Peter M. Penner

Mennonite Genealogy with Michael Penner

Peter M. Penner (1880-1936)

Peter M. Penner, was born June 29, 1880, in Blumenort, Manitoba to Martin Penner and Aganetha nee Toews. The second oldest of ten children who survived to adulthood, Peter was raised his first eleven years in the small village of Blumenort, Manitoba. The village of about 35 Kleine Gemeinde families had been founded eight years earlier following a Mennonite exodus from Russia.

When Peter was just one year old, a major family event occurred that would have a lifelong impact on Peter, his parents, and his future family. An American church reformer by the name of John Holdeman had been invited to the area to share his message of spiritual renewal. His message was well received by many in the community of Blumenort, and in the summer of 1881 Peter’s father and mother were among about half of the community who seceded from the Kleine Gemeinde to join Holdeman’s movement. A local chapter to Holdeman’s American church was formed and Peter’s father was selected as a minister. And so it was that Peter was raised within the Holdeman church.

When Peter was eleven years old, his father purchased a sizeable (400-acre) parcel of land in Greenland, Manitoba on section 6-8-6E. The family, which now consisted of seven children under fourteen years of age, relocated to the new property. Living outside the relative safety of a village was actually a somewhat novel concept at that time. The Penners returned to Blumenort for winter, and in the spring moved back to Greenland to stay.

Peter would have spent much of his growing up years tending the family farm and playing with his siblings. Peter was the oldest of the seven brothers in the family, meaning he likely shouldered additional responsibility around the farm. The Penner boys were a rather handsome bunch, and it is said that when they filed into the Holdeman church dressed in their Sunday finest, the congregation turned their heads at the spectacle!

Peter grew into adulthood at the Greenland farm, where he continued to work for his parents. It was in 1899 when Peter was touring with his Holdeman church choir at North Dakota Holdeman churches that he met a young woman, Maria Friesen. Their cross-border friendship blossomed.

Wedding portrait of Maria nee Friesen and Peter M. Penner, 1902.

Source: Caroline Loewen, Arborg, Manitoba

Peter and Maria married on January 16, 1902 in the Holdeman Church in Greenland. Shortly after their wedding, Maria’s father invited Peter and Maria to Sunnyslope, Alberta, where unbroken land had opened up for homesteading. Her father assisted with the arrangements by signing a homesteading contract on their behalf. (The site of their homestead was 1 mile east and 1 1/2 miles north of what is present day Linden, Alberta. The property is presently owned by Randy Reimer.) The Penners would undoubtedly have travelled with their belongings by train to Alberta.

It was in Sunnyslope that the Penners began to establish a family. They built a rather small and simple house on their property and less than two years into their marriage their first child, David, arrived, followed about two years later by their second son, Abe.

Living in close proximity to her parents and siblings was a delight to Maria. She was very attached to her family and enjoyed frequent contact with them. Among many of the events she would have celebrated with her Friesen family was the birth of her youngest half-sister, Esther, who was born in 1905 when Maria was 24 years old. Maria was by eleven years the oldest of the six Friesen daughters and was likely a strong motherly figure to her sisters.

The Move to Manitoba

After Peter and Maria had been farming in Sunnyslope for about four years, they were gifted a 40-acre parcel of land (SW 26-8-5E) by Peter’s father. The parcel was near to where Peter had lived in Greenland, in an area loosely called the Lorette, later Prairie Rose, and now Landmark. But the gift did come with strings attached: to claim the land, he needed to homestead it. From a legal perspective, Peter was free return to his childhood haunts in Manitoba. The Penners had already satisfied their contractual homesteading obligations to “prove” the property in Sunnyslope. They were free to sell it and move away. And that is what they did.

The decision to move was difficult for Maria, who left behind her parents and siblings to whom she was strongly attached. The Sunnyslope property sold for what was considered a large sum at that time, $3,000, beginning a somewhat protracted relocation to Prairie Rose. Apparently included in the move was a winter layover in Manitoba (possibly Greenland), where their third child, Carolina, was born. The Penners finally arrived at their final destination in the spring of 1907. Here Peter joined three of his younger brothers who were also establishing homesteads in the vicinity: Abram, Jacob, and Aron. Meanwhile, Maria enjoyed keeping in touch with her family in Alberta through letters, and she wrote them often. One mitigating factor is Maria’s separation from her Friesen family was the presence of her mother-in-law, Aganetha Penner nee Toews. Maria was fond of her mother-in-law, whom she found very helpful and kind.

The quarter section that Peter and Maria settled was in a largely unpopulated and undeveloped scrubby forest of poplar trees, with some marshy clearings. The nearest settlements were Lorette (6 miles to the northwest), Ste. Anne (8 miles northeast), and Greenland (5 miles southeast). Peter and Maria were not alone, though. Peter’s brother, Abram M. Penner and family had been likewise allured from Sunnyslope in 1907 with “strings-attached” land from their father. Peter and Abram had abutting land, and they built houses about 1/8 of a mile apart, in the middle of section 26-8-5E. Their houses were on opposing sides of a dirt oxcart trail that lead from Giroux to Winnipeg.

The house that Peter and Maria built that year was very modest. But it was a start. And with treed and marshy unbroken land before them, there was much work ahead.

For the first thirteen years or so, Prairie Rose was sparsely populated and the Penners had few neighbors. Among those neighbors with whom the Peter M. Penners had frequent contact were the their kin, the Abram M. Penner family, as well as Scottish/Irish families, the Mitchells and Grahams. The children also had close contact with their French schoolmates at St. Cuthbert’s school, which lay just on the near side of the Seine River.

Peter and Maria’s son Archie relates the story of the Penners first vehicle. In 1916, Peter travelled to Steinbach by bicycle to buy a car. He purchased one from the well-known dealership of J. R. Friesen. When he came home one day, there was a wire gate across the driveway. Not being very familiar with the brakes, Peter said “whoa” but the car didn’t listen and proceeded through the gate!

Peter build a new, more spacious house in 1919. The old house was later moved onto Peter F. Plett’s property a few miles away.

In about 1920, the Prairie Rose area saw a significant influx of Mennonite farmers from the Mennonite East Reserve. The East Reserve had a shortage of arable land, and being just miles away, Prairie Rose was a natural choice. These new settlers brought more of a community feel to the area, and gave the Peter M. Penners more families to interact with. With the influx being largely Kleine Gemeinde families, the Penners formed social ties outside their denominational boundaries.

One of the new families was of particular interest to the Penner children—the Heinrich R. Reimer family. Both the Penners and Reimers had large families and both had children of about the same age. The Reimers built a large home on what is now Main Street Landmark, a mere one mile walk from the Penners. The Penner and Reimer children socialized frequently. And it wasn’t long before they also explored romantic relationships. Over the course of time, four Penner children married H. R. Reimer children. In addition, a Penner daughter married one of H. R. Reimer’s grandsons and a widowed Penner son remarried to H.R. Reimer’s daughter-in-law. The many inter-family connections made for deep ties between the Penners and Reimers.

While these social ties between the Peter M. Penner family and Kleine Gemeinde families were being formed, ministers from the Holdeman church in Greenland would visit Peter and Maria to admonish them for not “keeping the faith”, as they understood it. After one of these closeted meetings with the staid bearded Holdeman leaders, son Archie remembers his parents being in a reflective and unhappy frame of mind.

While Peter and Maria kept their membership in the Holdeman church, in thinking and sentiment they were not denominationally minded. As an illustration, Peter once gathered his children into the family car and travelled to Winnipeg to see the movie, Uncle Tom’s Cabin, at a time when the anti-slavery novel was a popular topic of conversation all over North America. Movie-going, even to a movie considered to be entertainment for the whole family, would have been considered a very worldly activity by most church-going people in their community at that time.

Tragedy

It was a shock to the family when Peter’s life ended at the young age of 55. On Wednesday evening, February 12, the usually healthy Peter fell badly ill, so much so that a doctor was called. The doctor ordered that he be taken to hospital, and he was admitted to Concordia Hospital in Winnipeg on Friday morning with a ruptured appendix. The doctors operated on him immediately, but without success. They operated a second time, also without success. Knowing that his death was imminent, Peter called for H. R. Reimer, a man he had come to respect as his spiritual counselor, to his bedside. After four very difficult days in the hospital where he was fully conscious, Peter died on the morning of February 19, 1936 at five minutes before seven.

The funeral was conducted in the Holdeman Church in Greenland, with their ministers in charge. At the funeral service, Peter’s brother Martin, a member of the Kleine Gemeinde in Steinbach, rose to his feet before the close of the service, and said the family wished that the Rev. H. R. Reimer would say a few words. Diplomatically, Rev. Reimer moved to the front of the church to speak to the mourners, but did not mount the steps to the raised area where the pulpit was located. Following the funeral service in Greenland, Peter’s body was buried in the Prairie Rose Kleine Gemeinde Church cemetery in Landmark.

Peter M. Penner, The Man

Peter M. Penner is widely described by his grandchildren as a kind, nice, personable, and endearing man. His grandchildren remember the attention that he showed them and how he had taken them on his knee. He was described by his son Archie as quiet yet outgoing, peaceful, slow to anger, frugal and a good manager of his money. Physically, Peter was a fit man, never over 168 pounds, and always trim. Businesswise, he was a successful farmer.

Peter is remembered as a generous man who wanted to do good in the world. When his youngest child was 12 years of age and his oldest children were of marriageable age, he and Maria adopted two young girls as their own children. Daughter Ruby recalls how she loved her father and was deeply saddened by his early passing.

Peter is also remembered by family for his strength of character. He stood firm to valued principles. Peter lived at a time and place when the Holdeman practice of shunning was levied by the church elders and administered by the congregation. Peter could not condone this type of discipline, and said firmly, “I do not practice avoidance on Christians.”

Peter was tolerant and even accepting of those unlike him. He allowed his children to attend St. Cuthbert school, which was conducted in French by neighboring Catholics. Although he was Holdeman, he attended the local Kleine Gemeinde Church upon occasion when the road to Greenland was impassible. Peter even took the family to revival meetings at a well-known chapel in Winnipeg.

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