Estel Maynard Buss

Estel Maynard Buss, son of Rose Marie Bucher and Charles Lewis Buss, was born 21 July 1911 in Martintown, Green County, WI, the village founded by his great-grandparents Nathaniel Martin and Hannah Strader, and one of the two communities in which his mother had been raised. His father had by the time of his birth become the main foreman for the legacy Martin mills, working for Estel’s grandfather Elwood Bucher. During Charles’s tenure the mills produced not only the traditional products of lumber and flour, but also electricity. Elwood Bucher had installed a generation plant two years before Estel’s birth, which took advantage of the mills’ water wheels to produce power for Martintown and the neighboring village of Winslow, Stephenson County, IL. The Busses lived in one of the main homes of the original Martin estate. When Estel was small, his mother helped take care of Hannah Strader Martin in her extreme old age.

(A photograph of Estel as one of the male pupils of Martin School in 1919 can be seen on the History-of-Martintown page of this website. Click here to go right to that page. You will need to scroll down to see the image of the schoolboys, whose members include his brother Dwight and second cousin Ernest Brown Hastings.)

Charles Buss was not satisfied to remain in his father-in-law’s shadow, and when he lost three fingers in the mill equipment in the early 1920s, the Buss family took it as a sign and moved away. This marked the end of an era, as the mills had been overseen by members of the greater Martin clan ever since 1850, and the way was now paved for outside owners to take over.

Charles and Rose and their boys settled on a farm in Vermilion County, IL. This was near the village of Olivet, which in turn was near the town of Danville. Here Estel would finish growing up. His parents and his brother Dwight would remain in the Danville area for the rest of their lives.

As Estel came of age, the Great Depression began. In need of a job, he went to Chicago. This turned out to be where he would stay long-term. He worked for Railroad Express Agency. At that time REA was the premier package delivery service. Its name is less known today because its corporate executives did not properly anticipate the decline in passenger train service, something critical to the transport of its goods, and REA eventually succumbed to the competition of more forward-thinking companies, particularly United Parcel Service.

During the 1930s Estel met Dorothy Ann Cain, daughter of James Rolla Cain and Ethel Elizza Sanders, whom he married 7 October 1939 in Indianapolis, Marion County, IN. One of five children of a music teacher, Dorothy had been born 12 August 1918 in Indianapolis. She and Estel made their home in Chicago. They had one child in the mid-1940s, and then two more in the mid-1950s. Dorothy was a professional violinist with the Chicago Women’s Symphony, and was head of the violin department at Olivet Nazarene University. She also taught private lessons in violin and piano.

Both of Estel’s parents would in their mature years fulfill their ambitions to preach the Bible. Estel retained an active interest in religion throughout his own life. With Dorothy, he would one day write a pamphlet book, Our Story of Miracles,, about miracles of Jesus experienced and witnessed in their lives. The cover of the book is reproduced at right. It is available from End-Time Handmaidens and Servants, a non-profit religious missionary organization that Dorothy co-founded in 1966.

In 1975, as Estel was reaching retirement age, he and Dorothy decided to make Jasper, Newton County, AR their home, to allow Dorothy to more easily work with the End-Time Handmaidens, which had become based in Newton County. Since that time, northwestern Arkansas has continued to be the milieu favored by Estel’s descendants.

Estel passed away 22 December 1994 in Jasper. Dorothy survived him by over thirteen years. Toward the end of her life she was obliged to move some fifty miles to the northwest to Bella Vista, Benton County, AR, where she could be looked after by her eldest son and his family. She passed away at Highland Health Care Center in Bella Vista 8 March 2008.

In the late 1970s all but one of the surviving grandchildren of Elwood Bucher and Mary Lincoln “Tinty” Martin got together one day and this photo was taken of the generational group. The one missing surviving grandchild was Glenn Charles Ames, who was then living in California. Shown left to right are Dwight Cecil Buss, Phyllis Irene Claus Scott, Mary Alice Bucher Maynard, Thelma Eileen Ritter Welch, Evelyn Lois Claus Stoner, Estel Maynard Buss, and Helen Claudia Bucher Brobst.

Descendants of Estel Maynard Buss with Dorothy Ann Cain

To go back one generation, click here. To return to the Martin/Strader Family main page, click here.