Peter D and Sarah’s Farm: A Postscript

The previous fourteen posts of this series, along with the two shorter series on Peter D’s estate and Sarah’s death and estate, have traced the history of the original family farm. We have answered, as far as the available records permit and to the best of our ability, a number of important questions spanning how the farm initially came into the family’s possession in 1879 and was transferred to other owners nearly half a century later. 

One minor question remains outstanding: Who was living on the farm in 1922–1923, when Peter D and Sarah’s children sold 75 percent of the farm to Heinrich H. Ediger and the remaining 25 percent to Helena H. Penner? Before we address that question directly, it will be useful to recount the various known changes in residency since our family first put down roots on the farm a mile west of Henderson.

• 1879–1897: Initially Peter D, Sarah, and their children, who eventually numbered ten, lived on the farm.
• 1897–1901: After Peter D’s death, Sarah and her unmarried children still living at home continued to reside on the farm.
• 1901–1902: After Peter D and Sarah’s son Henry married, he and his new wife lived with the rest of the family on the Buller farm.
• 1902–1913/1916: When Sarah moved into the house in Henderson, Henry remained on the farm, which he rented from Sarah.

We do know know for certain when Henry moved from the Buller farm, but we do know that he returned from Canada to attend Sarah’s funeral (see here). According to GRANDMA, the last child born into the Henry Buller family in Nebraska was John H, on 17 February 1913. The next family birth, on 4 March 1916, took place in Canada. Thus the move took place sometime between February 1913 and  March 1916.*

We know even less about which family member, if any, lived on the Buller farm after Henry left. We can eliminate some of the children from consideration based on our knowledge of their whereabouts.

• Johann/John had moved to Mountain Lake, Minnesota, well before then (at least by 1898).
• Peter P, as we all know, began living on his wife Margaretha’s family farm east of Henderson in 1890.
• Katharina and her husband, Heinrich G. Epp, also lived on a farm east of Henderson.
• David S. was living 2 miles east of Henderson on a farm inherited by his wife, Margaretha Epp (Heinrich G. Epp’s sister).
• Cornelius lived with Sarah in 1920 and was in no condition to manage a farm during this time (he had issues, shall we say).
• J. (Jacob) P. was living with Sarah in 1918 (see here) and moved to Hawaii in 1921. Prior to that, he was a school teacher and thus could not have been a full-time farmer.
• Abraham appears in the 1910 census as renting land in Beaver precinct of Hamilton County. Ten years later, the 1920 census has him renting farm ground in Brown township of York County.
• Maria/Mary and her husband Peter Krause lived with Sarah for a time. Peter was a carpenter, so an unlikely candidate for managing the Buller farm. 

This leaves only daughter Sarah and her husband, Peter Dick. It appears that this family lived in Mountain Lake, Minnesota, sometime during the early 1900s, but they apparently returned by 1918 and probably several years before that. Our first piece of evidence is tenuous, since we cannot be certain that the Peter Dick mentioned is the same one who married Sarah Buller. With that caveat in mind, consider the brief report from the Lushton section of the 1 February 1918 York Republican below:

What is of interest to us is the note that Peter Dick and family “moved some time ago on a farm near Henderson.” Was this Peter and Sarah Buller Dick? Was the farm near Henderson the Buller family farm? The 1920 census implies strongly that the answer to both questions is yes.

The listing of Peter and Sarah Dick, with their children Abraham, Agatha, George (Gerhard), Marie, Tina, and David matches what we know of the family in 1920. One son, Johann S, died in 1905 before he reached his first birthday. Peter and Sarah’s oldest son, Peter S, was twenty-one in 1920; he seems to have remained in Mountain Lake, since he married a young woman there the previous year. All the other children are accounted for in the census.

In short, there can be little doubt that the people listed here were Peter and Sarah Buller Dick. But can we be reasonably certain that they were living on the Peter Buller farm? The following census entry leaves little doubt: as we have noted in previous censuses, John/Johann Penner and his wife Lena/Helena were next-door neighbors to whoever lived on the Buller farm. Thus, the 1920 census offers proof that members of Peter D and Sarah’s family were living on—and renting, according to the R on Peter’s line—the family farm at that time.

One wonders where Peter and Sarah Dick lived after they left the farm and if there were hard feelings when their siblings decided to sell the farm instead of continue to rent it to them. We may never know the answers to those questions, but with this final post in the series we now know which members of our family lived on the Buller farm and when they finally left.

* The 18 March 1913 issue of the York Daily News states that the J. J. Pankratz, John Thieszen, Henry Buller, and D. D. Janzen (spellings of the names corrected) families were en route to Langham, Canada, with every expectation of living there. However, this appears to be a different Henry Buller, since the 14 November 1913 issue of the York Republican reports that “Mr. and Mrs. Henry Buller and two daughters arrived here from Canada Saturday evening. They have come back to stay here because Mr. Buller didn’t like it there.” Our Henry and family stayed in Canada at least until 1924, when his last son was born in Langham, Saskatchewan, Canada.