The car

An earlier post (here) spotted the vehicle pictured below in a collection of photographs taken during a 1961 sale at the farm south of Lushton.

The early report was that the car in question is a Model A, which Ford manufactured from late 1927 through early 1932, selling 4,858,644 Model A vehicles in that five-year period. By 1932 there were nine different body styles available; the one pictured above is a Tudor Sedan (either a standard of a deluxe model).

Family memory is able to place this car with one of two of Grandpa and Grandma’s children; I hope that a reader of this blog may be able to narrow it down further. But first a little story and a teaser for a future post.

About a month ago I was looking for accounts of the 1949 blizzard, perhaps the worst in Nebraska history. In my online scrounging I happened upon a story that the York News Times published a few years back that interviewed several York County people who had gone through that blizzard. One of the interviewees is well known to us all: Matilda Klippenstein. Buller Time will come back to that story in a future post; for now we focus on what I learned about Matilda that I had never known: she used to teach school.

Why is that important for this photo? I am told that both Matilda and Esther taught school in the late 1940s (news to me) and that Grandpa and Grandma bought two Model A cars to  to enable them to commute back and forth to their schools. Family memory is that those cars were a Model A coupe and a Model A two-door sedan. The latter is the car in the photo above. What type of coupe is less clear, since Ford produced at least six diferent models: Coupe, Deluxe Coupe, Special Coupe, Sport Coupe, Standard Coupe, and Business Coupe (pictured below).

What we know for certain is that the sedan pictured at the top of this post was driven by Matilda or Esther. What we do not know is which one drove the sedan and and which one the coupe. If any of Matilda’s children happens to read this post, perhaps you can ask your mom if she recalls who drove which car.

One final request: I know where Matilda taught in 1949 from the blizzard story, but I do not know where Esther taught and when. Any information about Esther’s teaching is welcome and will be shared on the blog.

Johann Buller 2

Although we do not have a definitive identification Johann Buller of Waldheim (see earlier post here), we do know a little more than we did previously. Heinrich and Gerhard Woelk continue their work by including the reminiscences of Helene Woelk, who was a member of the Krasnogorovka community mentioned earlier (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 28–35).

She recounts how in 1941 the members of the Mennonite fellowship in Krasnogorovka were exiled to the east, carted to southeast Kazakhstan, to a region just north of Kyrgyzstan and 175 miles west of the border with China. As Helene Woelk tells her terrible story, she mentions one particular Buller several times.

The steppe-land of Kazakhstan not far from Algabass.

She mentions, for example, how Anna Buller rescued her when Helene was paralyzed by fear and in danger of being left behind by the train—the train that held her son Heinz (eleven) and her daughter Helenchen (seven) (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 31). She also recounts that, upon arrival her family and “the family of Heinrich Harder with their daughter Anna (Njuta) Buller (from Halbstadt) remained in the Kazakh village of Algabass in the region of Akmolinsk” (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 32). Now we know that Anna Harder Buller (perhaps Johann’s wife?) was the daughter of Heinrich Harder.

Within months “our minister Heinrich Harder, the former leader of the M.B. Church of Halbstadt,” passed away. Helene Woelk adds, “He often came to see father [Helene’s aged father, who lived with Helene and the children]; they understood one another. But it grieved him to see his daughter, Njuta Buller, who was expecting a child” (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 33).

One morning, it was April 10, 1942, Njuta came to tell us that her father had died that night and that her mother didn’t want to close his eyes. I went along with her. What a sad picture! Onkel Harder lay on the floor and his wife kneeled next to him, murmuring disconnected words.… I kneeled beside her and gently tried to persuade her to close her husband’s eyes. The Lord was gracious and her mind cleared long enough for her to do it. Then my father came, washed and dressed the body, covering it with a white sheet. I reported the death to the village council. This gave rise to the new question for them: where to bury the body. The corpse of a Christian would desecrate a Muslim cemetery. Then the body of Onkel Harder was carried out into the steppe where a grave had been hurriedly dug. There were no coffins here. Following Muslim custom, a niche was carved out at the bottom of the grave and there the body was placed and covered with earth. Njuta insisted on accompanying the body to the burial. The men didn’t want to permit it, since according to their customs no woman should touch or accompany a dead person. Because I had to stay with the children, father and Njuta were the only ones (from among us) who went along. Father prayed at the graveside. Tante Harder was in shock and afterward never regained her full faculties. But the heavenly Father knows his children and all their weaknesses. He will find his own, they will hear His voice and arise from their graves. Even if that is a lonely grave on the wide steppes of Kazakhstan. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 33–34)

The story continues:

Then Njuta came to give birth. I will not recount the difficult circumstances—no hospital, no doctor, no medicine. In the same room in which his grandfather had passed away, little David was born—into poverty. Tante (Aunt) Harder lived for another nine months and then the Lord reached into these pitiful circumstances and released her poor, weak spirit. One morning Njuta found her mother dead, beyond hunger, cold and all manner of suffering. That was January 7, 1943.

The details are enticing: Anna/Njuta Harder Buller was the daughter of Heinrich Harder, minister of the M.B. church in Halbstadt, Molotschna colony. She was exiled to Kazakhstan with her parents, but no mention is made of her husband. There, in a village known as Algabass, within the span of a few months, she buried her father, gave birth to a son named David, and buried her mother. Striking is the fact that at no point does Helene Woelk mention Anna’s Buller husband. What had happened to him, and where was he?

More important, who was Anna’s husband? The fact that Johann is the only male Buller mentioned in these Krasnogorovka accounts makes it reasonable to think that Johann and Anna were married. This is, of course, nothing more than a plausible hypothesis.

Beyond that, was Anna’s husband a close relative of ours or simply part of the larger Buller family and thus a distant relative at best? The search continues.

***

A teaser: we now know a little more about the car pictured here. The identification is not complete, but we can now say that the car was used by one or another of Grandpa and Grandma’s children. Stay tuned!

Source Cited

Woelk, Heinrich, and Gerhard Woelk. 1982. A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. Translated by Victor Doerksen. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 4. Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary.

Johann Buller

Not patient enough for a larger book to finish downloading to my iPad several nights ago, I began reading one already loaded: Heinrich Woelk and Gerhard Woelk’s A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. There one reads of how Russian Mennonites attempted to cope with and even escape the Soviet persecution of the early Stalinist period.

Another kind of way-station for harassed preachers and other believers were some Russian settlements—smaller and larger towns—where a few German families could live undetected for a period of time. They looked for protection in dispersal. One such place of refuge was the town Krasnogovka [sic: Krasnogorovka] in the Donetz Basin. Several families had come there in the years 1931–33, among them the old missionary to Sumatra, Gerhard Nickel of Gnadenfeld, with his family. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 16–17)

Map by RGloucester.

The Donetz (Donets) Basin is more commonly known as the Donbass, the area highlighted in brown in the map to the right. The town Krasnogovka mentioned in the passage is a mistake for Krasnogorovka (modern Krasnohorivka). The red dot under the Do of Donbass marks the location of that town.

If all that is correct, then we can see that the town in question was 85–90 miles northeast of Molotschna colony, which is marked by a red dot under the word Zaporizhia.

Now that we know the geography behind this account, we are ready to read on. The Woelks list other Mennonites who moved to the town Krasnogorovka in order to avoid the Soviet persecution.

Also the minister Heinrich Harder, leader of the M.B. church in Halbstadt, who had worked for many years on the estate “Steinbach” and later as teacher at Sparrau, with his family. Another was the deacon Abram Dyck from Lichtfelde, Molotschna, with his family. And minister Gerhard Fleming of Rudnerweide, who had been teacher in Nickolaidorf for almost 20 years, then manager and preacher for some six years in the forestry camp Sherebkovo, and finally farmer in Rudnerweide, where he had led the small M.B. church—an affiliate of Alexandertal. While there, he lived with his children, the Heinrich Woelks. Others were the minister Johann Weier of Barvenkova and his family, the families of Johann Buller of Waldheim, Jakob Janzen of Lichtfelde, Jakob Dick of Steinfeld and others. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 17)

Did you catch that? One of the families that moved to Krasnogorovka was the Johann Bullers of Waldheim. This will require further exploration, but reading of a Buller family from Waldheim, where our ancestor David lived for so many years, leads one to wonder whether Johann and family were part of our own immediate group of Bullers.

The account does not end here, as the Woelks continue:

The old missionary G. Nickel was soon called to his eternal rest. The other families lived in contact with each other and met on Sundays, as long as Sunday was still legally considered to be a day of rest. Soon this was changed and those days were considered days of rest which could be divided by the number six (thus: 6, 12, 18, 24, 30). …

So the believers here found time to meet together, for they were eager for spiritual food. Six or seven families met on the free days. Usually it was Heinrich Harder who read from the Bible and said something about it, leading to a discussion of a religious theme. This was followed by singing together (but not too loudly, so as not to be heard outside) and by prayer so that they left strengthened by the experience. This went on for a few years. They became accustomed to the loneliness and were satisfied not to be persecuted and to be able to make ends meet. But in 1936 this too came to an end. First, on April 24 Jakob Dick was taken at night from his large and poor family and put in prison. On April 30, again a day of rest, two young brothers Janzen (20 and 21 years of age) and the minister Heinrich Harder were arrested. The third arrest, on May 18 (again a rest day), took Heinrich Woelk and Johann Buller. All were accused of anti-revolutionary propaganda according to Article 54, 10 of the Ukrainian Criminal Code. Soon after, Article 11 was also applied to them because they were considered as a group. It was clear that it was a matter of their religious meetings and conversations, but the investigating judges asserted that the religious meetings were only an excuse in order to advance the cause of Hitler, who had in the meantime come to power in Germany. …

After almost three months in prison three brethren were released. They were Heinrich Harder, Jakob Dick and Heinrich Woelk. … But the other three were judged and sentenced (though guiltless). The brothers Janzen never returned. Jakob Dick endured five years of imprisonment, then returned to his family in 1941. But when the war began, he was taken again and never returned. (Woelk and Woelk 1982, 17–18)

Frustratingly, the account does not contain a key piece of information of importance to us: What happened to Johann Buller? As the table below makes clear, two reports are given for Jakob Dick but none for Johann Buller.

Jakob Dick	released after three months or released after five years, then rearrested
Janzen 1	never returned
Janzen 2	never returned
Heinrich Harder	released after three months
Heinrich Woelk	released after three months
Johann Buller	???

Presumably one of the two reports for Jakob Dick applies to Johann Buller, so one can reasonably conclude that Johann Buller was released at some point. Given the level of detail for the second Jakob Dick report (return in 1941, followed by rearrest after the war), it seems most likely that the other report applies to Johann Buller: he was released three months after his arrest.

A subsequent post will explore whether Johann Buller was a somewhat close or much more distant relative of ours. Whatever the answer to that question may be, it is interesting to discover that, while one group of Bullers was hard at work on their Depression-era farms, another family of Bullers was focused on a much more basic task: securing the freedom to live and worship consistent with their faith.

Source Cited

Woelk, Heinrich, and Gerhard Woelk. 1982. A Wilderness Journey: Glimpses of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Russia, 1925–1980. Translated by Victor Doerksen. Perspectives on Mennonite Life and Thought 4. Fresno, CA: Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Mennonite Brethren Biblical Seminary.

Farm sale

Apologies for the lack of posts over the past week: a flying trip back to Nebraska interrupted my normal routine. On the plus side, I was able to scan some photographs of interest while there, which I will share over the coming weeks.

First up is a photograph from a farm sale held on the Lushton farm in December 1960. More on the specifics of the sale later; for now I draw your attention to several items that were apparently on the sale.

Visible in the foreground are a hay wagon, a tractor, and an old car. It is the latter that is of interest to us in this post.

I am told that this vehicle is a Model A Ford, and comparison with the 1931 Deluxe Tudor Model A pictured below seems to confirm this identification.

This raises the question, of course: Whose car was this? Did Grandpa and Grandma own a Model A at some point (we know about the 1929 Nash; see here), or was this owned by one of their kids? If you know anything about this car, please let the rest of us know.

Update: Or could the Buller car above actually be the 1929 Nash?

U.S. farm economics 11

Thus far in this series we have set the historical context of our family’s life in Nebraska, beginning with World War I (1914–1918) and its skyrocketing prices for crops, followed by a post-War farm economy collapse through the 1920s and the Great Depression, which was made worse by severe drought and clouds of dust during the dirty ’30s.

We then located our specific ancestors in their historical contexts, weaving our family history into the fabric of national and world history, with Peter D settling his prairie farm bought from the railroad and homesteaded in the final decades of the nineteenth century, Peter P acquiring substantial amounts of farmland both before the prosperous days of World War I and even during the economic collapse that followed, and Grandpa Chris establishing his own farm during the tough times of the late 1920s, just before the worldwide economic collapse of the Depression.

Moving from the general to the particular, we first explored the types of farming that characterized Nebraska as a whole and our family’s specific area within the state. We then discussed how Peter P and Grandpa acquired their farmland through gift and purchase as well as how much per acre Peter D, Peter P, and Grandpa were likely to have paid. We also took time to explore Grandpa’s financing from the  Federal Land Bank. We will return to that governmental agency momentarily, but first we will learn dig deeper into the question of the type of land that our ancestors acquired and how those acquisitions likely shaped the farming that they did.

1. Growing Conditions

A few posts back we viewed Nebraska in terms of nine different types of farming regions (here) as specified in a 1930 bulletin titled Types of Farming in Nebraska (Hedges and Elliott 1930). There we located York County in area 3, the Southern Cash Grain and Livestock Area, as shown in the map below.

A Experiment Station bulletin on the same subject from eleven years earlier (Spafford 1919) offers a slightly different configuration, but the general picture of farming in Nebraska remains approximately the same.

As Spafford explains, “The boundaries of type areas in Nebraska are to a large extent determined by heat, rainfall, and soil” (1919, 58). We all are aware that western Nebraska is much sandier (thus less fertile) than the eastern part of the state, and it should come as no surprise that the southern counties are, on average, warmer and have more warm growing days than the northern part of the state.

What many may not realize is how much rainfall amounts vary across the state. In fact, as the map below makes clear, the eastern edge of Nebraska receives twice as much rain as the western central part of the Panhandle (figure 23 from Hedges and Elliott 1930, 42).

York County, located more east than west, is in the 28–29 inches band. Of course, this precipitation map is from 1930 (remember that year!), so it may not reflect current rainfall averages with complete accuracy.

At any rate, the combination of York County’s predominant soil type (silt loam and silty clay loam; see United States Department of Agriculture 1977, 3), position in the southern half of the state, and average rainfall, the area is ideally suited for raising a variety of grains and engaging in a particular type of farming.

2. Typical Farming Practices

The numbers on the second (1919) map above are significant, for they signal the relative distribution of the main crops in the area. York County is located in the Thayer area (which includes Nebraska counties Clay, Butler, Fillmore, Hamilton, Jefferson, Nuckolls, Polk, Saline, Seward, Thayer, and York and Kansas counties Clay, Marshall, Republic, and Washington Counties in Kansas; Spafford 1919, 60), so the key numbers are 28, 15, and 57. These numbers indicate that 28 percent of crops in this area in 1909 were winter crops (wheat), 15 percent spring crops (mainly oats), and 57 percent summer crops (corn).

In other words, even in 1919 the farmers of this area raised twice as much corn as wheat. If, as noted in the previous post with the wheat-related photographs, Peter P was primarily a wheat farmer, then he was adopting an approach different from most other farmers in the area. The fact that Peter P was able to expand his holdings throughout this twenty-five-year period, much of it characterized by one economic challenge after another, may hint that his approach was more profitable and stable than the usual farming practices of the area.

The 1919 bulletin offers numerous tables recording what an average farm in each area of Nebraska did. The numbers for Thayer (and thus York County) are interesting (all figures are for 1909, and the references at the end refer to Stafford 1919):

• The average farm cultivated 59.3 acres of corn and averaged 18.2 bushels per acre, for total corn yield per farm of 1,079 bushels (table 5 on 64).
• The typical farm cultivated 30.2 acres of winter wheat (average of 0.3 acres of spring wheat) and averaged 15.7 bushels per acre, for total wheat output of 480 bushels of wheat per farm (table 7 on 65).
• The average Thayer farm devoted 15.3 acres acres to raising oats and had average yields of 24.0 bushels per acres, for a total crop of 368 bushels per farm (table 8 on 66).
• Thayer farms also raised and harvested alfalfa (6.18 acres average) and wild hay (7.2 acres) (table 13 on 68 and table 15 on 69).
• According to the Spafford report, the typical farm had 35.4 apple trees; that sounds like a large number, but that is what he reports (table 16 on 70).
• The raising of rye, barley, potatoes, millet, timothy, and clover were negligible in this area.

The cultivation of crops formed the greater part of a farm’s income; how the various Nebraska areas fared in comparison to one another is laid out in the table below.

The Harvest Value Per Farm of All Crops Grown on Crop Land in 1909 (after table 17 on 71)

	Value of All         Crops Grown on Crop Land, 1909	Percent from  Grains, Vegetables,  Fruits, etc.	Value of Crops       Per Acre of Crop Land
Northwest to North Central
High Plains	$744	61	$7.45
West Sand Hills	$732	44	$3.95
East Sand Hills	$911	68	$6.00
Boyd	$1,185	71	$6.50
Southwest to Northeast
Chase	$1,004	86	$7.50
Buffalo	$1,582	81	$11.45
Custer	$1,544	82	$10.65
Wayne	$1,939	87	$13.70
Southwest to Northeast
Hitchcock	$1,261	86	$6.15
Harlan	$1,199	83	$8.05
Thayer	$1,718	88	$13.80
Cass	$1,612	88	$13.80

Note that Thayer (i.e., York and its surroundings) was tied for the top income-per-acre. Clearly our ancestors chose wisely when they decided to settle in this area.

In addition to crops, farmers raised various kinds of livestock. The following figures reflect a 1909–1910 time frame.

• The average farm had an average of 13.7 cattle, 4.3 of which were dairy cows (table 25 on 77 and table 23 on 76).
• The average farmer in the area had 7.2 horses and mules, which is no surprise, in light of their dependence on horses and mules to pull wagons, buggies, and farm implements, as well as for use with mills and the like (table 27 on 78).
• The typical Thayer farm had 13.6 mature hogs at any given point and sold or slaughtered 21.8 during a twelve-month period (table 28 on 78).
• Thayer farms also raised and kept chickens, on average 142 of them. These chickens produced 434 dozen eggs per year, 285 dozen to be sold, 126 dozen consumed by the farm family, and 23 dozen used for setting (table 29 on 79).

Farmers kept livestock for several reasons: to help with the labor of farming, to feed the family, and to generate income to be used to buy the things that could not be raised or made. A typical farmer in the Thayer area enjoyed the following average receipts from livestock raising (Spafford 1919, table 33 on 81):

receipts from sale of animals	$684
value of animals slaughtered	$42
value of diary products	$73
value of poultry and eggs produced	$129
value of wool produced	$1
TOTAL	$929

In other words, a typical farm generated roughly 65 percent of its income from crop cultivation and the remaining 35 percent from large and small livestock. The annual average income for the Thayer area in 1909 totaled $2,647. The average farm in the York County area had a per-acre price of $78 in 1909 and $91 in 1910 (a one-year increase of 16.7 percent). Therefore, a 160-acre farm would have cost between $12,480 and $14,560. Even if a farmer could have devoted every penny of income to paying off his farm, it would have taken 5.5 years, which was still shorter than the typical mortgage length in those pre–Federal Land Bank days.

Of course, no one could do direct all income to paying off a loan—other supplies had to be bought—so the typical farmer was destined to renew the land mortgage at least once, if not multiple times. During all this time Peter P expanded his holdings significantly, which raises the question of how he was able to do so. For fun we will look at wheat and corn prices during the high point of World War I, then play a little with Peter P’s acreage and his reputation as primarily a wheat farmer to see how this might shed some light on the source of his obvious success.

Sources Cited

Hedges, Harold, and F. F. Elliott. 1930. Types of Farming in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 244. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 80 pages.

Spafford, R. R. 1919. Farm Types in Nebraska, as Determined by Climatic, Soil, and Economic Factors. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 15. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.

United States Department of Agriculture. 1977. Soil Survey of York County, Nebraska. Soil Conservation Service, in cooperation with the the University of Nebraska Conservation and Survey Division. Available online here.

Photographic essay

Before we dive back into the details of early twentieth-century Nebraska farm economics, a brief intermission to give us a flavor of life when Grandpa Chris was a young boy. I am told that, unlike generations that followed, Grandpa’s father Peter P was primarily a wheat farmer. The photograph below would thus represent well what happened at harvest on his substantial acreage.

This photo was taken 24 July 1910 (Grandpa was four) on the farm of T. C. Shawver near Mitchell, Nebraska, in Nebraska’s Panhandle.

Obviously, there were no combines back then, so harvest involved several steps: the harvesters cut the wheat with a scythe, then bound the wheat into sheaves; the wheat sheaves were then hauled to a thresher, where the grain was separated from the chaff.

The first photograph below was taken in 1907 on a farm west of Lexington, Nebraska; the second was a few years earlier (1904) on a farm near Cozad.

We can gain a clearer understanding of the process by zooming in. The first photo below shows the steam engine, which rotated a pulley on the side; a flat, wide belt connected the steam engine to and powered the thresher. The belt is not visible in this photo, since it runs behind the wagon to the left.

The flat belt can be seen to the right of this photo. The thresher itself is mostly obscured behind the wagon in front (but see below). The wheat sheaves were hauled in on the two wagons in front; the wagon to the left rear was where the wheat kernels were deposited after threshing. The wheat chaff and straw was blown into the pile behind.

The photograph below was also taken in 1910 near Kenesaw, Nebraska. Note the belt to the right of the picture running the threshing machine. The sheaves were loaded onto the front of the thresher on what appears to be a conveyer of some sort, then pulled into the thresher where the wheat kernel was separated from the chaff and stem. The kernel was diverted to the left and into the wagon; the rest was blown into the pile to be used in various ways.

The use of steam power was a significant advance over earlier threshing technology, which relied—literally—on horse (and mule) power. The photograph below of a threshing crew working in Custer County, Nebraska, portrays well the process of threshing in 1887, when Peter P was eighteen and still living at home. Notice in the second photo that the horses are walking in a circle to turn the gear that operates the thresher. Note also what appears to be a whip in the hand of the man standing above the horses.

Facts and figures and words are all well and good, but sometimes they pale in comparison to a clear photograph. For more photographs of wheat threshing, go to the Library of Congress American Memory website (here) and search for the word threshing or any other word or phrase that interests you (e.g., wheat harvest).

U.S. farm economics 10

The previous post presented data relevant to the purchase of the farm a mile south of Lushton. Most important was our estimate of the price per acre: somewhere around $123. The post suggested that Peter P and Margaretha bought the entire 160 acres and gave away 120 of that amount, then had Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda  buy the 40 remaining acres (probably the 40 that contained the building site). Thanks to family memory some online resources, we can fill in several details of that story further.

Before we turn to those details, it is helpful to note that the 1928 cost of the 40 acres, $4,920, is roughly equivalent to $68,500 in 2017 dollars (calculated following the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis Consumer Price Index here). That gives us a better sense of the size of the investment.

Dad (Carl) recalls that Grandpa took out a loan with the Federal Land Bank to pay for the 40 acres. For those of us who know little about this entity, a bit of background is in order. For years America’s farmers had struggled to secure ample funding for their land purchases and, at times, their operating expenses. In most cases the only loans available to them were short-term, often five years in length. At the end of five years a farmer had to renew the loan with the same lender or take out another loan with a different lender in order to pay off the first (see Hinman and Rankin 1933).

According to the Farm Credit Administration website (here), political leaders recognized the problem and explored various ways to address it. Finally, in 1916 President Woodrow Wilson signed into law the Federal Farm Loan Act.

The Act established a Federal Land Bank (FLB) in each of 12 districts across the country, along with hundreds of National Farm Loan Associations (NFLAs) to serve as agents for the FLBs. The FLBs were the first component of what eventually came to be known as the Farm Credit System (FCS). The FLBs through their agent associations provided long-term credit to farmers to develop and expand farms. Part of each farmer’s loan bought stock in the association, making the individual farmers owners of the association.

The states of Wyoming, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Iowa were served by the Omaha FLB, which also had four hundred NFLAs spread throughout those four states, one in practically every county of the area served. As far as we can tell, the local NFLA for Grandpa was located in York, the county seat. (If anyone can locate information about a York NFLA, I would love to see it.)

Each FLB was a cooperative bank owned by both investors who purchased dividend-paying bonds and the farmers who bought bonds (shares) as a part of their loan arrangement (see further circular 16, “Financing the Farmer,” here). The guidelines for FLB loans were straightforward and relatively simple, as the following 1921 publication makes clear.

… In order to secure a loan from the Federal Land Bank of Omaha, it is necessary to make application thru a national farm loan association [i.e., one of the local NFLAs]. The Federal Land Bank of Omaha is authorized to lend one-half the value of the land without the improvements, in addition to 20 per cent of the insured improvements. The land described in each application is examined by a federal appraiser and loans are passed upon by the executive committee of the federal land bank. In recommending and approving loans, the federal appraiser and the executive committee must of course take into consideration the stability of the values placed upon the land.

The rate of interest on the bonds and the readiness at which they sell depend largely on the value of the security. If investors find that loans are made with care and that there is unquestionably two dollars’ worth of land security behind every dollar’s worth of bonds, they will continue to buy the bonds. Therefore, loans must be made with extreme care.

The largest loan to any farmer is limited by law to $10,000. … No other but an actual farmer can borrow from the federal land banks. The Farm Loan Board has defined an actual farmer as one who conducts the farm and directs its entire operation, cultivating the same with his own hands or by means of hired labor.

Land bank loans are now made on a 6 per cent amortization plan, the final payment becoming due in thirty-three years. Amortization payments are made semi-annually. At each interest payment date, a small payment is made on the principal, according to the amortization plan. The borrower pays the same amount each period until both principal and interest are paid. A 6 per cent loan made for a thirty-three-year period is thus discharged by paying 7 per cent of the principal each year. An increasing amount of each payment goes toward payment on the principal.

The money borrowed from the land bank may be used in paying off an old debt; it may be spent for the purchase of land or live stock or for any productive improvement, such as drainage and buildings, or for the purchase of fertilizers or farm implements. (Hogan 1921)

Now, what does all this have to do with Grandpa and Grandma? In addition to understanding better the process and general terms of the loan that they secured, we can draw two specific conclusions.

1. If they borrowed roughly $5,000 (40 acres x $123 an acre), their annual payment was $350, or $175 semi-annually. This figure will be important to keep in mind as we consider later on what types of income and expenses the family faced at various times.

2. The limitation that the loan could not exceed “one-half the value of the land” may give us a hint as to the reason behind Peter P and Margaretha buying 40 acres and gifting it to Grandpa and Grandma. According to FLB rules, Grandpa and Grandma could not have borrowed enough money to purchase the entire 80 acres. Their loan was limited to half the value of the land that would serve as collateral. Since they did not have the cash to purchase even 40 acres, the only way they could gain possession of the land was for Peter P and Margaretha to buy 40 acres and give it to Grandpa and Grandma, who then could put up the entire 80 acres to get a loan for purchase of the remaining 40 acres.

Peter P and Margaretha’s giving of land to their children was not only generous but also a wise means of enabling their children to make the most of all the resources available to them. Their gift opened the door for Grandpa and Grandma to secure the means of building their own future. We will return to the Federal Land Bank a little further down the line, when we talk about the Buller family during the Great Depression. Before we get to that point of the story, we should first discuss what type of farm land and farming practices our family’s land purchases led to, which will be the subject of the next posts.

* The FLB model was adopted by and adapted for other loan agencies, first Fannie Mae (1938) for the home-mortgage market, followed by Freddie Mac and eventually, for student loans, Sallie Mae. The contribution of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to the recent housing bubble and its damaging pop should not color our view of the FLB, which seems to have been managed relatively responsibly even during difficult times. Further research is needed to confirm or correct that impression.

Sources Cited

Hinman, Eleanor H., and J. O. Rankin. 1933. Farm Mortgage History of Eleven South-eastern Nebraska Townships 1870–1932. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 67. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. York County townships, including Henderson, are at the center of the study.

Hogan, D. P. 1921. Getting Federal Farm Loans. Wallaces’ Farmer 46:771.

U.S. farm economics 9

The south half of the Lushton farm today; the building site is long gone.
Photograph taken from the west road toward the south end of the quarter.

Time to turn to the question of how much per acre was paid for the farm south of Lushton. As we have noted before, the 160 acres of the farm was purchased from John Runnalls in late 1927 or early 1928.

Importantly, although Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda farmed the entire quarter, they did not own it all, nor did they buy all the land that they did own.

In fact, Grandpa and Grandma owned only the south 80 acres; the north 80 was owned by Grandpa’s brother Pete, his sister Anna, and perhaps another sibling (Henry?).

Further, of the 80 acres they owned, they purchased only 40; Grandpa’s parents Peter P and Margaretha gave them the other 40, just as they had presumably given the north 80 acres to two or three other children. When we put all this together, it seems most logical to imagine that Peter P purchased the entire 160 acres from John Runnalls and then gave away 120 acres and had Grandpa buy from him (Peter) the remaining 40 acres. (The fact that Peter gave Grandpa 40 acres and had Grandpa buy another 40 acres will become important in the next post, about Grandpa’s financing for the land purchase.)

Because we know the year the land was purchased, we can estimate about how much was paid for the land, drawing once again from the data in the Hinman bulletin (1934, table 4, 24):

1924	$126
1925	$126
1926	$124
1927	$121
1928	$124
1929	$120
1930	$115
1931	$99
1932	$88
1933	$77

Land prices were relatively steady between 1926 and 1928, and the average price for those years was $123. Using that reasonable estimate for our calculations, we can suggest that Peter P paid $14,760 for the 120 acres that he gave away and that Grandpa and Grandma paid $4,920 for their 40 acres. A few words of caution and clarification about these rough estimates.

1. As mentioned previously, the prices listed are averages over seven counties in the immediate area. The Lushton farm may have sold for more or for less, but the price was probably in this range.

2. It seems most likely that Grandpa and Grandma bought the 40 that contained the house site (they were going to live there, after all), so it is possible that the price per acre for that 40 was higher than for the other 120 acres.

Although an investment of $4,920 for 80 acres may not seem that large, the trend of the land prices in the rest of the table above reveals trouble brewing. Grandpa and Grandma bought land a year before the stock market crash of 1929 and the onset of the Great Depression. By the time their son Carl was born, their land had lost $46 an acre, or roughly 38 percent of its previous value. A rapidly declining land value was not their only problem. Grandpa and Grandma also had mortgage payments to make, which will be the subject of the next post.

Source Cited

Hinman, Eleanor H. 1934. History of Farm Land Prices in Eleven Nebraska Counties 1873–1933. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 72. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.

U.S. farm economics 8

The question of the day is: Did Peter P and Margaretha buy the 160 acres of the Epp farm (pictured to the right) or receive it as a gift?

We should admit at the outset that, with no official land-transfer document available to us, we will not be able to answer this question with certainty. Still, we can use the question to learn more about our family and the times in which they lived.

If you recall, Aunts Sarah and Marie wrote in the Buller Family Record that their mother Margaretha lived on the same farm for fifty-nine years, after which she and Peter P moved to California in 1936. In other words, Margaretha lived on the Epp family farm from 1877 (when Cornelius and Katharina Epp and their children came to the U.S. from Molotschna colony) until 1936. Stated differently, there was never a time when Margaretha lived somewhere else in Nebraska. Clearly, this means that Peter P moved in with his parents-in-law when he and Margaretha married in 1890.

Within six years both of Margaretha’s parents had passed away (Cornelius in 1894 and Katharina in 1896), and from that point on—as far as we know—Peter P and Margaretha owned the entire farm. We have already wondered why, of the seven living Epp children, Margaretha and her husband Peter acquired the farm (see here), so we will not return to that question. Another one, however, remains: How did Margaretha and Peter acquire the farm: by purchase or by gift?

The idea of the parents simply giving 160 acres to a child is not as outlandish as it might first seem. According to L. F. Garey’s Land Transfers in Twelve Counties in Nebraska, 1928–1933, a sizeable number of farms were transferred via gift. York County is not part of the study, but Hamilton County is, so it will serve as a point of comparison. Over a six-year period land transfers in Hamilton County were divided as follows among the three primary types of arrangements:

year	sale	foreclosure	gift
1928	70.62%	8.33%	21.05%
1929	73.94%	9.62%	16.44%
1930	67.03%	12.91%	20.06%
1931	69.74%	12.18%	18.08%
1932	53.82%	27.35%	18.83%
1933	49.24%	25.60%	25.16%

We should exercise caution, since these figures are from a time thirty years after the Epp farm was transferred to Peter and Margaretha. Nevertheless, the percentage of total land transfers by gift remains fairly constant around 20 percent. In other words, for every four farms sold voluntarily or as part of a foreclosure, one farm was simply given to its new owner.

One in five is a high percentage of transfers by gift, and it lends support to the notion that Cornelius and Katharina might have given the farm to Peter and Margaretha instead of having them purchase it. Garey states, “A considerable amount of land is given away every year, the chief recipients of which are heirs or relatives” (1938, 3). His comment raises another possibility, that Margaretha and Peter inherited the farm when Cornelius or Katharina passed away (i.e., in 1894 or 1896).

We will likely never know if Peter and Margaretha purchased or were given the family farm. If the former, then they probably paid $28–$31 an acre for the land (see the prices in the previous post). If the latter, then their acquisition was not unusual in that time and place, merely one of the 20 percent of land transfers that took place by gift.

Whatever the explanation, Peter P’s active acquisition of additional farmland through 1924 seems to indicate fairly clearly that he was not saddled by debt. Presumably by that time he owned the land free and clear and thus was able to expand his holdings. We will learn more about mortgage policies and practices a little further down the road, but in the next post we will return to the matter of land prices, specifically how much was paid for the Lushton farm where Grandpa and Grandma and their eight children lived and worked.

Source Cited

Garey, L. F. 1938. Land Transfers in Twelve Counties in Nebraska, 1928–1933. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 107. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.

U.S. farm economics 7

We have enough background now to address the first question asked in the previous post: How much did Peter D pay for his land? Peter P for his various tracts of land? Grandpa Chris for his Lushton farm? We also have resources available that will help us offer reasonable proposals, even if we are unable to answer with absolute precision and certainty.

Our main source will be Eleanor H. Hinman’s 1934 bulletin, History of Farm Land Prices in Eleven Nebraska Counties 1873–1933. The eleven counties surveyed include seven southeastern counties: Clay, Fillmore, Otoe, Polk Seward, Saline, and York. Obviously, the information provided in this publication will be more than a little relevant to our question.

1. We estimated earlier that Peter D probably paid in the vicinity of $5 an acre for the 80 acres that he presumably purchased from the Burlington and Missouri River Railroad company (here). Data recorded in the Hinman bulletin implies that we were not far off, as the average land prices for the seven southeastern counties indicates (Hinman 1934, table 4, 24):

1873	$8
1874	$7
1875	$7
1876	$6
1877	$7
1878	$7
1879	$7
1880	$8
1881	$9
1882	$11

Peter D purchased his land in 1879, when the average price was $7 an acre, so we are safe to assume that he spent around $560 for the entire 80 acres. Not to be forgotten is that Peter D homesteaded an additional 80 acres and owned it free and clear several years before he died.

2. If Peter D’s son Peter P bought all the land that his siblings and mother inherited when Peter D died in 1897, he no doubt paid considerably more than the original price (Hinman 1934, table 4, 24):

1889	$22
1890	$22
1891	$24
1892	$28
1893	$31
1894	$31
1895	$30
1896	$28
1897	$25
1898	$26

Interestingly, the peak land price during this period was in 1893 and 1894, after which prices fell by about 18 percent over the next four years. The price drop reflected a severe nation-wide depression and crippling drought (see further here). Assuming the 1898 prices, Peter P probably purchased the remaining part of the inheritance for $26 an acre, or around $3,950, over seven times his father Peter D’s original investment.

Although he had paid far more than his father had originally invested, Peter P did okay, since when he sold the 160 acres of the original Buller farm sometime between 1916 and 1923 (see further here), he received top dollar (Hinman 1934, table 4, 24):

1914	$110
1915	$106
1916	$109
1917	$119
1918	$128
1919	$152
1920	$180
1921	$165
1922	$136
1923	$129

The best year to sell would have been 1920, when Peter P’s original $3,950 investment would have fetched him $28,800, a sevenfold increase. Even if Peter P received only $109 an acre, he still would have received a sum of $17,440.

3. Peter P, of course, did not sit on his cash but rather invested in other land closer to home (i.e., the Epp farm where he and Margaretha moved when they married in 1890). We do not know if Peter P and Margaretha purchased the 160 acres of the Epp farm or if it was given to them (more on that in a later post), but we do know that they actively purchased additional land: 80 acres to the north of their place by 1916 and 320 acres more on various sections within a several-mile radius from the home farm, for a total of 560 acres by 1924.

It is impossible to know precisely how much they paid for each parcel, but since most of the land was probably acquired during the 1914–1923 period, we might guess that they paid an average of $133 an acre. Leaving aside the 160 acres of the home Epp farm, we might reasonably project that Peter P and Margaretha invested $53,200 in land during this time. For the early part of the twentieth century, that was a lot of money—and it could not have been covered entirely by Peter P’s profit on the sale of the Buller family farm. He obviously had other money available. Where he may have gotten that money will be the subject of a future post (or two).

If you are getting the impression that Peter P and Margaretha were wealthy, you would not be wrong. That conclusion is supported by another bulletin from the University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station, this one titled Types of Farming in Nebraska (Hedges and Elliott 1930). Here the authors show the average sizes of farms in various areas of the state of Nebraska. Area 3, Southern Cash Grain and Livestock Area, is the one that interests us.

Clearly, the most common farm size was between 100 and 174 acres: roughly 42 percent in 1925. The next biggest group was 175–259 acres (23 percent), followed by 260–499 acres (17 percent). Only 3 percent of all farmers in these counties had farm holdings larger than 500 acres—which means that Peter P and Margaretha, with their 560 acres of farmland, were among the largest landowners of their area.

I never would have imagined that Peter P and Margaretha were so wealthy, but the numbers do not permit any other conclusion. Our family had come a long way from the days of wandering Benjamin and landless David, and our story is even richer than many of us ever knew.

Our ongoing exploration of what U.S. farm economics can tell us about our family will continue by asking briefly whether Peter P and Margaretha bought or were given the Epp family farm, then turn to Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda’s acquisition of the Lushton farm. How much per acre do you imagine they paid for their 40 acres?

Sources Cited

Hinman, Eleanor H. 1934. History of Farm Land Prices in Eleven Nebraska Counties 1873–1933. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 72. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.

Hedges, Harold, and F. F. Elliott. 1930. Types of Farming in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 244. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here.

U.S. farm economics 6

The previous posts in this series set the broad contexts in which our family lived both historically (from the late nineteenth century through World War I and beyond), economically (the prosperous years of the Great War into the Great Depression), and even climatologically (the severe drought of the early 1930s). Within those broad contours we located Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller (the first of our family to break sod and plant crops on the former prairie) through their son and his wife, Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller (who came to own and farm a significant number of acres), to their son and his wife, Chris and Malinda Franz Buller (who started their farm and established a family during the worst of the Depression years).

All that is the bird’s-eye view of our ancestors’ lives within the context of world history. There is so much more to learn, however, by focusing in on particular aspects of the specific world in which they lived—which is precisely what the upcoming posts will attempt to do.

As someone who knows less about Nebraska farming than he should, I am curious about a number of matters, such as:

• How much did Peter D pay for his land? Peter P for his various tracts of land? Grandpa Chris for his Lushton farm?
• How were the land purchases paid for: primarily in cash or via a mortgage? If the latter, who was the mortgage issuer?
• What type of arrangement (cash or shares) was used with the rental of the north half of the Lushton farm?
• What crops did each one raise? How much was used on the farm, and how much was sold? What prices were they likely to have received for each?
• What were the crop yields during the time they were farming, and what would yields of that size have generated in terms of income?
• What other sources of income were available to the families? How much of their food did they raise for themselves?
• What standard of living did each family enjoy? What were the roles and responsibilities of the various family members, especially the adult women and children?
• How did the families cope with the various weather-related challenges, from extreme drought to severe blizzards?

I cannot promise that all these questions will be answered in full, but at least will will consider and explore each one as a way of gaining insight into the daily lives of our family members of the early twentieth century. We will draw from two groups of sources available to us: the memories of those who lived through a good portion of this time (i.e., Grandpa and Grandma’s children); and many of the publications of the University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station from that time frame (see a listing of many of them here).

Since most of what we will explore will be farming-related, there is no better place to start than by considering broadly Nebraska farming in the 1920s and 1930s. Our primary source is a Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin (Hedges and Elliott 1930) titled Types of Farming in Nebraska. According to the authors, Nebraska can be viewed in terms of nine different types of farming operations (marked in the map below):

1. Northeast Intensive Meat Producing Area
2. Southeastern General Farming Area
3. Southern Cash Grain and Livestock Area
4. Central Corn and Livestock Area
5. Central Hay and Livestock Area
6. The Sand Hill Cattle Ranching Area
7. Southwestern Wheat Area
8. High Plains Small Grain and Grazing Area
9. Irrigated Area

Obviously, the region of greatest interest to us is area 3, within which York County is highlighted in blue. Remember that the Lushton farm was in the southwest corner of York County. So what does this 1930 report have to say about the type of farming practiced in area 3? The bulletin summarizes:

Here the wheat enterprise has gained in importance over Area 2 and occupies about 22 per cent of the farm area. Corn remains the leading crop, however, occupying nearly a third of the farm land. Oats and hay are less important than in Areas 1 and 2, and the pasture land, while nearly as large in acreage, has a somewhat lower carrying capacity. The smaller hay and pasture acreages and their lower productivity account for the fact that there are fewer cattle in this than in the areas to the north and east. Feed grains are relatively plentiful, resulting in a somewhat higher ration of hogs to cattle than in any other area of the state. The dairy and poultry enterprises have gained somewhat in importance relative to the other livestock enterprises. The importance of wheat as a cash grain, supplementing livestock as a source of income, accounts for the name given this area. (Hedges and Elliott 1930, 25)

The authors elaborate later:

In this area there is a further decline in the proportion of the farm area devoted to corn, oats, and hay, and a decided increase in the wheat acreage as compared with Areas 1 and 2. Corn occupies about 31, oats about 8, and hay and other forage crops about 9 per cent of the farm area. Wheat occupies 22 per cent of the farm acreage, which is materially larger than in Areas 1 and 2.

In general, the land of Area 3 is quite level—more level than in any other area of the state. This, together with suitable soils, is favorable to wheat production. The boundaries were determined largely on the basis of wheat acreage; here it occupies a larger proportion of the farm land than in any of the adjoining areas.

The decline in the relative importance of corn in this area is due both to lower relative yields and to greater variability in yields. the rainfall, particularly in the southern and southwestern parts, is lower and the variation from year to year is greater than in Areas 1 and 2. … There is also more evaporation. Corn yields vary as much as 41 per cent from the long-time average. … This is not only very high relative to the variability of corn in other areas but is high relative to the variability of other crops grown in this same area. Oats, for example, have a variability of 35 per cent while the variability in wheat yields is only 30.

This situation results in reducing still more the comparative advantage of corn over wheat with the result that wheat acreage increases relative to both the corn and oats acreages. …

Cattle are somewhat less important relative to hogs in this area than in Area 2. The number is determined by the pasture and hay area. The low productivity of the hay and pasture land results in a decrease in cattle and the smaller amount of corn results in a decrease in hogs. In Figure 17 it will be observed that the number of cattle per square mile is materially below the number in Areas 1 and 2, yet the relative hay and pasture acreages have not changed a great deal. The carrying capacity of the pasture, except in the extremely northeastern part of the area, is considerably less than in the areas to the east and north.

Dairy cattle are relatively more important in this area than in Areas 1 and 2. Dairying fits in as a supplementary enterprise with wheat and utilizes family labor without adding to the out-of-pocket costs. It contributes to the stability of income and helps pay the minor expenses. …

There is more feed grain sold—particularly corn—in this area than in either Areas 1 and 2. Just why this practice has developed is difficult to explain. It possibly may be due to the uncertainty of the rainfall, which increases the feeding hazard. In dry years with a shortage in both pastures and feed grains it becomes necessary to liquidate livestock. This is usually done at a big sacrifice, with the livestock in an unfinished state, resulting in heavy losses. To avoid this hazard farmers ten to understock rather than overstock hence, they have excess feed grain to sell in nearly all years, particularly in the years of good crops. (Hedges and Elliott 1930, 54–56)

There is a lot of information packed into that short description, but several points bear highlighting. First, the crop distribution was, on average, 31 percent corn, 22 percent wheat, 8 percent oats, and the rest in hay, other forage crops, and pasture. This distribution may help us imagine more accurately which crops our ancestors raised on their farms.

Second, compared to the immediately adjacent areas, livestock as a whole was less important relative to the cultivation of cash crops. Dairy cattle were more significant relative to beef, as were hogs. The key here is that farmers in this area perhaps raised livestock first for their own consumption and only secondarily for sale.

There is far more that we can glean from this first bulletin, but this will suffice for now. We have a good sense of the type of farming in which Grandpa Chris engaged in 1930. It was a mix of crops raised for sale (corn and wheat), with large and small livestock for the family’s consumption and limited sales during productive times.

Source Cited

Hedges, Harold, and F. F. Elliott. 1930. Types of Farming in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 244. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 80 pages.

U.S. farm economics 5

The last substantive post (here) focused on Peter P and Margaretha’s context, how they took over the Epp family farm and steadily added to their land holdings so that by 1924 not only did they farm 560 acres of their own, but they also had bought and given to at least two of their children (or so we have reason to believe) 40-acre plots that served as the start of their children’s own farms.

We pick up the story in 1928 with Grandpa Chris, Grandma Malinda, and Matilda. As we explained earlier (here), the young family moved to the farm south of Lushton in March 1928, three weeks after the birth of Matilda. As far as we can tell, Peter P and Margaretha purchased the entire 160 acres at that time and apportioned it as follows: the north 80 was divided into two plots, and one was given to their daughter Anna and the other to their son Pete; the south 80 was also divided in two, with one 40-acre plot given to Grandpa and Grandma and the other purchased (presumably from Peter P and Margaretha) by Grandpa and Grandma.

The map to the right shows the relation between the Peter P and Margaretha farm to the north (top arrow) and Grandpa and Grandma’s farm a mile south of Lushton (bottom arrow). The drive between the two farm sites was right around 5 miles.

Although Grandpa and Grandma owned the south 80 acres, as explained above, they rented and farmed the north 80 acres for as long as anyone can remember. So, in 1928 they had a farm of 160 acres, counting the building site and pasture. Now that we have located Grandpa and Grandma geographically, we are ready to contextualize them historically.

Postwar Collapse

As already noted, the farm economy collapsed several years after the end of World War I in 1918, with crop prices falling rapidly and drastically (see the chart here). Prices recovered a little in 1925, but by 1928 they were in free fall once again. This was not a promising time to begin farming and start a family.

Depression and Drought

The rest of the economy followed suit beginning with the stock market crash in October 1929; whatever hope farmers had for a robust market in the country’s larger towns and cities was dashed as both the country and much of the world suffered from financial collapse, a steep decline in manufacturing, and high unemployment. Farm prices were low and were destined to stay there for quite some time.

To make matters worse, the early 1930s included several years of severe drought, sending crop yields sharply downward. It was certainly the worst possible time to build a farm and a family, but that is precisely what Grandpa and Grandma did. Between 1928 and 1941, when the Depression finally abated, they established a 160-acre farm and raised a family of eight children.

Think about it. Our immediate family was established in the midst of the worst circumstances that one could possibly imagine: a collapsed agricultural economy made worse by a depressed national and world economy, with drought, dust, and wind storms thrown in for good measure. This was the historical context in which the family of Chris and Malinda Franz Buller grew.

It is not enough to marvel at how Grandpa and Grandma succeeded against all odds (although they are worthy of our admiration and gratitude for doing so). We also want to learn all we can about the precise challenges they faced, the details of the context in which they lived. The resources listed in the last post (U.S. farm economics 4) will help us do that, since in those documents we can find records of rainfall amounts, land prices, crop yields, mortgage practices, and much more. By comparing what we learn from those records with what Grandpa and Grandma’s children remember of that time, we will fill in numerous gaps in our knowledge of the lives of the Bullers in the early twentieth century, both Peter P and Margaretha as well as Grandpa and Grandpa and their children. The next post will begin to do precisely that.

U.S. farm economics 4

Before we go further with the series, a word about sources. The amount of valuable information freely available online is staggering. This series would be far poorer if we did not have access to a number of contemporary reports and documents on matters of farm economy in the period that interests us. Many of the records consulted and cited are available on the Nebraska Public Documents website, “a collaborative effort between the Nebraska Library Commission, the Nebraska State Historical Society, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and the University of Nebraska-Omaha” (here).

For those who wish to read the primary sources for themselves, this post links the publications that caught my eye. Each document listed can be read online by clicking the Next button in the upper right corner to flip from one page to the next.

Brackett, E. E., and E. B. Lewis. 1933. Pump Irrigation Investigations in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 282. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 31 pages.

———. 1934. Use of Electricity on Nebraska Farms 1920–1934. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 289. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 47 pages.

Brackett, E. E., and O. W. Sjogren. 1917. Pump Irrigation in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Circular 2. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 28 pages.

Clark, M. Ruth. 1931. The Contribution of Nebraska Farm Women to Family Income through Poultry and Dairy Products. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 258. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 32 pages.

Clark, M. Ruth, and Greta Gray. 1930. The Routine and Seasonal Work of Nebraska Farm Women. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 238. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 39 pages.

Fedde, Margaret, and Ruth Lindquist. 1935. A Study of Farm Families and Their Standards of Living in Selected Districts of Nebraska, 1931–1933. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 78. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 39 pages.

Filley, H. Clyde. 1923. Factors Affecting the Price of Farm Products. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 198. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 41 pages.

———. 1934. Effects of Inflation and Deflation Upon Nebraska Agriculture, 1914 to 1932. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 71. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 131 pages.

Filley, H. Clyde, and E. A. Frerichs. 1923. Purchasing Power of Nebraska Grains. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 187. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 35 pages.

Filley, H. Clyde, and Arthur M. Hauke. 1933. Local Prices of Farm Products in Nebraska, 1895–1932. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 284. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 38 pages.

Garey, L. F. 1938. Land Transfers in Twelve Counties in Nebraska, 1928–1933. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 107. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 26 pages.

Hedges, Harold, and F. F. Elliott. 1930. Types of Farming in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 244. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 80 pages.

Hinman, Eleanor H. 1934. History of Farm Land Prices in Eleven Nebraska Counties 1873–1933. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 72. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 60 pages. York is one of the counties included in the study.

Hinman, Eleanor H., and J. O. Rankin. 1933. Farm Mortgage History of Eleven South-eastern Nebraska Townships 1870–1932. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 67. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 67 pages. York County townships, including Henderson, are at the center of the study.

Kiesselbach, T. A. 1925. Winter Wheat Investigations. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 31. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 149 pages. Mention of Mennonites on page 16.

Kiesselbach, T. A., Arthur Anderson, and C. A. Suneson. 1933. Winter Wheat Varieties in Nebraska. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 283. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 24 pages. Mention of Mennonites on page 6.

Prescott, R. T. 1939. Fifty Years’ Achievement in Agricultural Investigation. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Circular 60. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 80 pages. Mention of Mennonites on page 29.

Rankin, J. O. 1923. The Nebraska Farm Family: Some Land Tenure Phases. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 185. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 31 pages.

———. 1927. Cost of Feeding the Nebraska Farm Family. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 219. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 37 pages.

———. 1928. The Use of Time in Farm Homes. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 230. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 50 pages.

Ranking, J. O., and Eleanor H. Hinman. 1932. A Summary of the Standard of Living in Nebraska Farm Homes. Nebraska Agricultural Experiment Station Research Bulletin 267. Lincoln: University of Nebraska, College of Agriculture, Experiment Station. Available online here. 36 pages.

I encourage you to read widely within these sources. I have been and will continue to do so.