In the News: Peter Bullers

The fact that we have two Peter Bullers in our immediate family line sometimes creates complications, as it is not always clear whether someone is talking about Peter D (the father) or Peter P (the son). This problem becomes especially acute when we have little context to point us in one direction in the other.

Consider, for example, the extract from the 14 December 1895 Hamilton County Register to the right. This is a list of expenses that the Hamilton County commissioners approved for payment at a meeting three days earlier. Note that the name Peter Buller appears twice, once for payment of $8.00 for searching Russian thistles* and once for payment of $3.00 of labor related to the bridge fund. What are we to make of this?

Careful readers will notice, no doubt, that the names have one slight difference between them: the first one is simply Peter Buller, and the second one has a middle initial: Peter D Buller. One might reasonably deduce from this that the first reference is to twenty-six-year-old Peter P, while the second is to his father, Peter D. Although that would be a logical explanation of the information before us, it is not the only logical explanation we can offer.

It turns out that Peter D and Peter P were not the only Peter Bullers in the area. Another Peter Buller lived 2 miles west and 2 miles north of our ancestor Peter D. The two Peters were both born in Molotschna and only a year apart: our Peter in 1845 and the other in 1846. Like our forebear, this other Peter Buller also farmed and had a son named Peter. Clearly, this sort of name overlap demands that we take care not to attribute to our own Peter Bullers actions and events that probably involved the other Peter Bullers who lived nearby (or any other Peter Bullers we may encounter).

So, for example, when we read in the 14 August 1884 Republican Register (published out of Aurora) that Peter Buller purchased the east half of the southeast quarter of section 27 in the Beaver Township of Hamilton County from the CB&Q Railroad Company, we should not jump to the conclusion that our ancestor purchased a farm in addition to the one we already know about (the northeast quarter of section 12 in the Farmers Valley Township). Rather, this is almost certainly the other Peter Buller.

So, was the Peter Buller who searched for Russian thistles our own Peter P or the other Peter Buller who lived several miles away? We really cannot say. However, there is another interesting newspaper notice from 1886 that almost certainly relates to one of our ancestors. That will be the subject of a subsequent post.

* The Nebraska legislature declared the Russian thistle (aka tumbleweed) a “public nuisance” in early 1895 and required county officials to inspect farms and roadways for infestations of Russian thistles. See further here.