Matrilocality … and Bullers 5

In light of all that we have learned in recent posts, a question asked nearly two years ago (see here) can now perhaps be answered with a bit more confidence. The paragraphs in question are:

Curious is the Farmers’ Directory listing for David S. Buller, Peter P’s younger brother who came to the U.S. on the S.S. Switzerland at the same time, when one compares it with the corresponding plat map. The entry reads:

Buller, David S. Wf. Margaretha; ch. Kathrina, Sarah, Maria, David, Margaretha, Anna, Martha and Emma. P.O. Box Henderson, Rt. 1. O. 160 ac., sec. 3 (26 [years in the county].) Breeder of White Wyandotte Chickens.

What is interesting is that the plat map lists Margaretha Buller as the owner of the southwest quarter of section 3. The most reasonable explanation is that in this instance the wife owned the land, not the husband. Perhaps she inherited it from her parents Gerhard and Katharina Dueck Epp? Now we really need to find an earlier plat map!

The 1923 plat map in question clearly shows Margaretha Epp Buller as the owner of the southwest quarter of section 3 in Henderson Township.

Since her parents Gerhard and Katharina had passed away, we can assume that the Gerhard Epp who owned the quarter to the north was probably her brother. The same picture is given by an earlier map, this one from 1911.

This is not surprising, since Gerhard Senior had passed away in 1893 and Katharina in 1904. Both parents were gone, and at least some of the children now owned the family farmland.

The key question then becomes: When did Margaretha Epp Buller (wife of David, not Peter P) first gain possession of the land and how? In light of what he have learned about inheritance practices, the most reasonable explanation is that Margaretha received the land from her parents before they passed away (e.g, around the time of her marriage), not as part of the settlement of the estate.

This is precisely the situation described earlier in Jefferson County Nebraska:

The significance of this was that the Klassen daughters of Jefferson 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)

One could easily substitute Margaretha Epp and David S Buller’s names in the explanation above: David was a resident of Henderson Township, but he owned no land; instead, he lived on his wife’s land near other members of her family.

Again, a matrilocal marital arrangement—in this case the husband moving to his wife’s land even though her parents were alive when they married—provided the couple with economic opportunity. The wife’s name remained on the deed, since she had received the land from her parents as a sort of living inheritance (i.e., before they died), and the couple farmed her land together.

A final post in this series (I think) will ask whether other Bullers engaged in this same sort of early inheritance pattern and reflect on what it tells us about the Bullers involved.

Source Cited

Loewen, Royden. 2001. Hidden Worlds: Revisiting the Mennonite Migrants of the 1870s. Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press.