Peter P and Margaretha’s House 2

When it began, this post was not meant to offer anything profound or revelatory. It was to be simply a collection of several photos, a visual walk through one slice of our immediate family’s history: the farmstead and house where Grandpa Chris spent the earliest years of his life. However, as happens more often than not, a little digging and some serendipitous searching uncovered something that was previously unknown to me (others may have already known this).

It all concerns when the Peter P and Margaretha house pictured in the previous post was built. If you recall, Peter P and Margaretha moved to her family farm in 1890, the year they were married (see here and here). Margaretha and her parents Cornelius and Katharina Tieszen Epp and the rest of the family lived on this farm after settling there in 1877, the year of their immigration from Molotschna. This raises the question whether Margaretha’s parents built this house sometime between 1877 and 1890.

Thinking that a clue might be found in the Epp family book Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers: Five Branches from the Family Tree of Heinrich Epp: Heinrich, Cornelius, Peter, Johann, Gerhard, which is where we found the house photo in the first place, I decided to thumb through its pages once again. Looking back at the photo in the book, I suddenly realized that the answer was apparently staring me right in the face. The first line of the caption reads: The Peter P. Buller Family — New house in 1905.

I had earlier imagined that the caption was dating the photo and that it was mistaken, since Grandpa Chris, who was born in 1906, appears in the photo. On second thought, however, it seems more likely that the caption is dating the building of the house, not the photograph. If this is true, then the photo takes on greater significance: it visually captures and celebrates the building of the new house sometime within its first year.

One question answered, another raised: Where is the house in which Cornelius and Katharina Epp lived when they farmed the quarter section, which is presumably the same house where Peter P and Margaretha lived for the first fifteen years of their marriage, the one in which they lived before they built a new house in 1905? Again, Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers provides the answer. A section titled “A Family Project” begins as follows:

When Don and Margaret Huebert became fascinated with their Mennonite heritage, little did they realize how it would eventually affect their lifestyle in the future. The couple planned to build a new house with a workshop for Don. They looked at houses and visited with people in Canada and in Kansas but could not come up with a favorable plan.

One day Margaret asked Don, “Do you remember that old granary on my home place where Fred lives? That building was the first house my great-grandfather, Cornelius Epp, built in 1877.” Ideas started to develop. It was at the next family gathering when Don purchased the old building for fifty dollars. (1991, 20)

Several bells went off in my head when I read these paragraphs. The obvious one is reference to Cornelius Epp. That was the name of Margaretha Epp Buller’s father. Could this be the same person? Mention of Fred also caught my eye, since I recall my dad telling me that Fred Regier had lived on the Peter P Buller farm for a number of years before turning it over to the next generation. This was a clue that had to be pursued.

Thanks to GRANDMA, I quickly confirmed that this was Don and Margaret Regier Huebert and that Fred Regier was indeed her brother and that Cornelius Epp, father of Margaretha Epp, was Margaret Regier Huebert’s great-grandfather. The identification was certain: the Cornelius Epp–Peter P Buller farmstead is the subject of this story, which continues:

In 1970 an old barn was dismantled. Then it was taken to an acreage near Beaver Creek where the boards were scrubbed clean and reassembled. This also became a temporary dwelling until the entire project was completed.

The next phase was to dismantle the house which had a Dutch-Flemish architectural design. The sturdy 6" x 10" ceiling joists were placed close together since the attics in Holland were used for storing grain to keep it dry. Square nails had been used for building the house.

The bricks from the cellar walls were taken apart and cleaned. In the new house they would be used to build the fireplace. A zinc pipe had been laid to connect the cellar with the well. This made it possible to fill a barrel with water in the cellar without having to carry the water across the yard.

In the rebuilding process most of the windows were replaced with new ones the same size. New clapboard siding and shingles gave the house a new look. Now the structure has the appearance of a house at one end and a barn at the other end. Don’s dream was fulfilled by having his workshop off the kitchen. The workshop is part of a double garage.

The family moved into the house in 1981. When visitors come to take a look at the house, Margaret tells them how they found much of the original pieces of furniture on the old home place.

The account continues on to detail how Don and Margaret Huebert filled their house with historical pieces that tell the story of their, and our, Mennonite past. Although interesting, those details are not crucial to our immediate interests, which is the history of the original Cornelius Epp house.

Back in the late 1970s when I still lived in the Henderson area, I recall hearing bits and pieces about a house barn that Don and Margaret were building, but I had no idea that it had a connection to our family. 

Before we wrap up, we need to add one final piece of information from the Epp family book. After noting that the Cornelius Epp family arrived in Sutton (the closest train station) on 4 July 1877, Elsie Helen Epp reports:

After spending several nights with relatives, Cornelius Epp made the proper legal arrangements for the future home of his family. This site was located three miles north of Lushton and was within the neighborhood not very far from his four brothers. A dugout was built into the hillside which served as temporary housing until the new house was finished. (1991, 19)

Putting all the pieces together produces the following sequence of accommodations:

1. Cornelius and Margaretha Epp arrived in early July 1877  and moved the family into a dugout until a frame house could be constructed. For a brief description of dugout construction, see here. 

2. Sometime in late 1877 or early 1878 Cornelius and Margaretha and their children who still lived at home moved into the new house. Where on the farmstead that house was located is unknown to me, although I suspect there are a number of people who do know. The parents lived in that house for the rest of their lives, Cornelius until 1894 and Margaretha until 1896. Both are buried in the Buller (or Mennonite) cemetery that adjoins their farm on the south. 

In 1890 Cornelius and Margaretha were joined by their daughter Margaretha and her husband, Peter P Buller, who began raising their family there. (For discussion why Margaretha, the eleventh child born in the family, took over the family farm, rather than one of her older siblings, see here and here.)

3. In 1905, it seems, Peter P and Margaretha built a new house for their growing family. If the house was completed in 1905, then Grandpa Chris was the first of their children born there, on 17 April 1906. Over a century later, that house still serves as a home and has even had at least one extension added to the north.

The original house was left standing and put to different purposes. By the late 1960s, if not earlier, the old house was used as a granary. Again, I suspect that some of Grandpa’s children remember the building and how it was used. During the 1970s the original house was disassembled and repurposed in Don and Margaret Huebert’s new house barn, where presumably the old home lives on even today.

If anyone has additional photographs of the Epp–Buller houses and farm, I am certain that Buller Time readers would love to see them. In the interim, I offer this visual walk through the photographs that we do have.

Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller family and house, 1906

The corner of the house can be seen in the right of this photograph from circa 1913

Both the original structure and the addition to the north (right) are visible in this 2015 photograph

The south side of the house in 2015, the same side as shown in the 1905 photo

Work Cited

Epp, Elsie Helen. 1991. Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers: Five Branches from the Family Tree of Heinrich Epp: Heinrich, Cornelius, Peter, Johann, Gerhard. Privately published.

Peter P and Margaretha’s House

Over the past four years we have often had occasion to reference the Buller Family Record, which we all know offers the most complete listing of the descendants of David and Helena Zielke Buller ever assembled. Of course, our family is not the only one to have a record book listing its members. 

As noted in a recent post (here), the Johann Siebert family also has its book, titled In the Days of Our Youth: The Mennonite Heritage and Descendants of Johann and Cornelius Siebert. Contrary to what is stated in that post, this book was compiled in 1980 by Elsie Helen Huebert, wife first of Arlie E. Friesen and then of Willard J. Epp. My apologies for the earlier mistake.

The Johann Siebert book was not the only one that Elsie put together; in 1991 she also assembled a book for the family of her second husband. The book is titled Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers: Five Branches from the Family Tree of Heinrich Epp: Heinrich, Cornelius, Peter, Johann, Gerhard. This book, like the Johann Siebert one, is of interest to our family, since this is the family line of our own Margaretha Epp Buller, wife of Peter P.

Best of all, Mark Dillon, the great-grandson of HP Buller who earlier provided photographs of great interest to Buller Time, has original copies of both of these family books, and he graciously provided them to me to scan, which I have now done. 

All that is background to the main point of this post: Episodes of the Prairie Pioneers includes a photograph of the Peter P and Margaretha house from the first decade of the twentieth century. 

Considering that this is a scan of a copy of the photograph printed in a book, the quality is actually quite good. The photo is accompanied by a caption that reads:

The Peter P. Buller Family — New house in 1905 

Katharina, Margaretha, Margaretha Buller, Cornelius, 

Elizabeth, Sara, Benjamin, Klaus and Peter P. Buller 

Not pictured: Maria, Peter, Anna and Henry

The photo and caption require some unpacking. First, to begin at the end, implied but left unstated is that Maria, Peter, Anna, and Henry are not pictured because they had not yet been born. Those four were born in 1908, 1911, 1913, and 1915, respectively.

The two adults in the picture are easy to spot: Margaretha Epp Buller with the umbrella and Peter P in a hat at the far right of the photo. The children in between are identified as Katharina (born 1895), Margaretha (1892), Cornelius (1906), Elizabeth (1904), Benjamin (1897), and Klaas (the preferred spelling; 1902). 

Cornelius, or Grandpa Chris, may not be visible at first glance, but he should be in this closer look.

Grandpa Chris is the infant in the carriage at Margaretha’s side. He is clearly quite young, one might guess six months or younger. Since Grandpa was born 17 April 1906, we might reasonably date the photo to sometime in the summer of 1906. The fact that Grandpa was alive at this time means that the photograph caption is mistaken in dating the picture to 1905.

This is certainly the earliest picture we have of Grandpa Chris, probably the earliest photo that ever existed. Important as that family archival record is, the house also deserves further attention, since the house is still standing and has even appeared in an earlier post. We will return to the house, then, in the following post.

Sarah Siebert Buller and Family

The two previous posts dealing with this photograph (here and here, under a different title) focused on identifying the people pictured; this post turns our attention to the buildings in the background. We know when the photo was taken (1904) and who it includes (Johann Siebert, his daughter Sarah Siebert Buller, and six of her children with their families), but we have no idea at this time where the photo was taken. Whose house was this?

It is reasonable to imagine that the house was owned by one of the families or heads of family in the photograph. We can exclude Marie M. Buller, who did not marry until 1909; Jacob P. Buller, who did not marry until 1925; and Abraham P. Buller, who did not marry until 1905. This leaves us with five possibilities: 

• Johann Siebert
• Sarah Siebert Buller
• Peter and Sarah Buller Dick
• Henry and Katharina Buller Epp
• David and Margaretha Epp Buller

Before we go further, it may help to focus on the house itself, minimizing the visual distraction of all the people standing in front of it.

The house seems to have only one story, since there are no windows where a second story might be. I imagine that the area under the peaks was unfinished, good for storage but not for living. The house has two roof lines, so it the floor plan is sort of a T. The entrance to the house is through an open porch with ornate trim; the house seems more finished than rugged. 

I call attention to these features in hopes that someone with memory of the places where one or more of the five candidates above lived might recognize the house based on its layout or porch trim.

Several other background items merit attention as well, since some sort of building is visible behind each end of the house. 

With a little help from Photoshop’s adjustment of the photograph’s brightness and contrast, we can clearly see a two-story structure in the background. We see the faint outline of a cupola on the peak of the barn roof, along with what appears to a fairly large opening on the second floor of the barn.

Both the side (left) and the end (right) of the barn are covered with narrow horizontal siding. The dark color suggests that the barn may well have been painted the traditional red.

Although we cannot see the entire barn, the part that is visible gives the impression of a large structure. This is not a machine shed or a modest-sized barn. It is likely the equal of the Peter P barn pictured  here or the HP Buller barn shown here. To be clear, I do not believe that the barn in the background of this picture is either of those barns, especially considering that both houses with those barns have two stories, but they give us a point of comparison that helps us to imagine how the rest of the barn looked.

On the right end of our original photograph is another structure, this one harder to make out. In fact, it is impossible to tell exactly what it might be. A line across from the edge of the house eaves might suggest a roofline in the background, but the height of the roof above the base of the structure seems out of proportion. 

One wonders if we are viewing a silo or the side of a machine shed. A farmyard would not have sported a second large barn, so one of those seems the most likely option. The presence of what appears to be a window in the side would favor a machine shed, presumably with a shop area inside.

The main goal of noting these details is to jog someone’s memory, who can then tell us where the photograph was taken. Until that time, we must satisfy ourselves by reflecting further about our five options, working backward through the list and comparing it to several York County plat maps.

1. David and Margaretha Epp Buller do not appear on the 1911 map, but a Marg. Buller does for section 3 of Henderson Township (see below). So, seven years after the photograph was taken, we have the possibility that this couple lived on that farm.

The possibility becomes more likely when we compare the 1924 map along with its corresponding directory, which lists David S. Buller and his wife Margaretha living on section 3. Presumably David and Margaretha could have lived at the same place in 1904, and that could be the place in the photograph. Now let your eyes wander slightly to the left in both plat maps as we consider the next possibility.

1911 Plat Map

1924 Plat Map

2. Henry and Katharina Buller Epp lived just across the road to the west from David and Margaretha. This is not surprising when we realize that Margaretha Epp and Henry (Heinrich G.) Epp were sister and brother—and that their father died in 1903 and their mother in the following year, 1904. 

The 1911 map leads us to think that a Henry C. Epp lived in section 4, but the 1924 directory leaves no doubt: it is Henry G., the one in the picture, since it lists his wife Katharina and all their children. Thus, the farmstead in the photograph could be theirs as well.

Before we move on, we should note that these first two couples presumably ended up on adjoining properties due to the death of the Epp parents Gerhard and Katharina. I suspect that Gerhard owned both the 240 acres of section 4 (the home place?) and the 160 acres of section 3 and that the two pieces of land passed to these two children upon his and his wife’s deaths. Interestingly, the property remained in Margaretha Buller’s name for as long as we know; she owned the land independently of her husband even in the early twentieth century.

3. Peter and Sarah Buller Dick can be excluded from consideration, since apparently they did not live in Nebraska at this time. Rather, according to GRANDMA their children were born in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, which means that they were visiting Nebraska when this photograph was taken. This is not surprising in the least; as we noted earlier (here), one of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller’s sons also moved to Mountain Lake.

4. Sarah Siebert Buller had been a widow for seven years when this photograph was taken. Did she still live on the farm a mile west of Henderson that she and Peter D had built on the open prairie? If so, which of her children lived at the home place?

As noted above, the oldest son, Johann Buller, was living in Mountain Lake at this time. The second son was our ancestor, Peter P, who married in 1890 and presumably moved to his wife Margaretha Epp’s family farm shortly after. Third came Katharina, wife of Henry G. Epp (see above). Child four was David S., who is pictured here but apparently lived on his wife Margaretha Epp’s inherited farm. The fifth child was Cornelius P Buller, about whom little is known. He married in 1898 but has no children listed; his wife passed away sometime before 1910, and he lived another six decades but apparently never remarried. Child six was Sarah, pictured here and living in Mountain Lake. After her came Jacob, pictured here at age twenty-five. According to the Buller Family Record, he attended Fremont Normal School and then graduated from the University of Nebraska in 1911, after which he married (in 1925). Presumably he still lived at home in 1904. Child eight was Heinrich (or HP), who married in 1901; we are uncertain exactly where in the Henderson area he lived at that time, but it apparently was not on the Peter D and Sarah family farm. Abraham Buller came next; he is pictured here at age twenty, still living at home, no doubt, at least until he married in 1905. The next child was named Maria, but she died at birth, so four years later when Sarah Siebert Buller gave birth to another daughter they named her Maria M Buller. She is pictured here at age fourteen, obviously still living at home.

This long rehearsal has helped us sort out what we can know about where Sarah lived in 1904. If she lived on the farm west of Henderson, she did so with the children who still lived at home: Jacob, Abraham, and Maria. None of the other children, it seems, ever returned to live on the family farm. Several moved out of state, and several lived on their spouse’s family farms in the area. All that to say that we could be looking at the house where Sarah and her unmarried children lived, although we have no reason to favor this house over options 1 and 2 above.

5. Finally, Johann Siebert was also widowed at this time, and we do not know where he lived. In fact, it is not clear to me where he originally settled in Nebraska. I think it was section 12 in Henderson Township (across the road east from where Peter P and Margaretha lived), but it may have been section 14 to the southwest of Peter P. The section 12 place was owned by Johann’s son Peter Siebert in 1911; the section 14 place was owned by another son, Cornelius Siebert, at that time (see both plat maps above). Whichever of the two was the original Siebert place is a candidate for the location of the photograph—provided that Johann continued to live on his old home place even when it belonged to one of his sons. If he did, and if the photograph was taken at that place, then we need to explain why the other Sieberts who lived there do not appear in the picture.

However, we do not know that Johann continued to live on the original Siebert farm. In fact, it is also possible that he moved in with his daughter Sarah and her children. At this point we simply do not know. The most that we can say is that it is unlikely that the photograph was taken at Johann’s original farm, wherever it was located, given the fact that the Siebert who then owned the farm does not appear in the photo.

In the end, we have three strong possibilities for the site of the photograph: the David and Margaretha Epp Buller farm, the Henry and Katharina Buller Epp farm, and the Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller farm, provided that Sarah and her unmarried children still lived there in 1904. None of these locations has more to commend it over the others, although sentiment would like to think that the photograph was taken on the Peter D and Sarah farm, so that we have a picture of that house. Perhaps someday we will be able to say more. For now we must be content to know more than when we started this exploration, even if we do not have a final answer.

***

For the sake of argument, I note that the simplest solution that would tie all these threads together is as follows: Johann Siebert moved in with daughter Sarah and her children after both were widowed, and they all lived on the original Peter D and Sarah farm, where the photograph was taken. The two other local families (David and Margaretha Epp Buller and Henry and Katharina Buller Epp) visited that farm when another daughter of Sarah (Peter and Sarah Buller Dick) visited from Mountain Lake.  I would like to think this simple solution is correct, but we do not clear evidence supporting it.

One additional question comes to mind: Why are Peter P and HP Buller not in attendance? They also lived in the area, and it seems odd that all of Sarah’s other children are there but not these two brothers.

Other Bullers 2

Two weeks ago we considered a photograph provided by Mark Dillon, great-grandson of HP Buller, who was a son of Peter D Buller and thus brother of Grandpa Chris’s father, Peter P (here). Mark has since located another copy, so to speak, of the photo, this one in the family history book assembled by Elsie H. (Regier) Friesen: In the Days of Our Youth: The Mennonite Heritage and Descendants of Johann and Cornelius Siebert.

Comparison with the earlier photograph leaves no doubt: the two are identical. An intriguing question immediately comes to mind: Did Elsie Friesen have access to another copy of the photograph, or did she borrow the one currently held by the HP Buller family to use in her book? I suspect that Elsie had her own copy, which raises further questions: Who took the photograph: a professional or a member of the family? If a professional, how common was it for photographers to provide multiple copies of a single photograph? If a family member, how did an amateur photographer have a photo developed and reproduced in the early twentieth century?

Those questions are of minor importance in comparison to the identities of the people in the photo. Our identification of all the parties was correct: in the center are Sarah Siebert Buller and Johann Siebert, surrounded by six of Sarah’s children (three daughters on the left of the photo and three sons on the right) and their families. As the caption correctly notes, this is a four-generation picture; we might add that the birth years of those pictured nearly spanned a century, from Johann in 1822 to the baby just over his left shoulder, born in 1903.

With the additional confirmation from In the Days of Our Youth, we can identify the individuals in the photo as follows (year of birth in parentheses).

1. Peter Dick (1869), husband of Sarah Buller Dick

2. Sarah Buller Dick (1877), daughter of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller

3. Peter S. Dick (1898), son of Peter and Sarah Buller Dick

4. Abraham S. Dick (1901), son of Peter and Sarah Buller Dick

5. Katharina Buller Epp (1871), daughter of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller

6. Heinrich (Henry) G. Epp (1863), husband of Katharina Buller Epp

7. Sarah Epp (1893), daughter of Henry and Katharina Buller Epp

8. Katharina H. Epp (1895), daughter of Henry and Katharina Buller Epp

9. Margaretha G. Epp (1897), daughter of Henry and Katharina Buller Epp

10. David H. Epp (1899), son of Henry and Katharina Buller Epp

11. Dietrich G. Epp (1901), son of Henry and Katharina Buller Epp

12. Isaac H. Epp (1902), son of Henry and Katharina Buller Epp (the outfit is presumably a boy’s frock, not a dress)

13. Anna Epp (1903), daughter of Henry and Katharina Buller Epp

14. Maria M. Buller (1890), daughter of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller

15. Sarah Siebert Buller (1847), wife of Peter D Buller

16. Johann Siebert (1822), father of Sarah Siebert Buller

17. Margaretha Epp Buller (1878), wife of David S Buller

18. David S Buller (1874), son of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller

19. Katharina E. Buller (1900), daughter of David and Margaretha Epp Buller

20. Sarah E. Buller (1901), daughter of David and Margaretha Epp Buller

21. Maria E. Buller (1903), daughter of David and Margaretha Epp Buller

22. Jacob P Buller (1879), son of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller

23. Abraham P Buller (1884), son of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller

We are nearly finished with this photograph, but a few background items warrant a closer look, which we will take in a subsequent post.

Four Years and Counting

With apologies for the recent light blogging and a promise to pick up the pace once again (or at least to do my best to do so), I take a moment in this post to note that today, 15 June 2018, Buller Time blog turns four years old. Woohoo!

If you recall, Buller Time was launched on Father’s Day in 2014 with a simple post of a few lines and a photograph of a Mennonite barn in Molotschna colony (here). Since then we have covered a lot of miles, practically circling the globe from Kazakhstan on Russia’s east through Russia, Volhynia, Poland, Prussia, Germany, and the Netherlands in western Europe, then across the Atlantic and North America and all the way west to Hawaii. We have also covered a large number of topics, ranging from the size of a typical Wirstschaft in a Molotschna village to the reason a large body of Waldheim residents left the village within a decade of originally settling there, from the challenges in Prussian Poland that led so many Mennonites to emigrate to Russia to the hardships that our family experienced traveling in steerage class across the Atlantic in 1879, from life on an early nineteenth-century Volhynian estate to memories of both hard and good times on Grandpa and Grandma’s farm south of Lushton.

We have made a few mistakes but have also had some notable discoveries, not least in identifying the man the Przechovka church book knew only as *** Buller as George Buller, husband of Dina Thoms. With the help of good friends who are also more expert in matters of Mennonite history (thanks most of all to Glenn Penner), we have also extended our own family tree by more than a century. No longer do we meet a dead end at David and Helena Zielke Buller, the first couple listed in the Buller Family Record. We now have documented proof that David was the son of Benjamin, whose father was also named Benjamin, who was, we think, the son of Heinrich, who was the son of Hans, who was the son of George and Dina Thoms Buller—a couple who take us back to sometime in the latter half of the 1600s.

Another way to quantify the last four years is to consider the number of posts written. This post is, according to the blog totals in the right-hand margin, number 65 in 2018. Add that to the 116 of 2014, the 90 of 2015, the 200 of 2016, and the 107 of 2017, and the total to date is 578, roughly 144 a year, or one post every 2.5 days. 

It would take a lot of tedious work to calculate how much has been written, but we can extrapolate from 2016 and gain a reasonable sense of how wordy Buller Time has been. During that year, with its 200 posts, Buller Time published just over 172,000 words. Thus, each 2016 post was roughly 860 words long. If that average holds for all four years of posts—a reasonable enough assumption—then the total number of words published is approaching half a million: 860 x 578 = 497,080. Depending on the number of footnotes, headings, and figures (photographs, tables, and diagrams), a typical academic book averages around 400 words a page, often less. If we use the 400-word figure for our purposes, then the blog would fill nearly 1,250 pages—over four 300-page books. 

One final set of figures: the number of page visits to the blog. In this case it is impossible to calculate all the page visits over the last four years: the statistics kept by Blogger were inflated by Russian bot activity (seriously) in 2015–2016, so the current Google Analytics numbers begin only on 21 July 2016. In other words, we have less than two years of data. Since that day Buller Time has enjoyed 15,683 page visits, which translates into approximately 682 page visits a month, or 22.6 page visits per day. If we use this average to estimate the entire history of Buller Time, assuming that the visit rate the past two years is higher than it was the first two years, we can conservatively project a total of perhaps 27,000 page visits. In the blogging world, this is quite a small number (some blogs would be upset if they fell below that number in a day), but I consider it quite good for the descendants of a bunch of landless hicks from Molotschna colony.

Looking ahead, I do not expect us to run low on topics to discuss or questions to explore. Time is our only limitation, and even that is temporary, what with retirement being maybe a decade away. Thank you to all the Bullers and others who stop by and read and especially to those who take the time to write. In truth, I would continue to post even if Dad were my only reader, but it is also nice to know that others find some enjoyment, even value, in the Buller Time blog. As always, stay tuned not only for more explorations but also for more questions that we do not yet know but need to be asked. 

HP Buller farm 1

Recently we considered a photograph provided by Mark Dillon, a grandson of HP (Heinrich P) Buller (here), determining that it portrayed Grandpa Chris’s grandmother Sarah Siebert Buller and her father Johann Siebert. With this post we turn to another photo (there will be even more), albeit with a less clear idea of what is being portrayed.

The photograph above is clearly labeled on the back as the farm of HP Buller in Nebraska, so in that sense we do know what is pictured here. However, the question of which HP Buller farm it is (there were two, if I understand correctly) remains unanswered. Determining the date of the photo, even roughly, may help us further clarify where this HP Buller was located, since HP lived in Nebraska at two different times separated by several decades. All we can do is to try to sort through the bits and pieces of evidence at hand to make our best guess.

According to the Buller Family Record, HP was born 5 February 1882; on 3 October 1901, at the age of nineteen, HP wed Maria Janzen, who was HP’s senior by eight days. Their first child was born on 8 July 1902; their second followed in 1905, with others being born in 1907, 1909, 1913, 1916, 1919, and 1922. 

These dates are provided simply to set the background for the family’s history. If I have the story correct, HP and Maria lived in Farmer’s Valley Township, Hamilton County, during the first years of their marriage, until about 1913. They then moved to Saskatchewan, Canada, and lived there until sometime around 1925. Their next stop was the Mountain Lake, Minnesota, area (perhaps in Delft), where they lived for four to five years before returning to Farmer’s Valley Township in 1930 (perhaps slightly before), where they took over Maria’s family farm, her father David Janzen having died many years previously (1841–1907) and her mother Anna Braun Janzen passing that very year (1843–1930).

Although it is possible that HP and Maria lived on the same farm in the 1910s and the 1930s, it seems most likely that we are dealing with two different farms. Historical plat maps for Farmer’s Valley offer support for this hunch. We begin with what we (think we) know, with the farm from the 1930s.

A Farmer’s Valley Township plat map from 1923 offers our first clue, since it lists Anna Janzen as the owner of the north 80 of the southeast quarter of section 2 in Farmer’s Valley. 

Maria Janzen Buller’s mother was, as noted above, named Anna Janzen, and Maria’s father had died in 1907. Therefore it seems reasonable to imagine that this Anna Janzen was Maria’s mother. This hypothesis receives support when we notice that two 40-acre plots north of Anna’s were owned by Helena Janzen and Jacob D. Janzen, the names of two of Anna’s other children. Helena did not marry until 1922, so it seems reasonable to think that the property was still under her maiden name for the 1923 map. In short, we have every reason to think that this was the family farm seven years before HP and Maria moved back to Nebraska.

A 1916 plat map may shed further light on the situation. (Note also the Peter Buller farm in section 12 to the southeast.)

Here we note that the same pieces of property, now divided as two adjoining 80-acre plots, were owned by Heinrich D. Janzen. This was the name of another of Anna’s children, her third-born son (1869). According to the GRANDMA database, Heinrich (or Henry) died in 1919: three years after this plat map was made and four years before the 1923 one was made. It is not difficult to fill in the blanks: when David Janzen passed away in 1907, the family property passed to his son Henry, who owned and farmed it until he passed away in 1919. At that point his mother Anna Janzen took possession of one 80, and the other 80 was divided between two of his siblings. 

Presumably, then, when HP and Maria Janzen Buller returned to Nebraska in 1930, they took over the 80 acres that Anna owned between 1919 and her death in 1930. How long they lived there I do not know, although I should note that they rest close by in the Friesen cemetery (on the boundary between the Heinrich Janzen and John J. Friesen 80s), along with both sets of parents—Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller and David and Anna Braun Janzen—as well as a number of other members of the immediate family.

Unfortunately, there are no known Farmer’s Valley Township plat maps between 1888 and 1916, that is, during the time of HP and Maria’s initial Nebraska residency (1901–1913), so we have no idea where the couple and their growing family lived during these years. It would seem reasonable to think that they lived somewhere close by their two sets of parents, but where that might have been we cannot say.

To bring this back around to the photograph with which we began this post, can we uncover any clues about when and where this photograph might have been taken? It seems best to leave that question for another day and another post. Of course, if anyone recognizes the house, barn, and farmyard, do not hesitate to let me know.

Alexanderwohl 38: A Recap

Because the Alexanderwohl series has covered a wide range of topics over a considerable length of time (we began this series Christmas Day 2017), we should briefly review the high points before we proceed further.

We began the series by exploring the modern name (Svitle), location, and layout of the village (here), then narrowed our focus to several specific buildings and sites within the village: the school (here), the church (here), and two cemeteries (here). 

With our geographical bearings set, we moved on to matters of history. We initiated this phase of our survey by reading the 1848 Gemeindebericht, or community report, in its entirety (here). There we encountered the community’s own record that “in 1821 twenty-two families from District Schwetz in the Prussian administrative district of Marienwerder settled here [in Alexanderwohl]; followed in 1823 by seven families and in 1824 by yet another family.”

These specific historical claims are important for our exploration, since they are subject to testing, to verification or contradiction. Thus, with the village’s historical account in the background, we began systematically to work our way through the entire village Wirtschaft by Wirtschaft, that is, lot by lot, to identify to the extent that we were able the original settlers of Alexanderwohl. Our goal was not merely to list the names of Alexanderwohl’s original settlers but also to evaluate the accuracy of the Gemeindebericht’s claims. Did twenty-two families settle the village in 1821? Did another seven join them in 1823? Did yet one more family settle in 1824?

Our investigation drew first upon the 1835 Molotschna census, which listed both the current residents of each village Wirtschaft plus many past residents as well as village residents who did not own their own land, who lived on the outskirts of the village and often on the margins of society. In addition, we also consulted the visa, passport, and settlement lists recorded in Peter Rempel’s Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828 (2007). 

Starting with Martin and Anna Unrau Kornelsen (or Cornelsen) in Wirtschaft 1 (here and here), we proceeded steadily through all thirty Wirtschaften until we had identified the likely original settlers for nearly all the plots in Alexanderwohl.

1. Martin Jacob Kornelsen
2. Heinrich Peter Block (here)

3. ???? (here)

4. Peter Jacob Voth (here)

5. Heinrich David Schmidt (here)

6. Peter Johann Unrau (here)

7. David Bernhard Voth (here)

8. ?? Peter Franz Goerz (here)

9. Jacob Peter Buller (here)

10. David Johann Unrau (here)

11. Heinrich Isaak Schroeder (here)

12. Jacob Jacob Pankratz (here)

13. ???? (here)

14. Heinrich Peter Unrau (here)

15. Jacob Jacob Buller (here)

16. Johann Peter Ratzlaff (here); also home to our ancestor Benjamin Benjamin Buller (here)

17. Heinrich Jacob Schmidt (here)

18. Jacob David Schmidt (here)

19. Peter Johann Reimer (here and here)

20. Andreas David Schmidt (here)

21. Peter Christian Dalke (here)

22. Peter Benjamin Frey (here)

23. Johann Peter Schroeder (here)

24. Andreas Jakob Nachtigal (here)

25. ???? (here)

26. Heinrich Jakob Buller (here)

27. Peter Benjamin Wedel (here)

28. Peter Heinrich Voth (here)

29. Andreas Peter Schmidt (here)

30. David David Unrau (here)

With twenty-seven of thirty original settlers identified, we tied up several loose ends. We first learned what we could about the households listed in the 1835 census who were not assigned to a particular Wirtschaft (here), compared our list with a similar list constructed independently by John Richert (here), and corrected a minor error that had crept in along the way (here). 

Significant attention was paid to the fact that several Alexanderwohl families came to Molotschna a full year before the main party referenced in the community report. We concluded, in light of that discovery, as well as several other discoveries slightly at odds with the village’s “official” history, that the community report is best regarded as generally reliable but sometimes inaccurate in its details  (here; see further below). 

Taking a second look at the settlement reports on which the earlier examination relied, we discovered the names of three individuals who settled in Molotschna but whose names do not appear on the 1835 colony census (here). Could these three be Alexanderwohl’s unknown settlers? Further examination led us to conclude that Jacob Heinrich Ratzlaff (here), David Peter Schroeder, and Jacob David Voth (here) were, in all likelihood, the three previously unidentified original settlers.

Once we had a full roster of thirty original settlers, we were ready to compare it with the account given in the 1848 Gemeindebericht (here). We observed again that the community report is largely reliable but slightly inaccurate as regards some details: the village was not settled by twenty-two families in 1821, seven more in 1823, and one more in 1824; rather, at least twenty-three families, and probably twenty-five, settled in 1821 (most arrived in Molotschna in 1820), with three more in 1822, and one each in 1823 and 1826.

A comparison of contemporary settlement records with the community report offers the same picture (here). Both sources agree that twenty settlers received government loans to establish households and that ten did not; however, the community report seriously underreports the amount loaned by more than half. As before, the Gemeindebericht sketches a generally reliable portrait but errs at the level of detail.

The following post continued in a similar vein, with an examination of the cash and personal goods that Alexanderwohl’s settlers brought with them from Prussia (here). Over half of the settlers arrived with no cash at all and thus clearly needed a loan to establish a household; those with the most cash generally did not receive a loan at all. We learned in the next post (here) that the government loans seem to have had a simple purpose: to ensure that each settler, regardless of what he brought to Russia, ended up with one wagon, two horses, and two head of cattle.

Finally, the last five posts prior to this one evaluated the community report’s etiological tale of how Alexanderwohl received its name. We began with a more recent example of a village etiology, for Lushton (here), then applied the same critical methodology to Alexanderwohl (here, here, here). On the basis of a careful and objective as possible weighing of the evidence, we concluded that the report was almost certainly correct that Tsar Alexander I had encountered the Przechovka traveling party in 1820 and had wished them good luck, or safe travels; however, that historically plausible story likely did not, as the Gemeindebericht claimed, explain the village name. Rather, like the village name Mariawohl (“May it be well with Maria”), the name Alexanderwohl wished well (German wohl) on the person honored by the village name: Tsar Alexander I (here). As before, the community report paints a broadly reliable portrait, even if some of the details are wrong.

This extended recap of the Alexanderwohl series has been useful for remembering all the topics we have covered to date and for reminding us of questions that remain unanswered. The next post will return our attention to the Alexanderwohl Gemeindebericht, as we look at it with fresh eyes in order to learn more about the early history of this important Molotschna village.

Work Cited

Rempel. Peter. 2007. Mennonite Migration to Russia, 1788–1828. Edited by Alfred H. Redekopp and Richard D. Thiessen. Winnepeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society.

Other Bullers

Every now and then a Buller from some other part of the larger family, that is, not descended from Grandpa Chris and Grandma Malinda, stumbles upon Buller Time and emails to add that family’s story to the larger Buller narrative that we are telling here.

Several months ago, for example, a Buller from South Dakota, emailed and shared about his family, who were descended from George and Dina Thoms Buller, but who came to the United States via the Neumark villages (see, e.g., here and related posts), Deutsch-Wymysle (see here and related posts), Molotschna, and Crimea. That family’s historical memory actually enables us to fill in one gap that remained in our Neumark investigation. More on that family later.

Similarly, in recent weeks another Buller descendant a bit more closely related has provided a number of photographs of interest not only to any descendant of David and Helena Zielke Buller but also to our specific family in particular. This post will focus on one of those photos, graciously provided by Mark Dillon, a grandson of Heinrich P (HP) Buller. HP, you may recall, was a son of Peter D and thus brother to Grandpa Chris’s father, Peter P Buller.

Some of the people on the photograph are identified on the back, but that labeling took place many years after the photo was taken. Still, we can be fairly certain about the identity of most of the people pictured. 

The young man on the far right end is Abraham P (Abe) Buller, and next to him is his older brother Jacob P (Jake); both are sons of Peter D Buller. 

Next to Jake are David S and Margaretha (Dave and Margaret) Buller; Dave was also a son of Peter D Buller. Dave and Margaret’s three children help us to date the photograph. Their first three children were born in 1900 (Katharina), 1901 (Sarah), and 1903 (Marie); their fourth child (not pictured) was born in 1907. Margaret is presumably holding Marie during her first year of life; since Marie was born 24 September 1903, we might date this photograph to mid-1904.

The couple on the far left is identified as Peter Dick (or Dycks) and Marie Buller, but presumably the listing of Marie is a mistake: Peter Dick was married to Sarah Buller, daughter of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller. It is difficult to tell which of the children are theirs; they had three at this time, the last of whom had been born in March 1903. Either that child (Agatha) is not pictured or is being held by the unidentified woman to Sarah’s right. The two boys immediately in front of Peter and Sarah are presumably Peter and Abraham, the couple’s two oldest.

The identity of the other couple—the standing man wearing the hat and the woman with the white trim on her dress next to him—is unknown. Presumably some or all of the other children are theirs, but we cannot know that with any certainty. (One wonders if this is Heinrich G. and Katharina Buller Epp; she, too, was a daughter of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller.)

This leaves the older woman standing in the center of the photograph and the even older man sitting next to her. Who are they? The man sitting is identified as Peter D Buller on the back of the photo, but that cannot be him: Peter D died at the age of fifty-two in 1897, roughly seven years before this photograph was taken. 

One can easily imagine why someone thought the old man was Peter D: the photograph contains a number of his children. That is an important clue, but not of the identity of the old man. We need to take a closer look.

If you look carefully, the woman may seem familiar, a face we have seen before. Might this be the same person as pictured here? If so, then the old man was presumably the same person as shown here. Certainty will always elude us, but it seems that we can have a high level of confidence about the identity of these two individuals: the woman standing is Sarah Siebert Buller, widow of Peter D and mother of many of the adults in the photograph; the man sitting at her side is her father Johann Siebert, grandfather and great-grandfather of most of the people pictured.

What we know about the people pictured is consistent with our identification; what we know about Sarah and Johann likewise fits. For example, Johann was born in 1822 and passed away in 1908; thus he would have been eighty-two at the time the photograph was taken. That seems to fit what we see. Sarah, for her part, was born in 1847 and lived until 1922; she would have been fifty-seven in 1904, which seems consistent with the age of the woman in the photo.

Of course, one wishes that Peter P and Margaretha Epp Buller and their children were also pictured, although Grandpa Chris would not have made it anyway, since he was born two years later. But even without our immediate Buller ancestor, this photo is a treasure for showing us families who were not only closely related but also well known to Grandpa Chris, including Johann and Sarah, who made the remarkable journey from Molotschna colony to central Nebraska only twenty-five years before this photograph was taken.

Alexanderwohl 37

On its surface, the explanation for the naming of Alexanderwohl sounds plausible: Alexander wished the Przechovka party well, so the village they settled was named accordingly: Alexanderwohl, which combines Alexander’s name plus the German word for “well.” Most etiologies sound plausible on the surface, but frequently they become suspect when one digs a little deeper. 

So it is with the Alexanderwohl etiological tale: the details of the story do not all correspond to the simple etiological explanation. That is, Alexander wished the party luck, not well, and the mundane character of the encounter, essentially wishing someone safe travels, would not typically warrant any sort of memorialization, let alone the naming of a village. 

Without calling into question the basic facts of the story, one wonders if the explanation given is the real meaning of the village name. Such skepticism increases when one considers a similarly named Molotschna village, namely, Mariawohl.

This village was one of the last founded in Molotschna, in 1857. According to Helmut Huebert, the village “was named in honour of Wilhelmia Maria, wife of the recently crowned Czar Alexander II” (Huebert 2003, 158). In other words, this village received its name by combining the name of the person being honored plus the German word wohl, or “well.” In this case there is no hint that Maria wished the townspeople well. On the contrary, the village name is more likely an expression of well wishes to the person whose name provides the first part of the village name. The village name is thus a shorthand way of saying: May it be well with Maria.

Why would not the same explanation be applied to Alexanderwohl? If we did not have the story of the encounter in Poland, we would naturally think that the village name was intended more to honor Alexander than to commemorate a brief encounter between Alexander and the Mennonites in which the tsar wished them safe travels. In this explanation, the village name was a vehicle for expressing a wish of good things for the tsar: May it be well with Alexander.

This clearly is not the perspective of the etiological tale, but it makes better sense of the way some village names were created at that place and time. There was, after all, a clear precedent for naming a Molotschna village after Alexander. In 1820, one year before the founding of Alexanderwohl, the village of Alexandertal was founded. The -tal suffix simply indicates that the village was located in a valley; the primary emphasis is on the person being honored by the village name: Alexander I. 

Similarly, in 1857 the Molotschna colony saw the founding of Alexanderkrone (where Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller lived for a few years). This village was named in honor of Alexander II, husband of the Maria honored by the naming of Mariawohl. The German word Krone means “crown” in English, which suggests that the village name meant something like Crown of Alexander. The point, again, is that the village name honored the one after whom it was named.

To bring this all back around to Alexanderwohl, one need not be a skeptic to find the etiological tale a little suspicious at the end. Granted, Alexander likely met and conversed with the Przechovka group south of Warsaw, and they dutifully shared his greetings with their fellow Mennonites in Molotschna. All that seems not only plausible but likely. 

However, when Fadeyev named the village—and we should not lost sight of the fact that Fadeyev was the one who named the village, not the Alexanderwohl settlers—he probably was more interested in currying favor with his tsar than in memorializing the tsar’s encounter with a party of Mennonite immigrants. Given the fact that just a year earlier Fadeyev had named another Molotschna village to honor Alexander, and in light of the plain meaning of the -wohl suffix in the later village Mariawohl, it seems most plausible to conclude that the village Alexanderwohl was given its name as a means of expressing a positive wish to a much-loved tsar: May it be well with Alexander.

The association of the account of the journey and encounter with the naming of Alexanderwohl is, in all likelihood, secondary. It may be that Fadeyev named the village for the reason just given but told the Alexanderwohl settlers that the name commemorated their extraordinary encounter with the tsar. Fadeyev may have told them, in other words, what he thought they would like to hear. 

It is equally possible, in my view, that the etiology proper—“When the office in Ekaterinoslav heard of this extraordinary event, the chief judge Fadeyev immortalized it by naming the colony Alexanderwohl because, as he said, ‘Tsar Alexander has wished you well.’”—was the villagers’ own creation over time, their attempt to make sense of the village name in light of their own history with the tsar. 

We may never know the precise origin of the etiology proper, but it does seem more likely than not that the etiological tale of the naming of Alexanderwohl is both generally true but mistaken in its final detail. Indeed, everything up to that final detail seems likely to have taken place just as it was recounted. However, it probably had little to do with the naming of the village when Fadeyev called this new settlement Alexanderwohl in 1821.

This long discussion of the naming of Alexanderwohl has shed light on this one village but has also revealed a great need to examine more systematically the names of the other Molotschna villages: how they were constructed and what they might have meant. Keep watch for a new series on exactly that topic in the near future. 

Work Cited

Huebert, Helmut T. 2003. Molotschna Historical Atlas. Winnipeg: Springfield.