The older that a person becomes, the more one ponders the past. Conversations start to center around events of the past as well as one’s origins. For instance, I now take special notice when March 6 arrives on the calendar. This is the day when my mother Katherine (née Harms) was born. Sadly, historical research is often only begun after someone has died. The death of a parent or friend can cause us to reflect. I am no exception, and now that my mother is gone, I often wish that I would have asked more about her life and family. A resource for me has been to talk with other members of her family and to document their stories. The following is a collection of stories I have gathered about my Harms family.

My mother’s maiden name was Harms. The Mennonite Encyclopedia states that the name Harms is recorded in Mennonite church records dating back to 1572. The name is a Frisian Dutch name and can still be found in the Netherlands today. The name “Harms” is unique as it can be used as a surname or a given name. For example, my great Uncle Herman Harms who died in Swan Plain, Saskatchewan had both. The name “Harms” means Herman or son of Herman, as the following variations of the name show: Harms, Harm, Herman, Harmens, Hermsen, Harmszen, Harmsen, and Harmesz. From the Netherlands our ancestors moved to Poland (Prussia), to escape persecution for their beliefs.

Another interesting aspect about the Harms family is their variety of occupations. A Prussian Mennonite church record lists Harms with the following occupations: farmers, linen weavers, school teachers, labourers, and beer makers. Some eyebrows might be raised in regards to the last occupation mentioned, but at that point in Mennonite history, consuming or brewing alcohol was not viewed as a sin, although it was a sin to abuse it. Likely, there was abuse of liquor like there is now, but consuming alcohol was accepted as being a part of their daily diets. The main reason that Mennonites became distillers was the fact that the Prussian government refused them the opportunity to participate in many other trades.

Over the course of time, I became very interested in knowing more about the lives of my great-grandparents, Johan and Maria (Neufeld) Harms. In this article, I have recorded some of the things I learned about them, their travels, and the struggles they encountered. Johan Harms was born on 24 February 1864 in a Mennonite village in southern Ukraine. His parents, Johan Sr. and Aganetha (Hamm) Harms were farmers. I suspect that they were a poor family, as when land became available to be rented in the Fürstenland colony, they moved together with many other poor families with the hope of obtaining farmland. This proved to be short-lived because of the many changes taking place in Russia. Mennonite leaders were unhappy with the changes to their community’s military exemption and their right to educate their children with their own curriculum and in the language of their choice. In 1873, communities in Russia sent delegates to find a new home in North America. The Canadian government promised these delegates a home to live in freedom. The first Mennonites left Russia in 1874 and the Harms family followed in 1876, arriving in Quebec City on June 23 aboard the S.S. Quebec.

The Harms family then took a smaller boat through the United States, down the Red River and into southern Manitoba. They unloaded their goods and went by foot or horse and wagon and traveled inland. A house was built in August 1876 in the village of Hochfeld on the West Reserve. It was most likely a semlin, an A-framed structure made of sod and logs, dug into the ground. The following year they built a house, twenty-four feet by thirty-four feet, which resembled a building that they were used to. The first year must have been very difficult because they left Russia before they could harvest their crops and arrived in Manitoba too late to plant anything. The Harms homestead was located near present-day Winkler on NE S-1 T-1 R-4 W. They farmed their land from the village and in 1882 they cropped forty-two acres. They also built a stable measuring eighteen by twenty feet in that year. In addition, they owned two horses, one cow, one heifer, three pigs, one wagon, one plow, one harrow, and one grass mower.

In order to patent their homestead, Johan Harms Sr. had to become a Canadian citizen. He appeared before a judge in the courthouse at Emerson, Manitoba on 12 December 1882. Here he affirmed (rather than swore) his allegiance to the laws of Canada. Johan Harms Sr. was illiterate and had to sign his homestead record with an ‘X.’ Another requirement was that the Harms family had to be free of immigration debt. In order to immigrate to Canada, the Harms family had borrowed money from the Old Mennonite people in Ontario. This debt could be repaid once they were established in Canada. Johan Harms Sr. paid the last of his debt to the Waterloo Society and was granted a patent to his land on 15 March 1886.

My great-grandfather, Johan Harms (born 1864), married a local Hochfeld girl by the name of Maria Neufeld. The marriage took place on 27 December 1883. Like her husband, Maria had also been born in Russia. She was born on 22 February 1865 to Herman and Maria (Dyck) Neufeld, who immigrated to Canada on the S.S. Canadian, which arrived in Quebec City on 19 July 1875. Johan and Maria Harms introduced the name Herman into the Harms family.

It was customary for a young married couple to live with either of their parents for the first year of their marriage. This custom allowed the young couple to save some money to purchase a farm of their own. Therefore, Johan and Maria likely spent their first year of marriage with the senior Harms family in Hochfeld. In the spring of 1891, Johan Sr. (born 1828) died and an auction sale was held at the home of his widow on Monday, March 16, 1891. The auction was held under the direction of the Old Colony Church Waisenamt, which oversaw that half of the assets went to Aganetha, with the other half to be divided amongst the children. The following articles were sold at the auction: a house and barn, two horses, a cow, a pig, a wagon, a sleigh, a grass machine, a ripper, two plows with iron harrows, and a carpenter work bench with tools. Aganetha then moved to the village of Friedensruh, where the 1891 Census of Canada showed her living with her son Johan (born 1864) and his family. It was here that my grandfather Jacob Harms was born in 1891. Aganetha died on Boxing Day in 1896.

By the turn of the century, the majority of the available farm land in Manitoba’s West Reserve had been taken up by homesteads, which limited the opportunities for young farmers. By 1891, Mennonites began to move westward, initially into Alberta but finally settling in Saskatchewan. The Old Colony Mennonite Church negotiated with the Canadian government for a block of land for settlement north of Saskatoon in 1895. This became the Hague Osler Mennonite Reserve. In the spring of 1898, the family of Johan and Maria Harms, along with Gerhard and Katharina (Harms) Bartsch, who was Johan’s sister, along with the family of Jacob M. Klassen arrived by train at the Hague Siding and became some of the first homesteaders to settle in the village of Hochfeld. Johan Harms erected a 16 by 28 foot house in Hochfeld valued at $250.00. A stable, granary, hog barn, and a well, all valued at $300.00, were added soon afterwards. Every year, the Harms family made improvements to their homestead, SW S-14 T- 41 R-4 West of 3. In 1898 they broke fifteen acres; the next year they broke fifty and cropped fifteen. Every subsequent year, they broke more land so that by 1902, they were cropping 135 acres. They also added more horses and cattle every year. In 1898, they owned 2 horses and 2 head of cattle; by 1901, they owned 5 horses and 8 head of cattle.

Hochfeld was one of the largest villages in the Hague-Osler Reserve. The Harms children attended the private, German-language school in the village but by 1916, the provincial government began to enforce the Compulsory School Act, which meant that private schools were to be closed and children needed to be sent to the English-language public schools. In 1918, the government built Passchendaele School #4084 on the south end of the village, named after a battle site during the First World War. Under threat by the government-appointed school inspector, Mr. Johan Bartsch sold the land where the school was built. A poll was taken by the province seeking approval for this school district. Even though the local landowners all voted against it, the government built it anyway. Parents refused to send their children to this school. In reaction to this refusal, the government levied fines against many parents, who often had to sell off their assets in order to pay them, or it sent parents to jail. Church leaders appealed to the government, reminding them of the Privilegium, a document given to Mennonites in 1873 in which the government had promised them that they could conduct their own schools in the language of their choice (German) and use their own curriculum. The Harms family also paid many dollars in fines.

In response, the Old Colony Church sent a delegation to countries in Latin America in 1921 to find a new home. The Mexican government provided assurances that Mennonites could live out their faith in Mexico. Between 1922 and 1928, approximately eight thousand Mennonites moved to Mexico. In 1926, Johan and Maria Harms moved to Durango, Mexico with their family, with the exception of Herman, Jacob, Peter, and Aganetha (who was married to Jacob Harder). The move was very difficult, both for those who moved and for those who stayed. Emotional farewells were said, knowing that they may never see one another again.

In addition to raising their own children, Johan and Maria also helped to raise another young woman by the name of Agatha Wiebe. Agatha’s parents Aron and Aganetha (Klassen) Wiebe had homesteaded north of the village of Hochfeld. Her mother had died on 29 August 1919, when Agatha was twelve years old. Agatha continued living with her father up until 1924, when he passed away. Before his death, Aron Wiebe arranged for his daughter to move into the Harms’s home. Agatha remained with the Harms until her marriage to Klaas Neufeld on 11 July 1926. In the fall of that year, the Harms moved to Mexico. They wanted the newlyweds to move with them but the latter chose to remain. For Agatha this was a difficult parting, for in the two years that she had lived with the Harms family they had grown very fond of one another. She had finally felt that she had a home and now this was broken again. Klaas Neufeld died on 20 July 1978 and his wife Agatha on 5 March 1992.

In addition to Agatha Neufeld, the Harms household also extended a welcome to other people who were disabled or in difficult circumstances. This included Mrs. Abram Giesbrecht, an older woman in a wheelchair; a young woman who was called “Stomme Auntje,” who could not speak; another young woman by the name of Helena Teichroeb, whose parents were too sickly to look after her and who came to stay at their house until her parents were well again; and Peter Reimer, a mentally disabled bachelor. Peter Reimer and his brother Jacob were both bachelors who preferred to live alone. They were older men when they immigrated to Canada from Russia, living in Hochfeld for a time in a small wooden shack. They went to live in the Great Deer area, on the west side of the North Saskatchewan River. People from Hochfeld were quite concerned about them, so Johan Harms and Gerhard Bartsch went to visit them. They found Jacob dead in bed and Peter nearly frozen and suffering from malnutrition. They took him back to Hochfeld where he lived with the Harms family. He was a simple man who earned money for his tobacco smoking by splitting firewood for people and making wooden spoons. When Johan Harms moved to Mexico in 1926, Peter went to live with the Bartsch family. The Harms household was very lively, full of loud discussions on controversial subjects. Holiday seasons, when everyone was at home, were very hard on Peter. At one such gathering he left the dinner table and said, “Thank goodness, I don’t have children!”

Following the Russian Revolution, nearly 22,000 Mennonites came to Canada during the 1920s, in order to escape famine and violence. After their arrival in Canada, these Mennonites were often billeted with friends and relatives who had migrated to Canada some years earlier. In some cases, these immigrants had no immediate relatives and they sought refuge in homes of other compassionate Mennonites. The David Loewen family was in the latter category and was billeted with the Harms. The Loewen family was very grateful to the Harms for the year that the family spent living in their summer kitchen, and for sharing their home and resources with them.

The lives of Johan and Maria Harms included a great deal of movement. Born in Russia, they moved to Hochfeld, Manitoba, then to Hochfeld, Saskatchewan, and finally they helped to organize the village of Hochfeld in Mexico. After a short stay in Mexico, two pairs of children and their families returned to Canada: their son Johan and his wife Helena, and their daughter Katharina, who was married to Jacob Wall. Johan passed away on 12 January 1928 at the age of sixty-three. His life was characterized by hard work and making a living by farming and being a carpenter. He helped to build many of the homes in Hochfeld and when there was a death in the community he would build caskets for the deceased.

There is a story about Johan’s death that comes from the family of his son Jacob. Jacob and his family had not moved to Mexico with his parents but rather stayed living in the village of Hochfeld, Saskatchewan and later moved to a farm west of the village. The family had been sitting at the table eating a meal when they heard a bang on the wall behind Jacob. Jacob looked up and said to his family that his father had just died in Mexico. When he was asked about how he knew this, he said that the Gouta Yeist or Holy Spirit had sent him the message. The next morning, he went to the Hague train station where he received a telegram that confirmed that his father had died at exactly the time he had heard the bang on the wall. After Johan’s death, the newly widowed Maria returned to Saskatchewan for a short visit.

Maria Harms remained a widow for almost two years before she married Jacob Hiebert on 24 November 1929. Hiebert had moved from Gruenthal, Saskatchewan to Gruenthal, Durango in Mexico but the couple made their home in the village of Gruenfeld. In a letter that she wrote to her son Jacob in 1944, one feels the poverty, desperation, and frustration that filled their lives. At the age of seventy-nine they were still attempting to farm. They required this income because there was no old age pension available to them. Since they were old and found it difficult to work, they hired a maid. She was paid ten pesos per month. This was not very expensive, but for the Hieberts it was a lot. The crop was a small one. “The two-acre corn crop,” Maria wrote, “has produced fairly well but the other feed has not.” They needed to purchase all of their feed that year, which was expensive. They rented out one acre, which gave them some income, but when the milk cheque came it was not enough to pay all the bills. It became necessary for them to borrow some money and they kept hoping that some of their children in Canada would send them some more. Many items had to be sold in order to stay alive, namely the wall clock from Russia, a clothes closet, a Russian kist (chest), a creamer, and an irrigation outfit. In October 1945, they had an auction and sold their belongings, their buildings, and their nine acres of land and went to live with Maria’s daughter, also named Maria, and son-in-law, Jacob E. Klassen, in the village of Gruenthal.

Maria Harms Hiebert was a gifted midwife and her God-given talents were in demand not only in Saskatchewan but in Mexico as well. She also prepared bodies for funerals, so she was often the first to see them when they entered the world and then helped to prepare them to leave. Jacob Hiebert died in Mexico on 9 June 1946. Maria Harms Hiebert’s earthly struggle ended on 23 July 1947. She had been very sick the last four and a half days before her death. Rev. Johan P. Wall, a fellow Saskatchewan Hochfelder, paid the last tributes to this tired pilgrim.