Katherine Peters Yamada is a journalism graduate of Fresno State College in Fresno, California. She has written numerous family histories and has searched for her roots in Holland, Prussia, and Russia. Martin B. Fast was her great-uncle.

Ralph Friesen is an amateur historian with a special interest in the Kleine Gemeinde. He has contributed numerous articles to Preservings and is the author of Between Earth and Sky: Steinbach, the First 50 Years, which won the Margaret McWilliams Award for excellence in local history, Manitoba. He also co-authored an inter-generational family hist- ory, Abraham S. Friesen, Steinbach Pioneer, … Read More

Dan Dyck is a self-directed student of history. He is distantly related to Jacob Penner through both his parents’ lineages. This was discovered midway through the research for this project.

Kennert Giesbrecht is the editor of Die Mennonitische Post. He grew up in Menno Colony in Paraguay and has travelled exten- sively throughout Latin America.

Benjamin Wiebe practices internal medicine and is currently a doctoral candidate at Heidelberg University. He is writing his dissertation on alcohol among Mennonites in Russia, and the emergence of the abstinence movement. Benjamin is a member of the Mennonite Brethren Church in Frankenthal (Pfalz), Germany.

Glenn H. Penner is a retired chemistry professor interested in the early history of Mennonites in Prussia and Russia. He has been an active genealogical researcher since 1974 and works out of his office at the Mennonite Heritage Archives in Winnipeg.

John D. Thiesen is an archivist and co-director of libraries at Bethel College, in North Newton, Kansas. He is the co-editor of European Menno- nites and the Holocaust (2020).