David Regehr

Mennonite Genealogy with Michael Penner

David Regehr (c.1835-19??)

The story begins in May of 1856 in South Russia with the marriage of a young couple, David Regehr and Katharina Warkentin. They embarked on their marriage as a poor landless couple. Based on their wedding date, they were born circa 1835.

David and Katharina found employment tending sheep on a vast Mennonite estate called Steinbach. As shepherding was naturally an outdoor occupation, many of their days were spent on the Ukrainian steppe performing a livelihood we are well acquainted with from biblical stories.

The shepherd David and shepherdess Katharina began a family. They chose traditional Mennonite names for their children: Anna, Sarah, Maria, Johann, Elisabeth, and Helene. Their first child, Anna, was born in the spring of 1857. The couple went on to have four more girls and one boy. The Regehr children were spaced over a 22 year span and so the eldest Anna had ample opportunity to tend her younger siblings. One can only guess that little Johann felt alone at times as the only boy amongst a household of girls.

The landless Regehr family, through providence, hard work, generosity or perhaps all three, eventually acquired a small plot of land on the northeast corner of the estate. The plot was riverfront property, but was not prime land by any measure. It consisted of a steep embankment running north-south, its southern edge bounded by the small Tschokrak River, not much more than a stream, and the north edge the rim of the rolling steppe. Due to the steep grade of the property, the house was built into the hillside. It was land, nonetheless, and they were very thankful for it.

David and Katharina cared for their extended family. One of the people the Regehrs took into their household was David’s much younger half-sister, Anna Regehr. As a three-year-old, Anna had caught scarlet fever and became completely deaf. Thankfully, she retained the ability to speak, though always in the voice of a child. Anna lived with David and Katharina until she married. With her husband Bernhard Bergen, Anna lived in the vicinity of the Steinbach estate until they moved to Siberia, near Omsk, in 1900.

By the 1870s, David and Katharina’s older children were of school age. School attendance records from this period are sparse, but it is likely all the children attended school at the Steinbach estate private school. In 1883-84, school records show that the youngest two children, Elisabeth and Helene, attended that school.

The Family Enlarges

In the fall of 1876, when Katharina was about 41 years old, she gave birth to her last child, Helene. A short two-and-a-half years later, while still attending to her toddler, Katharina’s eldest daughter, Anna, had a child of her own. And so added to Katharina’s joy of motherhood was the joy of being a grandmother.

By the late 1880s, the Regehr family began a rapid expansion as more of the older married children began to raise their own, large families. Over time, Anna had four children, Sarah ten children, Maria ten children, Johann twelve children, Elisabeth eleven children, and Helene four children. Most of these children lived to reach adulthood. With the possible exception of Anna, the Regehr children raised their families for at least some years at the Steinbach estate. Thus the estate was brimming with Regehr grandchildren.

Regehr family traditions reinforced the family bonds. On Saturdays, David and Katharina would host an event for their grandchildren. Mennonite breads and desserts aplenty were baked and the grandchildren would descend upon their grandparents place for treats.

The Regehr children were strongly attached to their parents. And when times got tough, they relied on their parents for help. One such instance happened in 1900, when daughter Helene’s husband died. Helene and her children moved into the Regehr homestead and David and Katharina helped raise their grandchildren. Within two years, Helene remarried to the widower of her late sister Maria and relocated next door to her new husband’s large farm.

Another instance of a returning daughter happened a few years later. In 1904, daughter Sarah lost her husband to liver disease. She and her ten children returned to David and Katharina’s household. A financial arrangement was made where Sarah purchased David and Katharina’s property in Steinbach and began the construction of a new, large house, once again to be embedded within the embankment. David and Katharina remained on the property as well, perhaps in their same house. One might imagine how this could have been a mutually beneficial arrangement. Sarah was just recently widowed and had ten children ranging in age from about 5 to 18 for whom to care. David and Katharina, in their late sixties, could have received care but at the same time offered their daughter companionship, emotional support and help in raising the younger grandchildren.

Elderly Years

David and Katharina celebrated their 50th wedding anniversary in May of 1906. It was an important celebration, and so family members living afar traveled to Steinbach for the occasion. Everyone wore their finest clothes and a professional photographer was hired to commemorate the special day. A photograph of the event, showing family and close friends, appears later in the chapter. The Regehr family flock had expanded to over 50 members by this time.

In 1908, David and Katharina received an addition to their household: their twelve year old niece, Anna. The story of this begins with David and Katharina journeying to Siberia to visit David’s aforementioned half-sister Anna and husband Bernhard Bergen. Having suffered large losses with their cattle, the Bergens were nearly destitute. Opportunities for their eight children did not appear promising. And so a long-term arrangement was made with the Bergen’s daughter, Anna. She would return to Steinbach with the Regehrs and live with the now elderly couple as a housemaid and caregiver. In return, the young Anna would receive room and board and the same modest dowry as David and Katharina’s children: a cow, a chest of drawers, and 500 rubles. After a tearful farewell, Anna left her family in Siberia, most of whom she would never see again.

In their last years, David and Katharina lived with their son Johann, who lived across the road in Steinbach. Anna Bergen lived here as well, where she diligently cared for the elderly aunt and uncle. Even after Anna married David Schmidt (grandson of the Regehrs) in 1922 and had a child of her own, she would return in the evenings, child in hand, to care for her widowed aunt because she was so used to doing so.

Katharina lived to an elderly age, passing away in 1924, having lived to roughly the age of 89. David passed away some years earlier.

Faith

David and Katharina were affiliated with the Mennonite Brethren church in the neighboring village of Alexandertal. David served here in the role of deacon in his later years.

The Regehr household and the Steinbach community were recognized as a place of spiritual nurture: anecdotes from the family illustrate this. For example, daughter Sarah Regehr Wiens transplanted her family from her private estate amongst the Russian villages to Steinbach, her primary reason being to provide wholesome Christian influences for her children. A Regehr grandchild explains it well: “there was quite a spiritual harmony among the older people, this being an example for the children and youth.”

The story of David and Katharina is concluded here with a spontaneous event at their house that sent ripples through the Mennonite Brethren Church in South Russia. The events of this story happened within the wider context of the Blankenburg Allianz Conference and an ecumenical sentiment arising in some segments of the Russian Mennonite constituency. The minister in this story is Jacob W. Reimer, brother to Elisabeth Regehr’s husband. This story is set in the summer of 1899, when Katharina were in their mid-sixties. Condensed from the diary of Jacob G. Thiessen:

On this day, minister Reimer returned to Steinbach, where he had been the day before, continuing a discussion with teacher Peter Penner. Reimer asked Penner if he desired re-baptism and Penner said he would, that very day. Reimer agreed to stay and rebapize him. Invitations for the preliminaries were immediately sent to the neighboring villages of Alexandertal and Steinfeld. They were to be held that very afternoon in the house of David Regehr, who was a deacon in the Mennonite Brethren church.

Johann Mathies, son-in-law of David Regehr , this being before his relocation to Siberia and still a guest with his parents-in-law, turned to Brother Reimer and said: “If after the baptism communion should take place, I wish that the believing members of the Kirchengemeinde also participate!” This was surprising, as Mathies was a staunch member of the Mennonite Brethren church. What had happened to him? He had experienced such warm brotherly love in the Steinbach congregation that the rock of his opposition to open communion had rolled away. Brother Reimer, long in favor of open communion, saw Brother Mathies’ request as a sign from God. All believers from Steinbach, without regard to congregational affiliation, heard Brother Penner’s testimony. After the baptism, they gathered in Brother David Regehr’s home where Brother Reimer made it known that all disciples of Christ had an invitation to the Lord’s Table.

Brother Reimer’s sermon that preceded the communion was particularly blessed. As no communion had yet taken place in Rueckenau after my baptism, the breaking of bread in Steinbach was my first communion in the circle of believers. I experienced the presence of the Lord so deeply that I was shaken. One of the rich brothers, who had been afraid to express his opinion, embraced Brother Penner after the communion with the words: "Now we want to love one another only more!"

Only two individuals who were not Mennonite Brethren participated in the communion; the wife of Brother Penner, and Peter Schmidt from the Steinbach estate. Brother Reimer and I returned happily to Rueckenau. As a new member of the church, I had no idea of the storm that would follow at the next brotherhood meeting in Rueckenau. There, I was held innocent because of my youth while Brother Reimer was dealt with as a serious sinner. One brother called “Out with him!” Brother Reimer calmed me. He strived, in circumstances such as this, to remind me that these are the sins of Israel which we must carry.

When the General Mennonite Brethren Conference met the following spring, a resolution was passed for the dismissal of the minister Reimer and his supporters and requesting local congregations to lend their support. The resolution was considered in the brotherhood meetings of each congregation. Surely David and Katharina Regehr and the other participants in that communion could not have foreseen the fire they ignited nor that their possible excommunication would be discussed by all the Mennonite Brethren congregations!

The resolution was later put aside, but in 1904 the minister resigned when the Conference attempted to place controls over his itinerant preaching. Jacob W. Reimer later became a strong supporter in the formation of the Allianz Gemeinde, a denomination that all the Regehr inhabitants of Steinbach, aside from David and Katharina, came to attend. Hosting the spontaneous baptism that day was perhaps David and Katharina’s largest single influence on the course of Mennonite Brethren history.

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