Zacharias, Johann (1868-1954)
Johann Zacharias: Sommerfelder Mennonite minister, born 19 November 1868 in the Chortitza Colony in Russia (present day Ukraine) to Abraham Zacharias and Maria Klassen. He immigrated to Canada in 1876, settling in the Manitoba West Reserve and then moving to Herbert, Saskatchewan sometime around 1906. He married Elizabeth Rempel (1869-1959) on 29 November 1888 and had 12 children with her. He died in Meadow Lake in July 1954.
In 1907 Johann Zacharias became the first minister of the Sommerfeld Mennonites in the Herbert and Gouldtown area of Saskatchewan. He later served under David Doerksen, who became the Ältester of the Herbert Sommerfelder in 1911.
In 1922, Johann Zacharias led a small group of followers to Mexico together with a group of Saskatchewan Bergthaler under the leadership of Kornelius Epp, part of the larger emigration from Canada to Mexico and Paraguay in the 1920s of conservative Mennonites from Canada to Latin America in the 1920s. There is little information on what happened to this small group of immigrants. Many appear to have first established themselves on a small settlement at Milpillas, with the nearest government offices at Cusihuiriachic, about 25 kilometers distance from Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua. This settlement soon failed and most of the Herbert Sommerfelder who moved to Mexico returned to Canada within a few years; other Mennonite settlements in the region apparently absorbed the few who remained. Johann Zacharias returned to Canada in 1929 and settled in the Meadow Lake area in north-central Saskatchewan, where he died in 1954.
Bibliography
Bergen, Peter, comp. History of the Sommerfeld Mennonite Church. Sommerfeld Mennonite Church, 2001. Pp. 57-59, 213.
Doell, Leonard. "The Bergthaler Mennonite Emigration to Mexico and Paraguay." Saskatchewan Mennonite Historian 27, no. 2 (2022): 13-21.
Doell, Leonard. The Bergthaler Mennonite Church of Saskatchewan, 1892-1975. CMBC Publications, 1987. P. 17.
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.
GRANDMA (The Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry) Database, v. 26-03. Fresno, CA: California Mennonite Historical Society, 2026: #164648.
Hildebrand, Lydia et al., ed. and comp. The History of Gouldtown and Districts. Gouldtown History Book Committee, 1973.
Peters, Jacob E. “Ältester Abraham Doerksen (1852-1929).” In Church, Family and Village: Essays on Mennonite Life on the West Reserve, ed. Adolf Ens et al. Winnipeg: Manitoba Mennonite Historical Society, 2001. P. 121
Sawatzky, Harry Leonard. They Sought a Country: Mennonite Colonization in Mexico. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971. Pp. 52 and 73.
| Author(s) | Gerald Ens |
|---|---|
| Date Published | 2025 |
Cite This Article
MLA style
Ens, Gerald. "Zacharias, Johann (1868-1954)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 2025. Web. 15 Apr 2026. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Zacharias,_Johann_(1868-1954)&oldid=181817.
APA style
Ens, Gerald. (2025). Zacharias, Johann (1868-1954). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 15 April 2026, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Zacharias,_Johann_(1868-1954)&oldid=181817.
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