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.