The evidence for this is found in the Buller Family Record, where Aunts Sarah and Maria state that “in August 1936 the parents moved to Ontario, California. Mother had lived on the farm home near Lushton, Nebraska, for fifty-nine years, then in Ontario, California, until her death in 1951” (Peter P page). If by 1936 Margaretha had lived on the farm home for fifty-nine years, then she began living there in 1877—which is consistent with the fact that six-year-old Margaretha and most of her family immigrated to the U.S. in the summer of 1877 (arriving in Philadelphia aboard the S.S. Vaderland on 29 June 1877).
If Margaretha lived fifty-nine years on the Epp farm 4 miles east of Henderson—and, by implication, nowhere else—we can reasonably conclude that Peter P moved to that same farm when they married on 27 February 1890. As with Peter D, what we see is the textbook definition of matrilocality. That much is clear. What is less obvious is (1) why Peter P moved to his in-laws’ farm instead of staying with his own family and (2) why Margaretha, the eleventh child of Cornelius and Katharina Epp, had the opportunity to live on the family farm and eventually take possession of it. We will do our best to explore these questions fully yet carefully, without engaging in too much speculation.
Why did Peter P practice matrilocality?
It was relatively clear why Peter D lived with Sarah Siebert’s family a generation earlier: her family owned and farmed land; Peter D’s family did not. That was not the case with Peter P and Margaretha. Peter P’s father purchased 80 acres shortly after the family arrived in the Henderson area, and when Peter and Margaretha married he was in the process of homesteading an additional 80 acres adjoining the original plot. In other words, Peter P’s father Peter D did own land that would potentially be available for one of the children to buy and farm at some point.
Further complicating the picture is the fact that Peter P did eventually own (or so it seems) the entire 160 acres of the family farm. The 1916 plat map shown below clearly lists Peter Buller as owner of the northeast quarter of section 12 in the Farmers Valley Township in Hamilton County. Even if we are somehow misunderstanding who actually owned the property, one thing is clear: Peter P Buller (his father Peter D died in 1897) controlled and farmed the entire quarter.
The point of highlighting this in this context is simple: Peter P clearly had the opportunity later to acquire the family farm, so why did he move to Margaretha’s family farm when they were married? That part of the question we may never know. Perhaps the couple felt that their chances of acquiring the Buller farm were slim (there were nine other living children in the family, and Peter had an older brother Johann) and they chose to follow a more promising course (the Epp farm). We should recall that Peter D was only forty-five when Peter P and Margaretha married, and no one could have known that he would die a mere seven years later. Whatever led Peter P and Margaretha to choose her family farm over his, we do know that they moved there when they married and lived there until they moved to California forty-six years later.
The question of why Margaretha, the eleventh child of Cornelius and Katharina Epp, alone of all her siblings, or so it seems, had the opportunity to live on the family farm and eventually take possession of it is another intriguing question. This will require us to explore Margaretha’s family history a bit, which we will do in a subsequent post. Suffice it to say for now that Peter P and Margaretha Epp, like Peter D and Sarah Siebert, practiced matrilocality, perhaps for essentially the same reason: to ensure access to farmland that would support their families in the years to come.
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