“In
the year 1903[Heinrich H. Zimmermann] emigrated to America with his family
where they settled near Winkler in Manitoba.
Since his dear wife was already sick with tuberculosis in Russia, this
climate seemed even less bearable for her and in April, 1905, she died.”
HHZ
Obituary, Zionsbote 12 Sep 1934
Family
records state that the port where the Zimmermanns arrived in North America was
Halifax, which is in the Canadian province of Nova Scotia. Nova Scotia is at the eastern edge of the country,
a peninsula that juts out into the Atlantic from the province of New Brunswick. Nova Scotia is barely attached to New
Brunswick, and on many maps looks like an island separated from the mainland by
the Bay of Fundy. The town of Halifax is
on the Atlantic side of Nova Scotia, the main port of entry for immigrants
arriving in Canada from Europe when the Zimmermanns arrived in the late summer
of 1903.
From
Halifax the Zimmernamms would have traveled west by train through New Brunswick
headed for Quebec and the St. Lawrence River corridor to Montreal and Ottawa
before heading inland over the sparsely populated boreal forest of the Canadian
Shield north of the Great Lakes, “the bush,” as Canadians refer to it, skirting
Lake Superior above Thunder Bay, Ontario, before heading west and a bit north
through the wilderness to Winnipeg, Manitoba, a journey of about 1,600
miles. Gerald Friesen in his book, The Canadian Prairie: A History,
describes that long rail trek:[i]
“The
colonist cars became little communities in themselves. The wooden seats could be made up into berths
… At the end of [the] car was a tiny kitchen for the preparation of simple
meals. Armed with ‘yard of tickets’ and
a few supplies, the immigrants embarked upon the rough and, even for romantics,
seemingly endless train journey through the trees and lakes of the Shield. The ride was interrupted by quick sorties to
railside stores in the northern Ontario bush and by long waits on sidings for
priority trains to roar through.
Inevitably, talk turned to the future and to inquiries about ‘what it
was like ’” (254).
Arriving
in Winnipeg, the Zimmermanns were almost at their destination. The town of Winkler was just 60 miles south on
a rail spur that connected the town to the Canadian Pacific Railway. In Winkler they were again in Mennonite land,
among people who still spoke Plautdietsch even though they had been in
Canada almost 30 years. The West
Reserve, as it was called, was a block settlement of Russian Mennonites who
arrived in Canada in 1874-875, many of whom were from the Fuerstenland Colony,
the colony where Sergeyevka, the Zimmerman’s old home, was located. In 1903, the Mennonite community around
Winkler was well established, but it was still a recognizably Low German
Mennonite world. The Zimmermanns would
have seen Mennonites in the streets and in the stores. They would have had no trouble talking to
most of the people around them. There
was also a Mennonite Brethren Church. It
was the MB congregation that was the likely magnet that guided their journey
from Russia, gave them a concrete destination as they made their travel arrangements
and bought their tickets. Here were
people who would welcome them, help them find a place to live, introduce them
to Canada, their new home.
The
first place they stayed when they arrived in Winkler was with a family named Hiebert,
whose daughter would one day live next door to my Aunt Rosie when she and Russ
lived on Maple Street in Selma, California.
I have no idea how long Grandma and her family stayed with the Hieberts,
nor where they went to from there.
However, the letter Heinrich Zimmermann wrote to the Zionsbote,
definitely gives the impression that they were living in their own place in the
months leading up to his wife Maria’s death.
But whether they lived in town or on a farm, the letter gives no
hint. Nor does it give any indication of
how the family lived, their means of financial support. Did HHZ get carpentry work of some kind,
perhaps? He had worked in a factory in
Russia. He was not a farmer. Did the church help them financially, I
wonder? One thing though is very
clear—Maria’s tuberculosis got worse in Canada, and her illness and eventual
death dominated the house in which the family lived.
Zionsbote
17 May 1905, “Experiences”
“The Will of God”
“In the last years we
started thinking about going to America, but there were many hindrances, so
that it didn’t seem at all possible.
[We] asked the Lord and made plans, that if God wanted to make it so, we
would understand that it was his will, and He brought everything to pass that
it came about and he led us here and through all of the difficulties. So we cannot understand it except as the will
of God. But yet I now ask God, why
so? --For when we arrived here, my dear
wife soon became ill.
It was like a fever,
and it did not leave her. When we saw
that the illness became more severe, we sought the help of a doctor, but it
seemed as if none of that would help. In
the previous year, she thought she would leave us here and go home, [but] that
didn’t work out. She often said [she
would go] if we all could go at the same time.
So she lay around the entire time that we were here but could take care
of everything with the help of the dear children until the end of September
1904, then she couldn’t get up any more, but she lay down thinking that she
would soon be able to go home. God made
her willing to let us go and then she wanted to go home, but the dear Lord
thought differently.
At that time there
was a Conference here and several of the guests visited us; may God reward them
for it. Then my dear wife kept looking
to the future, how much longer she would have to stay here [in this world];
until Christmas that was too long, by then she would be over there. She often said: I have been sick for so long,
surely the dear Lord will not leave me here long.
But Christmas came
and went and her longing was not fulfilled.
When Elder Brother David Dyck had been here once, when I wasn’t at home,
he said that that could last until spring.
Then she was completely discouraged, but the Lord helped us, he knows
how to deal with his children. So she
lay there until the beginning of February, until then she was still able to get
up to go to the bathroom, if I helped her, but then that no longer worked, she
was suddenly too weak, she couldn’t move her legs any more; then I carried her
as well as I could. That probably wasn’t
always very nice for her, but she was very content, she was so happy that the
dear brothers and sisters had taken such good care of us, that she always
consoled me that they would take good care of me, too, when she was gone and it
is so, may God reward each one, for it is written: “All that you have done
for the least of these, that you have done for me.”
Two weeks before her
end, it seemed as if things might get better; she could sit in a rocking chair,
we could even rock her, and when we sat there in the evenings and talked about
how the Lord had led and guided us and that we would perhaps still be able to
stay together and settle somewhere, then she became cheerful, that she also
wanted to stay here, but it wasn’t long until the illness increased, her breath
became shorter and shorter, her pains ever greater and her desire ever stronger
to go home, so that she preferred us to talk about heavenly things or to sing
beautiful songs to her. In particular
she liked the song 690 in the Glaubensstimme and Brother Warkentin often
had to sing it to her.
She had an especially
hard time of it the last night. Brother
Dyck was here when the illness was so bad that she sweated profusely and her
breathing so difficult that she asked us again and again to sing and to
pray. Once she asked Brother Dyck to
pray over her, for so it was written, and the dear brother did it, we prayed
together. At 4 o’clock Brother Dyck went
home and I sat with her, but the trouble did not leave her. At 6 o’clock I woke the children and we
tended to her, but I kept wiping the sweat from her. When I was tending her, she asked me to wash
her and to make up the bed. When I had
washed her, I lay her on a bench in order to make the bed and when I had laid
her down she said: “So, now give me some water.” I did it.
When she had drunk, she made a bit of a face and died. She stayed lying there as she was, she didn’t
even straighten out her legs. It was
Thursday, the 6th of April.
“We held her funeral
on Sunday in the meeting house, so that everyone could attend.
And many guests had come. Yes,
dear brothers and sisters, only one who has experienced the same thing can
truly sympathize, people said that to me when my wife was still alive and I
have to agree. It goes very deep, when
the Lord reaches so deep, but those are thoughts of love, that’s what we read
in his word, and yet it hurts so much.
My wish is that the Lord may take care of me and console me. May all be heartily greeted by me with Psalm
116. Please, pray for us. My wife asked that greetings be sent to all
the brothers and sisters in Serjegevka, and also those who have moved away from
there, with the song from Zionslieder Number 45: ‘On the Beautiful
Golden Beach’. I ask Uncle Kornelius
Fehr to give these lines to my sister to read and to send me news.
H. H. Zimmermann
My address is:
Winkler, Manitoba, Canada
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The death of Maria Dyck Zimmermann
left five children without a mother, five young children. Grandma, the oldest, was only twelve years
old; her sister Anna just eleven; Henry, the oldest boy, was nine; Marie, the youngest
sister, would not turn six until the following June; Jacob, the baby, was only
three years old, would turn four on May 21.
Grandma’s childhood pretty much ended with her mother’s illness and
death. All the children would have done
what they could to help, but as the oldest girl she was the one who had the
primary responsibility for the work her mother could do.
In
the care of the church
“She was so happy that the
dear brothers and sisters had taken such good care of us, that she always
consoled me that they would take good care of me, too, when she was gone and it
is so.”
Heinrich Zimmermann was 39 years
old when his wife died. He was still a
newcomer in a strange new land. His
children were young; they needed a mother.
He needed a wife, a “help meet.”
But his need was not just his concern.
The church felt it as well, felt their responsibility to help this
family find a wife/mother, and it was known that among the Mennonite Brethren
in Saskatchewan, in the Brotherfield Church, there was a widow with nine
children in need of a husband. A
marriage was arranged. Heinrich and his
children left Winkler to take up a new life in the parkland between the North
and South forks of the Saskatchewan River.
