Both the extent of matrilocality and the manner in which it is applied varies from society to society, time to time, and even situation to situation. In some societies matrilocality is the norm; in others, such as among our Mennonite ancestors, it was an option but not a universal expectation. Further, matrilocality is more common among agriculture-based families than among those who no longer depend upon accessible land for their financial survival (i.e., most grandchildren of Chris and Malinda Buller). Finally, in some cases matrilocality involves the younger couple living in the same house as the wife’s parents, while in other instances the couple leaves nearby on land or in a house provided by the wife’s parents.
Loewen begins by laying out the conditions underlying the practice of matrilocality, namely, the continuation of partible, bilateral inheritance practices in North America:
Other evidence, such as land ownership among Mennonite women in Jefferson County, Nebraska [i.e., Fairbury area], supports the idea that midwestern Mennonites transplanted not only partible inheritance, but also bilateral inheritance practices. … In Jefferson County, Nebraska, for example, fifteen of the eighty Mennonite landowners in Cub Creek Township [Jansen area] in 1900 were women and only one of these women was widowed. (Loewen 2001, 42)
Loewen then moves from the general to a particular instance of the inheritance practices:
An even closer examination of an individual household suggests it was the Mennonite inheritance practices that enabled this. In 1891, just after the death of his first wife, fifty-nine-year-old Jakob Klassen divested himself of 200 acres, almost half his total acreage. The land was divided equally among his youngest five children, ages thirteen to twenty-nine, including a fourteen-year-old daughter, Sara. His eldest daughter, Katherina, who had received her share of land shortly after her marriage in 1879, received nothing. In 1896, when Klassen retired, he turned over his remaining 300 acres to his children, giving a piece to each child, including his two daughters. (Loewen 2001, 42)
Loewen explains elsewhere (2001, 38) that inheritance designated for minor children was held in trust and did not become a child’s possession until her or his twenty-first birthday. The point that must not be missed is that both female and male children received the same inheritance. Why was this important? Loewen continues:
The significance of this was that the Klassen daughters of Jeffereson County secured matrilocal households. Inherited land attracted the husbands of the Klassen sisters to settle on the western side of the township in the Klassen village of Neuanlage. Tax and census records for 1900 show that while both Abram Rempel and Isaak Friesen, the two husbands, were residents of Cub Creek, they owned no land. A letter from 1896 states that at least one of these men, Abram Rempel, “at the present is living on his wife’s land near her parents.” (Loewen 2001, 42–43)
The practice of these Nebraska Mennonites was fundamentally no different from those of Mennonites farther north in Canada. Later in Hidden Worlds Loewen recounts the practices of Mennonites in two communities—Hanover, Manitoba, and Waterloo, Ontario—showing both their similarites and some differences. In the process he brings to several new considerations that might inform our own view of Buller inheritance and residency practices:
The consequence of [bilaterality] in Ontario was similar to its consequence in Manitoba. In both places, a single household secured two avenues, through the husband’s line or through the wife’s, by which to accrue land. Matrilocality in both Manitoba and Ontario was evidence that men often relied on the inheritance of their wives to help establish an independent household. The bride’s patrimony may have been the reason why farmer Cornelius Plett’s eldest son, Heinrich, settled in the village of his wife, Elisabeth Reimer, in 1889. Not only was Elisabeth in line to receive a 325-ruble inheritance from Russia, but her father, Reverend Peter Reimer, was also one of the wealthiest men in her village. This practice was especially frequent when men hailed from poorer households than their wives. (Loewen 2001, 80)
Loewen continues:
In Ontario, the bilateral system had one consequence not seen in Manitoba. Unlike Hanover women, Waterloo women sometimes remained single, but in their unwed state they also sometimes aided men in establishing farms. When David Bergey, for example, sought to raise the $7300 required for the 100-acre land purchase in 1900, he turned to his [unmarried] sister, Lydia, for $1100, and to two other women for an additional $4800, thus raising more than 80 percent of the required money from women. Most often, however, women used their inheritance to help establish their own households. As in Manitoba, there were signs of this practice in matrilocal residence patterns. In 1882, for example, farmer Ephraim Cressman moved to Breslau, the home of his wife, Susannah Betzner. In the following years, at least two of Cressman’s brothers, Allen and Isaiah, actually moved onto farms owned by their wives’s parents. (Loewen 2001, 80–81)
Loewen’s examples and interpretations are rich and deserve a closer examination than we can give them in this already-long post. For the time being, then, let us sum up what we have learned thus far: Mennonites’s partible, bilateral inheritance practices created the conditions in which matrilocality became not only acceptable but also fairly common. This, of course, raises the following question: Which Bullers practiced matrilocality and why?Source Cited
Loewen, Royden. 2001. Hidden Worlds: Revisiting the Mennonite Migrants of the 1870s. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.
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