Peters, Klaas (1855-1932)

Klaas Peters was a Canadian land agent, Swedenborgian minister, businessman, and politician. In all these capacities, he made a significant impact on Mennonite communities in Manitoba and Saskatchewan. As a land agent, he played a particularly important role in the 1891-1906 “late Kanadier” emigration from Russia to Canada and in the early Mennonite settlement of what is today Saskatchewan.

Peters was born to Klaas and Agatha (Dyck) Peters on 22 September 1855 and raised in Friedrichsthal in the Bergthal Colony in Russia (present day Ukraine). With the rest of the Bergthal Colony, he came to Canada in 1875. His family was poor (his mother was twice widowed) and would not have been able to afford the move, but the Bergthal church pooled and shared its resources so that all of its members could take part in the migration. After a few years of living in Manitoba's East Reserve, Peters moved to the Gretna area of the West Reserve. He later spent much of his life living in various communities in Saskatchewan. Peters married Katharina Loewen on 12 June 1881; she was his life-long companion and together they had nine children. Peters died on 23 June 1932 in Waldeck, Saskatchewan.

Land Agent

By the end of the 1880s the Mennonites in western Manitoba were running out of land and in 1888 some constituency of Mennonites sent two men, Klaas Peters and Jacob Wiens, with publicly raised funds to investigate the possibility of settlement in Oregon. Peters gave a lengthy and highly positive report on his findings; however, he cautioned that those without the financial means should move instead to the newly opened Canadian Northwest (present day Saskatchewan and Alberta) where they could obtain land for free. A small group of Mennonites followed Peters’s recommendation and moved to Oregon. Some of these pioneers succeeded and established Mennonite communities that endure to this day, but most returned to Manitoba within a few years, many of them destitute and some blaming Peters for their trouble.

In 1890, the Canadian government was looking for land agents to recruit European settlers to the Northwest Territories; Peters, with his facility in English and experience in Oregon, received the assignment. On 14 November 1890 he left on the first of five trips to Europe, visiting a variety of Mennonite colonies in imperial Russia. His work carried a degree of risk since Russian officials did not want foreigners poaching Russian subjects. Peters was able to drum up significant interest, especially in the Fürstenland Colony. In the fall of 1891 nineteen families made the move to Canada with several others following shortly thereafter.

Peters spent the next decade working for Canadian federal and provincial governments, private real estate and legal firms, and the Canadian Pacific Railway, helping people to settle in western Canada and traveling abroad recruiting people to Canada. Between 1892 and 1903 he visited Mennonites around the world (often multiple times), including in Kansas, Nebraska, Oregon, Prussia, and imperial Russia. In imperial Russia, his activity was a significant factor in sparking the “Late Kanadier” migration of the 1890s and early 1900s that brought roughly 2000 Mennonites from Russia to Canada, though Jacob Peters finds that, after his initial 1891 visit, his trips to that country “had minimum impact on the out-migration.”

At the same time, Peters helped to settle new immigrants in the areas around Didsbury, Rosthern, Hague, Herbert, Duck Lake, and Waldeck. By many accounts he was a persuasive promoter of land in these areas. He also helped new settlers to select their land and arranged transportation, lodging, and supply deliveries. His impact on Rosthern and surrounding area was pronounced: he first selected the Rosthern area for settlement and brought its first settlers to live there in 1891 and 1892 as well as additional settlers in subsequent years.

Towards the end of World War I, Peters resumed his interest in resettling Mennonites and founding new Mennonite communities, though this time with limited results. His 1919 expedition to Brazil, Argentina, and Uruguay is notable for being the first of many post-war land-seeking delegations sent by Mennonites from Canada looking to find a homeland where they could maintain autonomy over their children’s education. A few years later, some 8000 Mennonites emigrated from Canada, settling in Mexico and Paraguay. During this time, Peters made an attempt to found a Mennonite settlement in Florida. He secured an invitation from the governor and settled there himself for a few years. He was, however, unable to attract any Mennonite immigrants, who feared that their group privileges would be abrogated without a legal document, and returned himself to Saskatchewan after a short time.

Pursuits in Business, Politics, and Writing

For most of his life, Peters was involved in both business and politics. In his first years in Canada, while teaching and farming in the East Reserve, he operated a side business as a book seller. In Gretna, he operated a store that specialized in the import of European goods. When he settled in Waldeck, Saskatchewan in 1903 he dreamed of turning the hamlet into a major commercial centre. He bought much of the land on the north side of the railway and founded a lumberyard and a hotel and saloon, which he persuaded his son to operate. The saloon was initially very profitable, but later became challenging to operate and in 1915 prohibition forced its closure. Peters’s dreams for Waldeck did not materialize and by the end of his life he had lost his investments.

In federal Canadian politics, Peters actively campaigned for the Conservative party in both Manitoba and Saskatchewan. Locally, he was appointed a Justice of the Peace in 1908 and elected as the first reeve of the Rural Municipality of Waldeck in 1909. People increasingly perceived conflicts of interest between Peters’s political positions and business activities and by the end of his political career he was a divisive and controversial figure.

Peters was a voluminous writer. He enjoyed an extended correspondence, contributed articles to periodicals like the Rundschau, and wrote everything from travel reports to poetry. His most enduring work is an account of the Bergthaler Church that focuses on the migration from Russia to Canada. Peters first published this account in several installments in the Rundschau in 1890. In 1925, Peters republished it as a book and it has since been reprinted and also translated into English under the title The Bergthaler Mennonites.

Religious Activity and Theological Views

Peters was born and later baptized into the Bergthaler church. He was likely an influential figure in leading the newly founded Mennonite church in Didsbury to associate with the progressive Bergthaler in Manitoba rather than the more conservative Sommerfelder.

Peters was, however, critical of what he saw as the church’s low regard for education and appears also to have felt unsupported in his business activities and intellectually and spiritually stifled by the church. He wrote in the 1890s that the while the Mennonite catechism and articles of faith were correct and praiseworthy, Mennonite life was often stagnant. Reimer observes that he was critical of his own people for their stubbornness, self-interest, and suspicion of outsiders.

Peters was drawn to the teachings of the Swedenborgian church (officially the Church of the New Jerusalem) and dropped his membership in the Bergthaler church in 1897 after a private conversation with Bergthaler Ältester Johann Funk. Peters later wrote that it was Swedenborgian biblical hermeneutics, what he called the "spiritual sense of the Word," that most attracted him. According to Swedenborgian teaching, the Bible is neither literal description of actual facts nor myth; instead, it provides clues and insights into the spiritual plane of existence and the correspondences between the spiritual and the material plane. Peters was also persuaded by unorthodox Swedenborgian doctrines, including judgement according to works and an account of salvation that rejects the end time resurrection of the dead.

In 1902, while living in Didsbury, Peters was ordained as a Swedenborgian minister. Peters was zealous for his new church and spread his beliefs everywhere he went. According to Doell, he was largely responsible for initiating and developing the many Swedenborgian churches that sprang up in many of the Mennonite settlements in western Canada in the early 20th century. Paul Dyck finds that Peters's conversion caused strain in the new Mennonite church in Didsbury.

Pacifism and World War I

Unlike some Mennonite Swedenborgians, Peters remained an ardent pacifist. During World War I he argued that anyone who had come to Canada under Mennonite designation and also their children should be protected from military conscription. In January 1917, a Mennonite delegation went to Ottawa to advocate for and clarify the position of unbaptized Mennonite youth, who were in danger of conscription. Peters was part of this delegation, representing the Mennonites in the Herbert area. Peters’s pacifist stance caused widespread anger in the large Anglo-Saxon community in Waldeck and appears to have shuttered his political career. At the war’s end, a large crowd burned an effigy of Peters in Waldeck’s main street.

Peters’s most controversial activity during World War I was signing exemption cards. To receive exemption from military conscription, Mennonite men required the signature of a Mennonite minister. Peters signed several of these cards even though he was not a Mennonite minister; additionally, some of the exemptions he signed were for men who were not part of the Mennonite church even though they were of Mennonite descent. For these actions, Peters was charged, found guilty, and sentenced a $200 fine, plus $149.75 in expenses. Both David Toews and Gerhard Ens testified against him. Peters's defence was that he had always considered himself a Mennonite and considered himself a minister of the church of Christ, not of any particular sect. The Swedenborgian church was not pacifist and distanced itself from Peters at this time.

See Also

• Ens, Gerhard (1864-1952)
• Rosthern (Saskatchewan, Canada)
• Canadian Mennonite Land-Seeking Delegations, 1919-1922

Bibliography

Doell, Leonard. “Klaas Peters (1855-1932): A Biography.” In The Bergthaler Mennonites, by Klaas Peters, translated by Margaret L. Reimer. CMBC Publications, 1988.

Doell, Leonard. "Klaas Peters: A Pioneer Entrepreneur." In Historical Sketches of the East Reserve, 1874-1910, edited by John Dyck. The Hanover Steinbach Historical Society, 1994.

Doell, Leonard and Adolf Ens. “Mennonite Swedenborgians.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 10 (1992): 101-117.

Dyck, John. “The Oregon Trail of Manitoba Mennonites.” Mennonite Historian 14, no. 3 (September 1988): 1-2.

Dyck, Paul I. The Bergthal Church in Didsbury, Alberta. Self-published, 1995.

Ens, Adolf. Subjects or Citizens? The Mennonite Experience in Canada, 1870-1925. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1994. Pp. 87, 97-98, 174, 180, 202-203, 206, 210.

Guenter, Jacob. G. et al. “Mennonite Homesteading in Saskatchewan.” In Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, 1895-1995, edited by Jacob G. Guenter et al. Hague-Osler Reserve Book Committee, 1995. P. 21.

Guenter, Jacob. G. et al. “The Hague-Osler Reserve.” In Hague-Osler Mennonite Reserve, 1895-1995, edited by Jacob G. Guenter et al. Hague-Osler Reserve Book Committee, 1995. P. 26.

GRANDMA (The Genealogical Registry and Database of Mennonite Ancestry) Database, 5.00 ed. Fresno, CA: California Mennonite Historical Society, 2006: #157879.

Harder, Delores L. Dedicated to Heinrich Loewens and Sara Toews. Self-Published, 1998. Pp. 5-6 and Chap. 4-5. Available at the Mennonite Heritage Archives. Pp. 5-6 and chap. 4 and chap. 5.

Klassen, Abram W. "Settling Alberta." In Mennonite Memories: Settling in Western Canada, edited by Lawrence Klippenstein and Julius Toews. Centennial Publications, 1977.

Klassen, Isaac P., David Friesen, et al. Chronicles and Genealogy of the Abram Edmund Klassen Family, Insel Chortitz, Ukraine. Self-published, 1988. P. 121.

Peters, Klaas. The Bergthaler Mennonites, translated by Margaret L. Reimer. CMBC Publications, 1988.

Peters, Jacob E. “The Forgotten Immigrants: The Coming of the "Late Kanadier", 1881-1914.” Journal of Mennonite Studies 18 (2000): 129-145.

Reimer, Margaret L. Translator’s preface to The Bergthaler Mennonites, by Klaas Peters. CMBC Publications, 1988.

Thorpe, Ralph and Delores L. Harder. List of the Descendants of Katharina Loewen (1859-1930) and Klaas Peters (1855-1932). Self-published, 2002.

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. "Peters, Klaas (1855-1932)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 2025. Web. 1 Feb 2026. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Peters,_Klaas_(1855-1932)&oldid=180425.

APA style

Ens, Gerald. (2025). Peters, Klaas (1855-1932). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 1 February 2026, from https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Peters,_Klaas_(1855-1932)&oldid=180425.

---

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