Not only have there been forgotten workers, men and women, in the EMCC, there are forgotten communities of believers that flourished for a while but have died out. Jesus in the book of Revelation warned a church their lamp stand could be removed, signifying that their existence as a congregation, their ability to witness to the light, the gospel of Jesus, could end (Rev 2:5). I do not believe this prophecy explains every church closure, for some zealous communities have been wiped out by war and disasters of various kinds. Another common cause of closing congregations is simply migration of members and the community to other places. A church split is pretty effective sometimes, too. Nevertheless, the closing of a church (I refer to congregations, not buildings, though that usually follows) is a sad event. In North America’s long decline of Christianity, this is happening rather often. Thankfully, God is planting numerous churches in many countries and even in the West.

I do not know the complete story of the Sherkston field of the New Mennonite Church which became served by the Mennonite Brethren in Christ. What I hope to do is recognize the congregation and outline the stages of its existence in the MBiC Church. It was based at Sherkston, Ontario, in Welland County. It is near Niagara Falls/ Fort Erie.

Anabaptists in Welland County. Anabaptist (Tunker and Mennonite) settlers arrived in Welland County shortly after the end of the American War of Independence (1780s).¹ Many of them arrived in Canada after Governor John Graves Simcoe’s proclamation of May 1792 allowing exemption from bearing arms in British wars to Quakers, Mennonites and Tunkers. Some of the family names in surviving documents are Fretz, Greiner, Hershey, Kratz, Lehman, Moyer, Shearer, Sherk, Troyer, Wismer and Zavitz, many from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania.² Other family names noted in intermarriages from Pennsylvania were Beam, House, Learn and Neff. There are many variant spellings of these names, such as Beam (Boehm), Sevitz (Zavitz), Neaff or Neave (Neff), Haun, Horn (Hahn), Shirk (Sherk).³

Mennonites were scattered among the mainly English and often United Empire Loyalist families all over the Niagara peninsula. Their religious community life was helped by a number of deacons, preachers and some who acted as bishops, but developing or even maintaining congregational life was hard.⁴ Eventually three places of worship were constructed by Mennonites in Welland, and a fourth used by them at times, which gave some centres for community life. The main one was built in 1828 1.6 km east of Sherkston.⁵ George Zavitz, who came to Canada with his family in 1788 about 7 years old, was the main minister until his death in 1858. Several other branches of Anabaptist congregations developed in the Sherkston area. Menno Bowman when visiting as an MBiC Presiding Elder said there were six kinds!⁶ Going by J C Fretz’ work, they would be Mennonite Conference, Reformed Mennonites (Herr’s), General Conference, Old Order (Wisler), Tunkers (Brethren in Christ), and the MBiC. The Tunkers (Brethren in Christ=Be in Christ) bought the Mennonite Church building in 1931 and remain today the only (and thriving) Anabaptist congregation in Sherkston with the congregational name Trinitylife.⁷ Many family names of former Mennonites and Tunkers persist in the area, however.

In the 1850s and 1860s, Mennonite preacher Daniel Hoch from The Twenty in Lincoln County west of St Catharines was invited to do evangelistic work around the Peninsula.⁸ People were interested in experiencing salvation and assurance of it as Methodist revivalism encouraged. He represented the New Mennonite Church which he was instrumental in organizing about 1852.⁹ The missionary work of German-speaking Evangelical Association preachers, active in Niagara since 1838, but more particularly in the Twenty settlement in the late 1840s aroused this desire.¹⁰ John H Steckley from Markham, and Menno Bowman from Waterloo followed this up in the 1870s. In 1875 the New Mennonites merged with a new evangelistic society of Mennonites (Reforming Mennonites). After further mergers in the USA they became the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church (1883), the main basis of early EMCC in Ontario.¹¹

MBiC organizing in Sherkston area. The first recorded MBiC organizing in Welland County was by the United Mennonite Church Annual Conference of 1877 which assigned that every four weeks a preacher would visit Sherkston alternately from Waterloo or Markham. The same plan was followed in 1878.

Daniel Hoch, who did not join the merged United Mennonite Church, died in 1878, and Menno Bowman now felt free to organize a “class” centred at Sherkston in 1879 as well as in The Twenty, but they continued the once-in-four-weeks preaching plan. The class was the basic unit of an MBiC worshiping community—a congregation in modern terms–but could be combined with other nearby “classes” as a “field”.

From 1880 to 1899, the MBiC stationed a pastor to live in the Sherkston community, also serving The Twenty, at the Bethesda and Zion meeting sites (renamed Vineland in 1894 after the new post office). In 1900 the roles were reversed, as Sherkston class was diminishing in numbers, but Vineland was growing. The MBiC held tent meetings and revivals in the Sherkston area, as they did elsewhere, but the Conference listed Sherkston for the last time in 1914, after which the MBiC assigned a preacher only to Vineland.¹² Sam Goudie had special affection for the people at Sherkston, his first solo assignment with his new wife Eliza. He mentioned the names of people he visited in his pastoral and Presiding Elder visits in diaries in 1897-1898, 1898-1899, 1905 and 1909: Elman Zavitz, George Troup (=Traub?), Samuel and Mrs Ada Brillinger, Esther Sherk, John Shisler, Roy Shisler, Mr & Mrs (Catherine) Titus Sherk and probably Menno Moyer among them.¹³ J C Fretz credited his account of the MBiC Sherkston congregation to the memories of Titus Sherk (1842-1935).¹⁴

Here are the preachers assigned to Sherkston for this 35 year period:

1880-1882 Menno Bowman with John Sider a helper 1881-1882

1882-1883: grouped with The Twenty (Lincoln County) and South Cayuga (Haldimand County) added: John Hoover Steckley with John Sider and David Moyer. Cayuga was not always mentioned in the appointments list in following years, or was served sporadically, until 1901.

1883-1886: William J Hilts with David Moyer, John Sider and Samuel A Moyer as helpers some years.

1886-1888: John Abram Sider, Cayuga listed in 1886-1887.

1888-1889: David S Shantz assisted by Sam Goudie and John Sider at Sherkston and S Cayuga

1889-1891: Records not preserved, but Sam Goudie at least was still at Sherkston

1891-1892: Franklin W Moyer over The Twenty, Sherkston and Cayuga, helped by Samuel Moyer and John Sider

1892-1895: Jesse S Guy at The Twenty/Vineland assisted by S A Moyer and J A Sider at Sherkston except 1894 to 1895 when Sarah Pool was preaching for Sherkston.

1895-1897: John Sider (1896-1897 included Shisler’s Point). Shisler’s Point, Bertie Township, had a building constructed with Brethren in Christ help in 1896, and later sold to them. The MBiC and the BiCs held a union Sunday School there for some years. ¹⁵

1897-1898: Charles F Krauth

1898-1900: Chris Roth Miller

1900-1903: Henry S Cressman

1903-1904: Charles F Krauth with Samuel A Moyer

1904-1905: Archibald Gormley Doner with Samuel Moyer

1906-1908: Amos Eby with local help

1908-1911: Lewis Percy Ramer with local help (1910 helped by James Morley)

1911-1913: William Waldron

1913-1915: Alfred George Warder

John Abram Sider. As mentioned, the Sherkston preaching site was discontinued after 1914. The building had been for a long time referred to as “Sider’s” probably reflecting that the meeting house was on land donated by an ancestor of John Abram Sider (1857-1930). The building was demolished at some point, which is why I only have a Google photo of an empty roadside that may be the site!

You will have noticed John Sider’s name frequently showing up in the list of ministers for Sherkston. His career to 1920 is profiled in J A Huffman’s history of the MBiC.¹⁶ He was appointed the class leader at Sherkston when Bowman organized it in 1879. He had been converted just 4 years prior at 18, before the United Mennonites even listed an appointment there. Sider stayed around Sherkston a long time, even though he entered the ministry of the MBiC in 1884 (spending two years as a probationer at Nottawasaga/Stayner area), and was ordained in 1888. MBiC preachers normally had to be “unconditional” to keep their credentials as an elder, that is, go where the Conference sent them. John did not leave the Sherkston area until 1897, when he was posted to the Maryboro field. After that he went to Shrigley, Toronto West End, Collingwood, New Dundee, Scott and finally Stayner (1918-1920) after a six-year break as a local preacher.

Sider was married to Julia Louisa Sherk in 1878, and they had six children: Cora (married Elder Isaac Brubacher, father of Elgin Brubacher, missionary to Nigeria), Wilmer, Robert, Frank, Grant and Myrtle Grace. Frank settled in the Stayner area and became the father of Lloyd K Sider, a long time MBiC/ Missionary Church minister. Robert settled in Berlin (Kitchener) and taught a Sunday School class in the Bethany church for some time. They took class photographs, with copies in the Missionary Church Historical Trust collection. Some of Robert’s daughters married Missionary Church pastors.

Banner: Current Trinitylife Church (BiC) building at Sherkston (Fort Erie), ON, the only Anabaptist group surviving from about six groups in the 19th century. Credit: Google image search.

1Joseph C Fretz, “The Early History of the Mennonites in Welland County, Ontario,” Mennonite Quarterly Review (January 1953). In reprint (March 1953) this article is 24 pages long and I refer to it.

2See also G Elmore Reaman, The Trail of the Black Walnut (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 1957) p 114. Dr Reaman, the first President of the Pennsylvania-German Folklore Society of Ontario, was a catalyst for genealogical studies of German and Huguenot settlers in Ontario. Many newer studies no doubt have refined the surveys of families in Reaman’s work. I want to bring attention to his part.

3Fretz, p 4-5.

4The best overview now is Samuel J Steiner, In Search of Promised Lands: A Religious History of Mennonites in Ontario (Harrison, VA/ Kitchener, ON: Herald Press, 2015) p 55-66, 91-123. He lists family names p 59.

5Fretz, p 8.

6Menno Bowman, “Presiding Elder’s Report,” Gospel Banner (March 1 1891) p 9; Fretz, p 18-20.

7TrinityLife Church in Sherkston resulted from the merging of the Stevensville BiC and Sherkston BiC, which happened in 2012.

8For more about this active man, see Samuel J Steiner, https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Hoch,_Daniel_(1805-1878).

9EMCC History of January 31/24, June 8/ 24 and June 15/24 for some history of the New Mennonite Church.

10J Henry Getz, 100 Years in Canada: The Canada Conference of the Evangelical United Brethren (Kitchener, ON: Canada Conference EUB, 1964).

11Fretz, p 18. The other party to Ontario EMCC were remnants of the Evangelical Church (“EUB”) joining in 1968 and 1993. For an outline of organizational stages see EMCC History Page “Formation of the EMCC.”

12Skip Gilham, ed, The Church on the Hill (Vineland, ON: Vineland Missionary Church, 1981) p 6, mentions the Sherkston connection but, typical of modern congregational histories, speaks of the Sherkston group as quite distinct from the Vineland church. It is an understandable but unfortunate view of our earlier structure that disassociates the former “field” or circuit groups that worked together in the past. Sherkston’s 35 years of Quarterly meeting records may also be lost or forgotten by now.

13Sam Goudie, “Pastoral Year Book 1898-1899.” Eleanor (Goudie) Bunker Collection.

14Fretz, p 18.

15E Morris Sider, The Brethren in Christ in Canada: Two Hundred Years of Tradition and Change (Nappanee, IN: Evangel Press/ Canadian Conference, Brethren in Christ Church, 1988) p 37.

16Jasper Abraham Huffman, ed, History of the Mennonite Brethren in Christ Church (New Carlisle, OH: Bethel Publishing, 1920) p 267. Sider was briefly pastor at Aylmer perhaps interim, sometime between 1912 and 1918.