hundred apple trees, two hundred cherry trees and other fruit trees in abundance, especially grapes, from which he manufactures the best of wine” (Ogle 1899, 435). The photo of David S and David E demonstrates that Jacob Friesen was not the only prolific grower of grapes in the Henderson area.

The third photo also shows David E, this time joined by his younger sister Margaret (according to the identification in Voth 1975, 65). Note especially the construction of the sled in the lower photo. It is almost certain that Grandpa Chris, who was born a year before David E, joined these and other of his cousins for wintertime fun on his own sled of similar construction. Thus the benefit of this post is not only that we learn more about a related line of Bullers but that we also see what life was like for our own direct ancestors who lived at the same time and same general place.

Sources

Ogle. 1899. Memorial and Biographical Record and Illustrated Compendium of Biography: Containing a Compendium of Local Biography, Including Biographical Sketches of Hundreds of Prominent Old Settlers and Representative Citizens of Butler, Polk, Seward, York and Fillmore Counties, Nebraska, with a Review of Their Life Work. Chicago: Ogle. Available online here.

Voth, Stanley E., ed. 1975. Henderson Mennonites: From Holland to Henderson. Henderson, NE: Henderson Centennial Committee.