View source for Wiebe, Marigan Weiland Friesen (1876-1957)

[[File:WiebeMarigan.jpg|300px|thumb|right|''Marigan Wiebe, 72 years old.

Source: Preservings. '']]     Marigan Weiland Friesen Wiebe, Mennonite pioneer, was born on 6 June 1876 in Antwerp, Northern Belgium. She was one of three children born to Dumnick Weiland (died 1905) and Margaretha Klee. In 1888 Marigan came to Canada with her father and two siblings where they settled among the Mennonites in [[Manitoba (Canada)|Manitoba]]. Her mother had died earlier in Belgium. Like many new immigrants in Canada, Marigan found work as a domestic. She met her first husband while working in the household of Cornelius B. Friesen. In 1895 at the age of 19 she was baptized into the [[Kleine Gemeinde|Kleine Gemeinde]] and married Peter T. Friesen (1857-1918), a man 19 years her senior. They had eight children together but sadly their oldest died at the age of 13. Marigan Friesen was widowed when Peter died in 1918. After managing for a year on her own, Marigan married Cornelius P. Wiebe (1878-1921), a widower with six children of his own. They had one child together; a son Heinrich born in 1921. The joy Marigan experienced in her second marriage, with the birth of her youngest son was soon overshadowed by tragedy. A typhoid epidemic swept through their community claiming the lives of three stepchildren and her husband Cornelius who died 16 December 1921. Marigan Wiebe was an optimistic woman who loved her family and was willing to work hard. With determination and the help of her older children she continued to run the farm and to raise 11 children on her own.

Marigan Weiland Friesen Wiebe died on 25 November 1957 at the age of 81. Her funeral was held at the Chortitzer Mennonite Church where she had been baptized in 1895. The hardships and struggles of pioneer life had proved Marigan to be a woman of strength and courage but above all her grandchildren remembered her as a "warm and loving" presence in their lives.
= Bibliography =
"Marigan Weiland Friesen Wiebe (1876-1957)." <em class="gameo_bibliography">Preservings </em>(June, 1997): 52-54.
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