Another step back

The last few photographic posts have spanned four generations, from Matilda at age one to Grandpa and Grandma (Chris and Malinda) to Peter P and Margaretha to Sarah Siebert Buller. Let’s make it five.

The man in the photograph below emigrated twice during his lifetime, first from West Prussia to New Russia, then from there to the U.S. He was born on 13 June 1822 in the village of Fuchswinkel, in the Marienwerder district of West Prussia (now Poland), along the Vistula River Delta.

Since emigration from Prussia to the Molotschna colony ended about 1835, he must have moved with his family prior to that time. GRANDMA confirms as much, stating that this man’s father emigrated in 1828. The next we hear of this man is in 1858: he lived in Kleefeld, where he held a full allotment of land (number 34 of 40). Two decades later, in 1879, he left the security of his land holdings and led his extended family across the Atlantic to settle near Henderson, Nebraska.

By now you’ve probably guessed that this is Johann Siebert, father of Sarah Siebert Buller (Grandpa Chris’s grandmother) and Margaretha Siebert Epp (Grandma Malinda’s grandmother).

Less than two years after the family arrived in the U.S., Johann’s wife Katharina Rempel Siebert passed away; fifteen months later he took a second wife named Katharina (Funk Regier, a widow), who was twenty-nine years his junior but who predeceased him by eleven years.

Johann enjoyed a long life and passed away on 31 January 1908. His obituary appeared in the 12 March 1908 edition of the Christlicher Bundesbote, a German weekly published by the General Conference Mennonite Church (see here; all obituaries now openly accessible here). It read:

Am 31. Januar bei Henderson, Nebr., Johann Siebert im Alter von 85 Jahren, 7 M. und 15 Tagen. Er war schon eine Reihe von Jahren Witwer gewesen. Kinder gezeuget 10, wovon ihm 2 vorangegangen sind. Großvater geworden über 74 Kinder und Urgroßvater über 69 Kinder. Das leichenbegängnis fand am 4. Feb. statt. Leichenrede wurde gehalten von Peter J. Friesen in der Kirche der Bethesda Gemeinde in Henderson, Nebr. (p. 6; see here)

On 31 January at Henderson, Nebraska, Johann Siebert at the age of eighty-five years, seven months, and fifteen days. He had been a widower for a number of years. He fathered ten children, two of whom predeceased him. He was grandfather to seventy-four and great-grandfather to sixty-nine children. The funeral took place on 4 February. The funeral sermon was delivered by Peter J. Friesen in the church of the Bethesda community [i.e., Bethesda Mennonite Church] in Henderson, Nebraska.

Johann is buried in the Mennonite/Siebert-Buller cemetery a mile south and three and a half miles east of Henderson.