Zimmermann-Willems Family Portrait (c. 1916)

There were actually three Zimmerman-Willems marriages in my family:

1) my great-grandparents, Heinrich H. Zimmerman & Elisabeth Boldt Willems Zimmerman;

2) my grandparents, Jacob and Lena (Helena) Zimmermann Willems; 

3) my grandfather's younger brother and grandmother's next youngest sister: George & Anna Zimmermann Willems.


The photo below was taken around 1916 in Saskatchewan, Canada, most likely in the town of Waldheim.

 Note: Elisabeth is wearing a traditional Russian Mennonite head-dress:

Front row:

            Heinrich and Elisabeth, the parents are seated in the center.  Seated next to them are their two oldest children and their spouses.  Lena, my grandmother, sits next to her father.  Jacob, my grandfather, sits next to her.  Seated next to Elisabeth in the front row is her oldest child, Cornelius, and his wife, Tina.  Standing behind them are all the rest of the Zimmerman and Willems children as well as the spouses of those who were married.

Middle row:  the women (left to right):

Margaret Willems, Elizabeth Jantz; Marie Zimmerman, Marie Goertzen, Kate Willems, Anna Jantz; Anna Zimmerman Willems

Back row:  the men (left to right):

Abe Jantz*, Pete Goertzen, *Henry Jantz, George Willems, Henry Zimmerman; Jacob/Jack Zimmerman; Henry Willems   

*Note:  The Jantz men were brothers--Abe Jantz was married to Elizabeth Willems; Henry Jantz was married to Anna Willems.  Other husbands: Pete Goertzen was married to Marie Willems. George Willems was married to my grandmother’s sister Anna.

The Zimmermann-Willems Marriage: 1906

“On 18 March 1906 [Elisabeth Boldt Willems] joined hand in marriage with Brother Heinrich Zimmermann, preacher of the Mennonite Brethren church.  They lived in Bruderfeld, Saskatchewan for fourteen years, and in the year 1920 they settled for the first time in California  and in the year 1926 for the second time.”                                          

                                                                                                 EBW Z Obiturary (Zionsbote 5 Jan 1944)

             Heinrich Zimmerman must have been a very tired groom when he pledged himself in marriage to the widow Elisabeth Boldt Willems on March 18, 1906. –Zimmerman family information[i] indicates that the marriage ceremony took place the same day that the Zimmerman family arrived in Saskatchewan! 

             It would not just have been the groom who was travel-weary when the widow and widower said their vows.  Heinrich’s five children, ages four through thirteen years, were likely beyond tired, exhausted from the trip, shell-shocked from all the disorienting changes that had taken place in their young lives—the long trip from their home in South Russia in 1903, their mother’s debilitating illness when they arrived in Winkler, her death April 6, 1905.   Now the children had traveled to another brand-new home to live with people who were strangers to them.    They now had nine new brothers and sisters. A woman they’d never before seen was now to be their ‘mother’. Would their new stepmother be kind?  Would their new stepbrothers and sisters be nice? 

     I doubt that anyone at the time gave any thought at all to how Heinrich and Elisabeth’s children felt about their parents’ remarriage.  Even in today’s psychotherapeutic culture couples are often oblivious to their children’s perspective when second marriages are made.  A hundred years ago, I doubt that the question would even have glimmered.  The decision to marry was one for the adults to make: Heinrich was a good man; Elisabeth was a good woman; children needed both a mother and a father.  How could anyone doubt that everyone would be better off because of this marriage?  Looking at it now, though, looking at what it must have been like for the new stepbrothers and stepsisters, one can see that bringing those two families together was not likely to produce one big happy “Brady-Bunch” family. 

When Heinrich and Elisabeth exchanged vows on March 18, 1906, it was not just a new couple that emerged.  That wedding was the marriage of two families.  On that day, whether they wanted it or not, Elisabeth’s nine children and Heinrich’s five became stepbrothers and stepsisters.  

Elisabeth’s children

            Cornelius                                23        b.  1 May 1882

Jacob                                      22        b.  8 Aug 1883

 Elisabeth                               20        b. 12 Sep 1885

Anna                                       18        b. 14 Sep 1887

Gerhard (George)                 16        b. 30 Nov 1889

Heinrich (Henry)                   14        b. 25 Apr 1892

Maria                                      11        b. 22 Oct 1894

Katherina                                7         b. 11 Jul 1898

            Margareta                              5         b. 13 Jun 1900

         Looking at the list, what is quickly obvious is the wide range of ages.  The two youngest children, Margareta and Katherina, were just little girls.  The two oldest, Cornelius and my grandfather,Jacob,, were fully grown young men.  Cornelius and Jacob were both still single, but both had already staked out homestead claims.  Elisabeth, who was 20, and Anna, who was 18, were old enough to marry, so it was possible that one or both were gone.  But even if all four of the older siblings had left home, the house would still have been full.  At least six people were living in Elisabeth’s house when the Zimmerman family arrived, and the number could have been even higher. 

        My grandfather and his brothers and sisters had to be curious about their new stepbrothers and sisters.  The younger kids may even have been excited about gaining new brothers and sisters.  But there must also have been resentment, too, and possibly some hostility, especially after Heinrich and his family actually moved in.  Six new people had to be fitted into an already crowded house.  The coming of the Zimmermann’s must have felt like a home invasion.

Heinrich’s children

Lena                           13        b.   5 Feb 1893

Anna                           12        b. 25 Apr 1894

Henry                         11        b.   4 Dec 1895

Marie                            6        b. 25 June 1899

Jacob                            4        b. 21 May 1901

The Zimmerman brothers and sisters were moving into the home of an already established family, a family that was both bigger and older than their own.  Six of the new stepsiblings were older than Lena, the oldest of the Zimmerman children.  Four of the Willems stepsiblings were males, new older brothers.  My grandmother Lena and her brothers and sisters probably felt more than a little overwhelmed and intimidated.  They must have felt like intruders, outsiders unsure of their welcome.  This big, new family was probably more than a little bit scary.

Tension and conflict among this crowd of siblings and step-siblings could not have been avoided.  Be that as it may, this initial marriage of the Zimmermann and Willems families eventually produced two more Willems-Zimmermann marriages: 

--February 6, 1909, Jacob Willems married Lena Zimmermann..

--May 19, 1912, Jacob’s younger brother George married Lena’s younger sister Anna.

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[i] Zimmerman emigration history, full text:  “Left Russia, 28 July 1903 and arrived Halifax in Aug. 1903 and went on to Winkler, Manitoba, Canada.  Then moved, in Mar. 18, 1906, to Sask. Can.  In Nov. 1920, the Zimmermans came to Calif. Reedley.  Then Jacob D. Left for Chicago in Nov. 1924 then went to Canada 1925 in Dec.  Then went to Calif in 1926.”   [This was part of the packet of Xeroxed family information received from my aunt Mary Davis in 1994.][i]

Early Zimmermann Photos

Below are photos found in my father's files.  The first is of Maria Dyck Zimmermann, my great-grandmother.  The second is a school photo taken in Manitoba, Canada,  in 1904 that includes my grandmother, Helena (Lena) Zimmermann Willems.

Maria Dyck Zimmermann 1861-1905

Written on the back in my grandmother's handwriting:

     "Frank J. Berg, teacher in Windom S.D. 615 in the year 1904."

My grandmother, Lena Zimmermann, is the tall girl on the far left.

Canada: The Zimmermanns

“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 6^th 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.

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[i] Gerald Friesen, The Canadian Prairies: A History, University of Toronto Press, 1984.