Preface


My grandparents, Jacob & Lena (Zimmerman) Willems, were step-brother and step-sister in a marriage my family says was arranged by the Mennonite Brethren Church. Grandma's father, Heinrich H. Zimmermann (1866-1934), was a widower with 5 children, whose wife, Maria Dyck Zimmermann (1861-1905), died soon after the family arrived in Canada (1903) from a Mennonite colony in what is now Ukraine. Grandpa's mother, Elisabeth Bolt Willems (1858-1943), was a widow with 9 children whose husband, Cornelius Willems (1885-1902), died two years after the family arrived in Saskatchewan in 1900 from Mountain Lake, Minnesota, the place where the family settled after emigrating from a Mennonite settlement in Crimea in 1875. Jacob & Lena were married in 1909. They moved to Reedley, California in 1919.

There is an even earlier couple important to this history, Gerhard Willems (1820-1900) and Katharina Rempel Willems (1823-1875), Cornelius' parents. Their story reaches back to the early years of Mennonite sesttlement in the land they knew as South Russia, a story of migration from the North Sea to the Black Sea, from Eastern Europe to North America.

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The Children of Gerhard & Katharina Rempel Willems



The Children of Gerhard Willems (1820-1900) & Katharina Rempel Willems (1823-1875)


                                Birth                                   Death                       Place of death

Gerhard               21 Oct 1842                         2 Mar 1843

Gerhard*            17 Jan   1844                         4 Apr 1916           Kutyuki, Crimea, S. Russia

Anna                     18 Aug 1845                           Feb 1932            Herbert, Sask

Katharina             28 Oct 1846                          7 Feb 1847

Peter                       9 Jan 1848                        31 Dec 1877        Mt.Lake, Minnesota

Heinrich               17 Oct 1849                          1 June 1928        Langham, Sask.

Johann                 25 Apr 1851                         20 Jan 1905         Henderson, Neb.

Bernhard             10 Apr 1853                         12 Mar 1912        Delft, Minn.

Cornelius              5 Feb 1855                          9 Aug 1902          Waldheim, Sask.

 

Katharina               7 Oct 1856                                      1890       Bingham Lake, Minn.

Abraham             17 Nov 1858                        17 Nov 1945        Waldheim, Sask. 

Elizabeth              6 Mar 1860                                        1862       Crimea (?), S. Russia

Elizabeth              31 Mar 1862  Crimea*             9 Aug 1927       Hepburn, Sask.

Jakob                    15 Mar 1864                        Unknown

Maria                      6 Aug 1866                          3 July 1895           Mt.Lake, Minn.

Margareta           17 Sep 1869                                       1917       Munich, North Dakota

_______________
Sources:
-- The data from Willems Gen. I. II. III. , this family data sheet that I received from my aunt Mary Willems Davis in 1996, has been updated from the GRANDMA, version 7, “Family Group Sheet” for Gerhard Willems (1820-1900), which was printed 9 Oct 2012. 
*The place of Elizabeth’s birth, “Crimea,” is given in the Zionsbote (7 Sep 1927) obituary for Elisabeth Willems Quiring (1862-1927), written by her husband, Johann Quiring.

Compiled by Loretta Willems
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