Peter D’s Estate 1

While searching for something entirely different last week, I stumbled upon an amazing record of our family history: a legal notice announcing the hearing for the settlement of Peter D’s estate. The full notice is shown on the right, but I will also transcribe it here for easier reading.

Legal Notice

In the county court court [sic] of Hamilton county, Nebraska.

In the matter of the estate of Peter D. Buller, deceased.

All creditors, heirs and other persons interested in the estate of Peter D. Buller, deceased, will take notice that on the 28th day of October, 1919, Abraham P. Buller filed his petition in this court, alleging that Peter D. Buller died intestate on or about the 28th day of September, 1897, having been a resident and inhabitant of Hamilton county, Nebraska, and seized in fee simple of the following described real estate in the county of York and state of Nebraska, towit: The North Half (N½) of the Northeast Quarter (NE¼) of Section No. Sixteen (16), Township No. Ten (10) North, Range No. Four (4) West of the 6th P. M. and also the following real estate in Hamilton county, Nebraska, towit: The Northeast quarter (NE¼) of Section No. Twelve (12), Township No. Nine (9) North, Range No. Five (5) West of the 6th P. M.; that his debts are all paid; that he left surviving him as his sole and only heirs at law, his widow, Sarah Buller, and his children, Johann Buller, Peter P. Buller, Katharina Epp, David S. Buller, Cornelius P. Buller, Sarah Dick, Jacob P. Buller, Heinrich P. Buller, Abraham P. Buller and Maria Krause; that your petitioner is one of the heirs of the said Peter D. Buller and is the owner of an undivided interest in all of said real estate, subject to the dower and homestead rights of the widow of said deceased.

Petitioner prays for a determination as to who are the heirs of said deceased, their degree of kinship, and the right of descent of the real property of which the deceased died seized, and that all claims and demands against said estate of said deceased shall be forever barred, and for equitable relief.

Hearing will be had on said petition on the 8th day of December, 1919, in the county court room in the court house in the city of Aurora, in Hamilton county, Nebraska, at 10 o’clock a.m.

Dated at Aurora, Nebr., October 28, 1919.   Fred Jeffers, County Judge   W. W. Wyckoff, Attorney

Before we focus our attention on two surprising revelations in this legal notice, it will serve us well to summarize the document and define its unfamiliar terms.

Abraham P Buller, Peter D and Sarah’s youngest son, filed this petition on 28 October 1919. The petition asked the court to settle Peter D’s estate in terms of who were Peter D’s legal heirs, how they were related to him, and how the real property that Peter D left behind should be divided among them.

Some of the terminology used in this petition will be unfamiliar to those of us not accustomed to dealing with matters of estate settlement. For example, the petition states that Peter D died intestate; that simply means that he did not leave a (legally binding) will specifying the division of his property. 

The petition also notes that Peter D was a resident and inhabitant of Hamilton County who had “seized in fee simple” the real estate listed. The word seized in land-ownership contexts means simply that Peter D owned the property; he was not a renter or tenant but the actual owner of the land. The phrase “fee simple” is another legal term, in this case signifying that Peter D held absolute title to the land, free from any claims against the title. This does not necessarily mean that there was no loan on the property, only that no one else had a claim on it.

Finally, the petition refers to certain rights that only Sarah had: dower and homestead rights. According to the dictionary at law.com (see here), dower is an “an old English common law right of a widow to one-third of her late husband’s estate.… the surviving wife can choose either the dower rights or, if more generous, accept the terms of her husband’s will.” Since it appears that Peter D died without a will, the petition acknowledges that Sarah was (presumably) entitled to at least a third of his real property. The petition also mentions Sarah’s homestead rights. As I understand the 1862 Homestead Act, the title to land homesteaded was granted to the head of the household; if the head of the household died, title to the land passed to his wife. It passed to the head of household’s children only if she, too, had died. Thus the petition recognizes that only Sarah can inherit the 80 acres that Peter D had homesteaded.

As noted earlier, the petition sought to settle Peter D’s estate by establishing who his rightful heirs were and how they were related to him. Of course, the petition itself provided the answers to these questions: Sarah was Peter D’s primary heir, entitled to the 80 acres he had homesteaded and at least one-third of all remaining real property; their ten children were Peter D’s secondary heirs: Johann Buller, Peter P. Buller, Katharina Epp, David S. Buller, Cornelius P. Buller, Sarah Dick, Jacob P. Buller, Heinrich P. Buller, Abraham P. Buller, and Maria Krause. Presumably the hearing proceeded smoothly, although I will be sure to scour the local newspapers around the time of the hearing date (8 December 1919) to see if any additional information can be located.

But about that date: Does it not seem odd that the settlement of Peter D’s estate took place over twenty years after his death? Peter D died on 28 September 1897, yet his estate remained unsettled until 8 December 1919. Why?

Beyond the timing of the probate hearing, the petition also reveals that Peter owned more property than we have realized to this point. In fact, Peter D owned farmland in Hamilton County and York County. Both the timing of the hearing and the real property in view require further exploration and thought, and both will be the subject of the following post.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 12

This post probably deserves its own individual title, such as “Sarah Siebert Buller’s Henderson Home,” but since it is a part of our larger exploration we will keep it in the “Peter D and Sarah’s Farm” sequence. The question at the end of the previous post was: Where did Sarah and family live in Henderson? This post is dedicated to answering that question.

Our first piece of evidence appeared already in the previous post: a record of a 1902 real-estate transfer.

The entry reports that Sarah purchased lot 3 of block 5 in Henderson, Nebraska, from Peter Dick (who was possibly Sarah’s son-in-law) sold; the purchase price was $450.

Our next evidence comes from the 1910 and 1920 U.S. censuses; we begin with the census from 1910 (for the full 1910 census page, see here; see also the ** note at the end of this post).

In 1910, Sarah and her daughter Mary and son-in-law Peter Krause lived in Henderson; unfortunately, we are not given the precise location. Thankfully, the 1920 census does a better job of locating Sarah’s household (for the full 1920 census page, see here). 

Note the vertical writing down the left side of the census page: Alice Street. This indicates that Sarah and the Abraham D. Peters family next door lived on Alice Street in Henderson. The only other member of Sarah’s household was her son Cornelius, who was forty-three years old and listed as divorced (D). (Cornelius presents a number of questions, which we may take up at some point.)

This is why I asked about Henderson’s street names several posts ago (here). I knew Sarah lived on Alice Street and was anxious to identify where that was. Happily, since writing that post I discovered a 1911 map of Henderson that answers all our questions (for a large version of the map, see here).

The full map shows the boundaries, areas, streets, and significant locations within the village at that time. Notice also in the pink section of the map, which corresponds to Henderson’s original boundaries, that the various blocks are numbered; the bottom row, which goes from 11 on the right to 17 on the left, is the easiest to see. Zooming in on a portion of the map will be of greatest help to us.

Now we can see the block numbers more clearly. Note especially the number to the left of the word ORIGINAL; that trapezoid-shaped area is block 5, the block where Sarah purchased a lot, lot 3, to be exact. We can now see on the map exactly where Sarah’s house was located. Our final confirmation that we have the right location is provided by the street name on the map, Alice, the street where the 1920 census located Sarah’s household.

Given the odd shape of the block and the fact that it lies two blocks west of Main (Hernando) Street and just south of Front Street, it is not too difficult to find the same lot today: 1131 Cedar Street (Alice Street was renamed Cedar Street sometime in the 1960s). For a Google Maps view, see here.

According to real-estate records, the house currently on the property was built in 1920. Of course, this raises all sorts of questions. Was there a house on the lot when Sarah purchased it in 1902? Presumably there was, so one wonders when that earlier house was built, what it looked like, and why it was replaced with a new house. Since Sarah still lived on this property in 1920 and apparently lived there until her death on 15 February 1922, was she the one who had the current house built? That would seem to be the case.

As always, we should admit that we may have a few details wrong in our reconstruction, but based on the information covered in this post it seems highly likely that Sarah moved to this location in mid-1902, lived in the house that was located on the lot for eighteen years, then constructed a new house on the same lot in 1920, where she enjoyed the final years of her life.

Sometimes our family history is little more than dull words on dusty pages; other times, however, we are able to see the same things that our ancestors saw, walk in places where they used to walk. That is when our history becomes more real than ever before. I can hardly wait until I am in Henderson again, so I can see Sarah’s house with my own eyes and feel a little more connected to our ancestors of long ago.

** To view Flickr photos at maximum size, click on the  icon in the upper right corner of the screen.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 11

After establishing the likelihood that Henry took up management (as a renter) of the Buller family farm sometime before 1910, the previous post in this series ended with two questions: When did Sarah leave the farm and Henry move in? Where did Sarah live after she left the family farm? Upon reflection, I see that the first question is poorly conceived, since it implies not only that Henry left the farm and then returned (we do not know if that was the case) but also that Sarah’s departure took place at the same time as Henry’s return. A more reasonable way to approach the matter is to divide this one question into two: Where did Henry live during the first decade of the twentieth century? Since we know that Sarah did not live on the farm in 1910, when did she leave? This post will attempt to answer these questions.

We begin by revisiting the 1900 census in order to recall who was living on the family farm with Sarah at that time, three years after the death of Peter D.

Below Sarah’s name we see four of her ten living children—Jacob (twenty), Henry (eighteen), Abraham (sixteen), and Mary (ten)—and the servant Maggie Quiring. By June 1900, when the census was taken, all of Sarah and Peter D’s other living children (Johann, Peter P, Katherina, David, Cornelius, and Sarah) were married and living elsewhere.

According to the Buller Family Record, sixteen months after the census, on 3 October 1901, Henry married Maria Janzen. This raises the obvious question of where the couple lived after they were wed. It is, of course, possible that Henry and Maria moved in with her family, David and Anna Braun Janzen, who lived in the Henderson area. It seems improbable that the newlyweds established their own independent household on a separate farm. Most likely of all, given the fact that Henry and Maria lived on the Buller farm by 1910, is that, instead of Henry leaving home to live elsewhere, Maria joined the household on the Buller family farm. 

This hypothesis is supported by another recently discovered historical record.

The clipping above (modified to fit here) appeared in the 8 May 1902 Blue Valley Journal, a newspaper published in McCool Junction from 1897 to 1942. Included in the weekly section reporting real-estate transfers we find a sale from Peter Dick to Sarah Buller; the property is identified as lot 3 of block 5 in Henderson (more on this in a subsequent post).

Although we cannot be certain of the identity of either named party (there were several Peter Dicks and Sarah Bullers in the Henderson area at that time), it seems most likely that the Sarah Buller listed here was the widow of Peter D Buller. There may even be a further family connection. Looking back again at the Buller Family Record, we see that Peter D and Sarah had a daughter named after her mother. On 13 March 1898, that daughter Sarah married a man named Peter Dick. Was this the Peter Dick who sold the Henderson property to Sarah? We cannot say at present, but the possibility is intriguing.

The main takeaway from this newspaper clipping is the strong likelihood that Sarah left the Buller farm and moved into Henderson sometime in 1902. If so, then presumably she would have left the farm under the care of her oldest married child who did not already have a farm to tend, namely, Henry.

This suggested reconstruction is supported by an additional piece of evidence: the fact that Sarah’s next son to marry after Henry did not remain on the family farm. That son was Henry’s younger brother Abraham, who married Anna Petker on 18 November 1905. Although we cannot know with certainty where the couple lived immediately after they wed, the 1910 census reports that Abraham and Anna and their two children lived in Beaver precinct (to the north of Farmers Valley) at that time. In other words, it appears that the Buller family farm was not in need of a tenant when Abraham and Anna married, presumably because Henry and family already filled that role. Consequently, Abraham and Anna settled on a farm in the precinct to the north of Farmers Valley. 

By pulling these and other historical pieces together, we can reconstruct a plausible timeline of events for the first years following Peter D’s death. 

1. Peter D Buller died on 28 September 1897, leaving behind a widow Sarah and three married children who had moved out on their own and seven children still living at home.

2. Over the next three years, between 1897 and 1900, three children married and moved away, so that by 1900 Sarah, who still lived on the family farm, was the head of a household that included four unmarried children and a servant.

3. In 1901, Peter D and Sarah’s son Henry married Maria Janzen, who joined Henry and the rest of the family on the Buller farm.

4. In 1902, Sarah purchased a lot within Henderson and moved into town. Presumably she was joined by some, if not all, of her remaining unmarried children: Jacob, Abraham, and Mary/Maria.

5. In 1905, Peter D and Sarah’s son Abraham married Anna Petker, and they settled on a farm in Beaver precinct of Hamilton County.

The two main questions of this post have been given plausible answers: Henry did not leave the family farm when he married Maria Janzen; Sarah did leave the farm when she moved into Henderson in mid-1902. One intriguing question remains: Where did Sarah and family live in Henderson? We will explore the answer to that question in the following post.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 10

The previous post in this series ended with the 1910 census securely locating Henry Buller, son of Peter D and Sarah Siebert Buller, on the family farm in the northeast quarter of section 12 of Farmers Valley precinct. Left unanswered was the question of who owned the farm at that time. This post will marshal evidence from both the 1910 census and the 1900 census to suggest a plausible answer to that question.

We begin with the 1900 census, the first census taken after Peter D’s death in September 1897. Sarah is now listed as the head of the family, and four of her children are still living with her: Jacob, Henry, Abraham, and Mary.

The information recorded in this census form is quite similar to what we saw earlier. Sarah is a white female who was born in August 1847, and at the time of the census she was a fifty-two-year-old widow. The next two numbers record the number of children a woman had borne and then the number of those children still living. Sarah had given birth to eleven children, but one of them (the first daughter named Mary/Maria) died on the same day as her birth (see the Buller Family Record). Note also that the household had a new member: Maggie (Margaretha) Quiring, a twenty-year-old servant. Maggie was the daughter of Kornelius and Justina Quiring, who lived in Beaver precinct just to the north of Farmers Valley.

To locate where Sarah and her household lived, we can adopt the same approach as we did with Henry: identify the people listed before and after Sarah to determine if that provides any clues.

81: Peter Griess

82: Fred Segrist

83: Peter Fuhner

84: Effie Douglas

85: Sarah Buller

86: Henry Pankratz*

87: Charles Williams

88: Lewis Riker

89: James Beat

The evidence for Sarah’s location is not nearly as clear as it was for Henry. Only one name is asterisked as someone who was known to have lived in the same vicinity as the Buller farm. However, that name in and of itself deserves notice, since Henry Pankratz was also the name that appeared immediately after Henry’s family in 1910. Based on this evidence, we can say only that it is possible, but not certain, that Sarah and her family still lived on the Buller family farm three years after Peter D’s death.

Thankfully, other evidence from the 1900 and 1910 censuses increases our level of certainty. We begin with the 1910 census. As shown in the previous post, the census recorded a wide variety of information, including the person’s occupation, industry, employment type, out-of-work status, weeks out of work, ability to read, ability to write, attendance at school, whether one owned or rented, mortgage status, the type of household, whether farm or house, and the farm schedule. The 1910 census records the following for Henry:

Henry’s occupation was farmer in the general farming industry, and he was self-employed (OA in the form means “own account”). The next two columns are blank, meaning that Henry was not out of work at the present nor had been out of work during the past year. The yes answers in the two following columns tell us that he could read and write, and the following blank means that he did not attend school. Our main focus of interest is the next column, which contains an R. This indicates that Henry rented his farm land. Consequently, he did not have a mortgage (the column is blank). The final two columns report that his household was a farm (F) and that further information could be found in farm schedule 118 (many of these records were destroyed long ago in a space-saving measure).

A comparison of Henry’s 1910 form with the same section of his mother’s 1900 form is enlightening.

In 1900, the columns in this section recorded a person’s occupation, the number of months he or she was not employed, attendance at school, whether one could read, write, and speak English, whether one owned or rented, mortgage status, the type of household, whether farm or house, and the farm schedule. Thus we see that Sarah is identified as a farmer who was employed all twelve months of the prior year. She did not attend school (the column is blank) and could read and write (yes, yes) but could not speak English (no). Most important for our purposes, Sarah owned (O) her farm and had a mortgage on it. The household was a farm, and further information was recorded in farm schedule 87.

So, in 1900 Sarah owned the farm where she lived, which might have been the original Buller farm, and in 1910 Henry rented the farm where he lived, which almost certainly was the family farm. Taken together, what do these two pieces of evidence imply? The most logical explanation is that Sarah and family continued to live on the original farm after Peter D passed away in 1897 and that sometime after 1900 but before 1910 Henry, who married Maria Janzen on 3 October 1901, took up residency in and took over responsibility for Peter D and Sarah’s farm. Since Henry is listed as a renter, not an owner, it appears that Sarah retained ownership of the farm, at least through 1910.

This historical reconstruction is by no means certain, but it does neatly weave together various strands of evidence found in records contemporary with the events (the censuses). As usual, some questions remain unanswered, most notably: When did Sarah leave the farm and Henry move in? Where did Sarah live after she left the family farm? Further hints about the answers to these questions will be the subject of the following post.

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 9

Recently this blog series has been exploring the question of what happened to Peter D and Sarah’s farm after Peter passed away on 28 September 1897. We learned in the previous post (here) that the entire farm had been sold to people outside the family by 1923, but what happened to the farm during the intervening quarter century? Although we do not yet know all the details about the disposition of the farm, another piece of the puzzle fell into place today.

This puzzle piece was waiting to be discovered in the U.S. census records. As most readers know, the U.S. takes a national census every ten years. The practice began in 1790 and continues until this day. Before we look at a recent discovery relevant for our family history, it makes sense to set the stage by rehearsing the history of census taking in Hamilton County, Nebraska.

The first nonnative inhabitants of Hamilton County arrived in 1866 (Burr and Buck 1921, 1:116). The boundaries of the county were officially defined the following year (Fitzpatrick 1925, 70), the same year that Nebraska received statehood. Hamilton County officially came into existence shortly thereafter, in 1870. This was, of course, a census year, so we know the population of the county just four years after its first permanent settlers: Hamilton County was home to 42 dwellings housing 42 families, for a total population of 130.

By the time of the next census, in 1880, the population had exploded. Hamilton County was now divided into seventeen precincts, and its total population was 8,267. Peter D and Sarah Buller and children, who had arrived on these shores in 1879, were part of this population explosion. The family had settled in Farmers Valley precinct, which lay immediately to the southwest of Henderson, Nebraska. In 1880, the population of that one precinct far surpassed that for all of Hamilton County only ten years earlier: 104 dwellings housing 106 families, for a total Farmers Valley population of 621. Peter D and Sarah and family—John/Johann, Peter, Catherine/Katharina, David, Cornelius, Sarah, and Jacob—contributed nine souls to that number.

  

The numbers in the left-hand column have no significance other than to track and record the order in which a dwelling was counted and the order in which a family was counted, since it was not unusual for several families to occupy the same dwelling. In this case, the Buller house was the thirty-first counted, and the family was also thirty-first in the Farmers Valley census.

The U.S. is not the only governmental body that has conducted censuses; Nebraska also took a census of its population in 1885. Once again, we see population growth in Farmers Valley precinct, which had 128 dwellings housing 135 families, for a total population of 724. With the addition of Henry/Heinrich and Abraham, the Buller family now numbered eleven.

The 1885 census taker was not as careful most others, a matter to which we will return at some point. Suffice it to say for now that Sarah Siebert Buller was not three years old in 1885, as the third column after her name indicates.

Most of the records for the 1890 U.S. census were lost in a fire in 1921; none of the records for Nebraska survived. Consequently, the next census relevant for our family history is that taken in 1900, three years after Peter D’s passing. As expected, Sarah and her children still living at home—Jacob, Henry/Heinrich, and Mary/Maria—appear in the Farmers Valley census. We will return to the 1900 census in due course, but for now we turn our focus on the 1910 census.

Two things stand out in the 1910 Farmers Valley precinct census: the absence of Sarah Siebert Buller and the presence of her son Henry, his wife Mary/Maria, and their three children. The full-width scan below shows the large amount of information that was collected for each person: name, relation to head of household, sex, age race, marital status, years married, number of children born, number of children living, birthplace, father’s birthplace, mother’s birthplace, immigration year, naturalization status, occupation, industry, employment type, out-of-work status, weeks out of work, ability to read, ability to write, attendance at school, whether one owned or rented, mortgage status, type of household, whether farm or house, farm schedule, veteran status, whether a person was blind and/or deaf and dumb.

The extract immediately below is a little (!) easier to read.

Henry is listed as the head of the household, a male, white, twenty-eight, and married for eight years. His wife Mary (Maria Janzen) is female and, like Henry, white, twenty-eight, and married for eight years. They have a daughter named Mary/Maria, age seven; a daughter Anna, age two; and a son Henry less than a year old.

All that enough is interesting enough, but one additional observation is the real point of this post. First, although the numbers in the left-hand columns do not tell us anything definitive on their own, where Henry and family appear among the other families listed can. That is, if we assume that the census taker proceeded through the precinct in a relatively systematic way, moving from one dwelling to the next closest one, we may be able to determine an approximate location for Henry’s dwelling by seeing who is listed before and after him, which should indicate who his closest neighbors were. The list below, taken from the 1910 census, does precisely that:

88: John Klippenstein

89: Henry D. Rempel*

90: John J. Friesen*

91: John Penner*

92: Henry P. Buller

93: Henry Pankratz*

94: George K. Friesen

95: Isaac Braun*

96: Leana (Helena) Penner*

The names marked with an asterisk are directly attested in other censuses or plat maps as living close to the Peter D and Sarah farm. Given the fact that six out of the eight names listed before and after Henry are known to have lived in the same vicinity as the Buller farm, it is safe to conclude that, at least by 1910, Peter D and Sarah’s original farm was still inhabited by a family member, namely, their son Henry, his wife Mary/Maria, and their three children.

This leaves unanswered the question of who owned the farm. The 1900 and 1910 censuses offer further evidence on that topic, but that is the matter for another post.  

Works Cited

Burr, George L, and O. O. Buck, eds. 1921. History of Hamilton and Clay Counties Nebraska. 2 vols. Clarke. Available online here.

Fitzpatrick, Lilian Linder A. M. 1925. Nebraska Place-Names. University of Nebraska Studies in Language, Literature, and Criticism. Available online here. 

Henderson Street Names

This short post is nothing more than a request for information from anyone who might know. I am trying to locate Alice Street in Henderson (why will become evident a little later), a street that no longer exists according to the map posted on the Henderson, Nebraska, website (see here).

Alice Street and several other streets (e.g., Mac, Raoul, Depot, Clara) that no longer appear on the map are mentioned up until 1962 in the Henderson News, so presumably the street names were changed sometime after that. Anyone with information about the current name of the street formerly known as Alice is asked to email me (use the Click Here to Contact Me link in the upper right).

Peter D and Sarah’s Farm 8

In the previous post in this series we learned that the northeast 40 acres of Peter D and Sarah’s farm, located in section 12 of Farmers Valley precinct in Hamilton County, Nebraska, was sold in early 1923. The buyer was Helena H. Penner, surviving widow of Johann Penner (GM 65704), who died 29 May 1921.  Who were the sellers? The ten children of Peter D and Sarah, each of whom held a 10 percent interest in the undivided whole. 

Of course, this leaves unanswered the question of what happened to the other 120 acres of the farm, the part that was not sold by the children to Helena Penner. Despite searching through countless newspapers, I have found no documented record of the sale. So, in the absence of hard evidence, this post will suggest a possible answer to the mystery.

Our first hint comes from a 1923 plat map for Farmers Valley precinct. The timing of the map could not be better, since it corresponds with the year of the sale of the northeast 40 acres of the quarter.

 

The enlarged extract below provides a better view of the division of the property. Mrs J. Penner (i.e., Helena Penner) now owned the northeast 40 acres of the quarter section (note that she also owned the east half of the northwest quarter), and someone named H. B. Alger owned the other 120 acres.

This raises several questions: Who was H. B. Alger, and when and from whom did Alger acquire the other 120 acres of the farm? To be honest, at present we cannot answer these questions with any sort of certainty. In fact, a search of Ancestry.com does not uncover anyone with that name (or anything close) ever living in Hamilton County. Still, it never hurts to engage in some informed imagination and plausible speculation.

One thing we do know is that by 1923 H. B. Alger owned the 120 acres. Importantly, we also know that Sarah Siebert Buller passed away the year before this plat map was published, on 15 February 1922. Thus, it seems entirely reasonable to think that the sale was somehow connected to her death. That is, perhaps the 120 acres was sold to Alger as part of the settlement of Sarah’s estate. Presumably all ten of Sarah’s children were equal beneficiaries of the estate and sale.

If this suggestion is true, then we also have insight into the settlement of Peter D’s estate. Clearly, the 40 acres in the northeast corner of the Buller farm had been partitioned off from the 120 acres that H. B. Alger came to own. The most logical explanation for such a division of the quarter is that it took place when Peter D passed away in 1897. What I am suggesting (!) is that the real estate portion of Peter D’s estate was divided as follows: 75 percent to Peter’s widow, Sarah; 25 percent to all the children. Stated in terms of acreage: Sarah received 120 acres, and the children collectively received 40 acres.

As noted some years ago (here) and repeated in the previous post (here), the most common practice in Mennonite communities was to divide the estate of a deceased parent equally, with the surviving spouse receiving one half and the children receiving the other half. However, we also observed that the common practice was frequently modified to fit the circumstances of a situation. In this case, it seems, Peter D determined that Sarah would receive more than the traditional amount, that she would continue as a significant landowner for as long as she wished.

Did Sarah sell the land to H. B. Alger at some point before her death, or was it sold by her children after she finally passed away at the age of seventy-four? We do not know. We may find a hint at the answer to this question in the census data for the first decades of the twentieth century, but that remains a question for another post.