Mennonite Genealogy with Michael Penner

Jacob Jacob Barkman (1794-1875)

from Pioneers and Pilgrims, by Delbert Plett, pp279-80

     Son Jakob J. Barkman was born June 15, 1794. On August 15, 1818, he emigrated to Russia together with his brother Martin. At the time of emigration they are listed as being from Neustaedterwald in West Prussia. According to tradition their mother treated them with a glass of buttermilk before they started out on their long trek, and wished them a happy journey. Since they were of military age they sought to escape conscription in Prussia. By day they hid under grain stooks. By night they made progress as best they could.

     When they first arrived at the Molotschna Colony they settled in the village of Ruckenau, which had been founded in the year 1811….

     An interesting incident involving Jacob J. Barkman is recorded in the annals of Kleine Gemeinde Aeltester Abraham Friesen (1782-1849). Both Jakob and his brother Martin J. Barkman had acted as village Schulz or mayor for many years. Evidently Jakob J. Barkman had become involved in inconsistencies in that capacity and complaints had been made to the Kleine Gemeinde, who counseled him to resolve the matter. Initially Barkman did not accept this advice as a result of which he was excommunicated by the Kleine Gemeinde of which he was notified in a ltter of Aeltester Abraham Friesen (1782-1849) written from Blumstein to Jacob Baergman (Barkman) in Rueckenau on July 20, 1845. In a further letter of August 5, 1845, signed by the entire Kleine Gemeinde ministerial they admonished his wife to encourage her husband to return to the fold which evidently occurred very shortly thereafter. The first wife of Jakob J. Barkman died in Rueckenau in 1847. In 1852 Jakob Barkman married for a second time to a widow Enns from Rueckenau who not quite seven years later. Jakob Barkman came to Manitoba as an elderly widower in 1874 and died at the home of his daughter Aganetha, Mrs. Peter W. Toews, in Blumenort, in 1875.

 

from Rueckenau, by Leona Gislason, p.45

     The Barkman brothers (Jacob and Martin) caused their congregation some grief, perhaps explaining why they never ran for church office. In 1845, while still living in Blumenstein, elder Abraham Friesen wrote to Jakob Barkman regarding seven points of error that had been raised against them. Among the sins were exaggerations in the accounting of earnings from wheat and the sale of horses (to what end, is unclear) and the smoking of tobacco. As a result of their denial of wrong-doing, they were excommunicated and forbidden to eat with their family or congregants or to cohabit with their wives. The disciplinary methods appear to have been successful and the Barkman brothers were eventually restored to their congregation.   ■

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