Epp, Kornelius (1861-1936)

Kornelius Epp was a minister and Ältester who lived in imperial Russia (present day Ukraine), Canada, and Mexico. He made his most notable contribution to the Mennonite people by serving as the first Ältester of the Bergthaler church in Saskatchewan. He also served as a minor leader in the 1920s migration to Mexico.

The first groups of Mennonite settlers began moving to the Rosthern area of what would become Saskatchewan in 1891. They came predominantly from Manitoba’s West Reserve, some of them having only very recently arrived from Russia. In 1893, with Epp's prompting, the settlers sent a letter to David Stoesz, Ältester of the Chortitzer church in eastern Manitoba, asking for help organizing a church. Stoesz arrived in the summer of that year and ordained Kornelius Epp as their minister. Two years later, however, this church dissolved when many of its members wanted to re-organize under the leadership of the local Ältester, Peter Regier; Epp wanted to remain under Stoesz’s leadership and moved back to Manitoba where he worked as a teacher.

By 1900 many more people with origins in the Bergthaler church and ecclesially aligned with the Chortitzer and Sommerfelder churches in Manitoba, which had recently split from the Bergthaler church, had moved to the area around Hague and Rosthern. They wrote to Abraham Doerksen, the newly elected Ältester of the Sommerfelder church, for help in organizing a church. Doerksen persuaded Epp to return to Saskatchewan to serve as this church’s minister. In 1902 Doerksen ordained Epp as the Ältester of the Bergthaler church in Saskatchewan.

Epp’s church members came from disparate Mennonite backgrounds and geographic locations, making church unity a challenge. Epp took controversial stands against involvement in municipal politics and the use of public buildings for church services. Worldly dress was a particularly vexed matter and ended up undoing Epp’s leadership. In 1908 Epp refused to marry a couple whom he thought were dressed too ostentatiously for the occasion. Many of his congregants disagreed with the stand he had taken and Epp left the church. He was replaced by Aron Zacharias.

For the next decade and a half Epp moved around a variety of Saskatchewan locations, including Aberdeen, Lost River, and Hague, always serving as the leader of a small congregation, sometimes called the New Bergthaler Church. At least one anonymous, contemporaneous source describes him as a weak leader and a poor farmer, with his congregants frequently choosing to join other churches.

In the 1920s, many Mennonites in Manitoba and Saskatchewan moved to Mexico in response to changes to the education laws in those provinces that restricted the Mennonites’ private elementary schools. In June 1922, Kornelius Epp led a small group of followers to the state of Chihuahua in Mexico together with a small group of Sommerfelder Mennonites from Herbert, Saskatchewan under the leadership of Johann Zacharias. There are different, and often vague, accounts of where Epp and his followers initially settled in Chihuahua. By the late 1920s most of Epp's church members had returned to Canada and there appears again to have been some controversy involving his leadership. At this point Epp moved to the Old Colony village of Blumengart in the Manitoba Colony where he lived out his final years.

Epp was born on 1 July 1861 in the Chortitza Colony. As a child, he moved with his family to the Fürstenland Colony. In 1891 he moved to Canada, staying briefly in Manitoba before continuing on to the Rosthern, Saskatchewan area in 1892. He was married to Maria Bueckert (20 October 1855 to 11 February 1935). He died on 12 June 1936 in Blumengart in the in Mexico.

See Also

• Saskatchewan Bergthaler
• Emigration from Canada to Mexico and Paraguay in the 1920s
• Aron Zacharias

Bibliography

Doell, Leonard. “Bergthaler Mennonites in the Carrot River Valley.” In Church, Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve, edited by Adolf Ens et al. Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 2001. Pp. 167-180.

Doell, Leonard. “Carrot River Settlement.” In Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, 1895-1995, edited by Jacob G. Guenter et al. Hepburn: Hague-Osler Reserve Book Committee, 1995. P. 432.

Doell, Leonard. "Hage Osler Old Colony Mennonite Church." In Old Colony Mennonites in Canada, 1875-2000, edited by Delbert F. Plett. Steinbach: Crossway, 2000. Pp. 142-151.

Doell, Leonard. The Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Saskatchewan, 1892-1975. CMBC Publications, 1987. Pp. 1-17, 96-97.

Doell, Leonard. "The Bergthaler Mennonite Emigration to Mexico and Paraguay." Saskatchewan Mennonite Historian 27, no. 2 (2022): 13-21.

Doell, Leonard. “The Move to Mexico.” In Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, 1895-1995, edited by Jacob G. Guenter et al. Hepburn: Hague-Osler Reserve Book Committee, 1995. Pp. 386-389.

Ens, Adolf. “Sommerfeld Mennonites at Santa Clara, Mexico.” In Church, Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve, edited by Adolf Ens et al. Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 2001. P. 187.

Peters, Jacob E. “Ältester Abraham Doerksen, 1852-1929.” In Church, Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve, edited by Adolf Ens et al. Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 2001. Pp. 112-115.

Sawatzky, Harry Leonard. They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico. University of California Press, 1971. Pp. 52 and 73.

Unlisted Author, "North and West: Homesteading at Rosthern." In Mennonite Memories: Settling in Western Canada, edited by Lawrence Klippenstein and Julius Toews. Centennial Publications, 1977.

Author(s)	Gerald Ens
Date Published	2025

Cite This Article

MLA style

Ens, Gerald. "Epp, Kornelius (1861-1936)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 2025. Web. 19 Jan 2026. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Epp,_Kornelius_(1861-1936)&oldid=180492.

APA style

Ens, Gerald. (2025). Epp, Kornelius (1861-1936). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 19 January 2026, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Epp,_Kornelius_(1861-1936)&oldid=180492.

---

©1996-2026 by the Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. All rights reserved.