A post earlier this year featured several photographs taken while Peter P, Margaretha, Sara, and Maria were enjoying an extended visit with Peter’s brother J. P. in Hawaii (see here). Carolyn Stucky was kind enough to share an additional bit of information associated with the Hawaiian vacation, which I reproduce below.
The account, titled “Memories of Meeting John,” was written by Carolyn’s mother, Sara Quiring Peters, in March of 1993. Sara was the daughter of Dietrich C. Quiring and Katharina Buller, and Katharina was the third-born child of Peter P and Margaretha. What does any of this have with the Hawaiian vacation? Sara explains:
Times were dry, and farming still had to go on. My grandparents (Peter and Margaretha Buller) and their daughters Maria and Sara had gone to the Hawaiian Islands to visit and stay for the winter at Grandpa Buller’s brother Jacob Buller’s. They left the farm with their son Pete and his wife Elsie Buller and also Pete’s two younger siblings, Anna and Henry. My Uncle Pete needed someone to help with chores and farming, so they hired John E. Peters as a helper, and he lived with them there. Henry and Anna Buller went to high school as John was left to do chores. Then when we as the Quiring family went there to visit or help out I got to meet the new hired hand. John worked and got as much as $15.00 a month plus room and board. That $15 he gave to his parents so they had money to live on. They lived in the town of Henderson. As I said, we did our socializing in church on Sunday evening as C.E. programs and visiting afterward. There were no first dates or such going out for dinner or shows—there was no money for that.
On one occasion my brother Diet and his girlfriend Viola Epp took me along. We picked up John at his parents’ house, and we all went riding on Sunday evening. Then after so many Sundays, he came and picked me up at my home and usually with Diet and Viola and we would all go to the C.E. (Christian Education) program at church.
While Peter P, Margaretha, Sara, and Maria enjoyed a warm Hawaiian winter, back on the farm Sara and John were enjoying the beginning of a lifelong relationship. Carolyn adds, “Mom said there was no engagement ring, but Dad bought her a watch which I have in the cedar chest!”
In addition to relating the circumstances under which seventeen-year-old Sara Quiring met twenty-year-old John Peters that winter, this brief account fills in a number of other details related to the family’a Hawaiian trip.
First, as Sara notes, “times were dry.” In fact, the years 1930, 1931, 1933, 1934 and 1936—in other words, the years before and right after the Hawaii trip—were considered severe drought years, and York County crop yields during that period were only two-thirds of normal (Cronin and Beers 1937, 4, 15).
In spite of the tough times, Sara adds, “farming still had to go on.” To that end, Peter P and Margaretha’s son Pete and his new wife Elsie were left in charge of tending the farm. Pete and Elsie had been married just a few months earlier, on 29 August 1935, so presumably they did not yet have their own farm or perhaps even home, which made them the logical candidates to manage the family farm while Peter P was in Hawaii.
Sara recalls that Anna and Henry were still in high school, but this may be a memory lapse. Anna was twenty-two at that time, and Henry turned twenty in late December 1935, so one would expect that both had finished high school. Maybe this is a false assumption. Even so, by Henry’s own admission he had little interest in farming, so Pete no doubt would have needed help with his new responsibility.
My own memory (for whatever that is worth) is that Pete assumed responsibility for the Buller-Epp family farm when Peter P and Margaretha and their unmarried children moved to California in August 1936. If so, then I wonder if this short-term assignment while his parents were in Hawaii was intended to reveal if he was up to the task for the long haul. As always, the more we learn about our family story, the more we realize how much more we need to discover.
Work Cited
Cronin, Francis D., and Howard W. Beers. 1937. Research Bulletin: Areas of Intense Drought Distress, 1930–1936. Washington, DC: Works Progress Administration. Available online here.
No comments:
Post a Comment