The William Hespeler and Gerhard Hiebert Stories: A Research Note

by Edwin D. Hoeppner

A visit to the St. John's Cathedral (Anglican) cemetery in Winnipeg on a sunny, warm day early last fall, 10 September 1998,with the temperature peaking at 32.4 degrees Celsius in the late afternoon, yielded an unexpected bonus for Lawrence Klippenstein and the author.

Our interest in the history of the first Mennonite immigration from today's Ukraine to Manitoba, motivated our search for the grave of William Hespeler. Hespeler, special immigration agent for the government of Canada in 1872 and thereafter, had an important role in influencing Mennonites who were leaving south Russia, to choose to come to Manitoba. That immigration began in 1874⁽¹⁾. It's 125^th anniversary is this year.

Wilhelm Hespeler was born in 1830 in Gernsbach, approximately 8 km. east-northeast of Baden Baden, Germany. He died in 1921 in British Columbia, Canada. His body, returned to Winnipeg at the time, is interred in St. John's Cathedral cemetery in Block J, Plot 3 North and Plot 4 South . the inscription on the gravestone reads as follows:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF WILLIAM HESPELER BORN DEC.29th 1830 DIED APRIL 18th 1921 AND HIS WIFE CATHERINE ROBERTSON BORN 1836 DIED JUNE 9th 1920 HESPELER

His career had been noted in several brief articles⁽²⁾. In all of them, William's wife's name is given as Mary H. Keatchie. This suggests that she was his first wife and one may conclude that Catherine Robertson was his second wife. Hespeler appears to have been an extraordinarily active, effective and versatile business entrepreneur, government agent, municipal and provincial politician, and community leader. For two years he was an alderman of the City of Winnipeg and for many years an MLA and Speaker of the Manitoba Legislative Assembly. He was appointed first Consul of the German Empire in Manitoba, and was gifted with diplomatic and negotiating skills.

Thanks to his initiative, thousands of immigrants, bilingual German and French speaking natives of Alsace-Lorraine, Lutheran German colonists of Bessarabia, Kherson and the Crimea, as well as many Mennonites from southern Russia chose to come to Canada. Here in Manitoba, not only Mennonites, but also the descendants of the "Canuck" neighbours near and on the Pembina Escarpment, have reason to honour his memory. They do well also to recall his associate Dominion Land Surveyor (DLS) William Pearce, as colleague in the investigation and successful resolution of the Menno-Canuck Difficulty in the western sections of the West Reserve. This has particular reference to the once thriving but now extinct villages of Burwalde, Schönfeld, Schöndorf, and Waldheim, as well as the vanished community of Nelsonville, 10 km. north-northwest of Morden⁽³⁾.

Just prior to our discovery of the Hespeler family plot, we spotted a gravestone, which concerns a family of undoubted Mennonite origin. It records family data as follows:

GERHARD HIEBERT BORN SEPT. 13th 1868 DIED DEC. 25th 1934 HELEN WIFE OF GERHARD HIEBERT DAUGHTER OF

ERDMANN AND MARIA PENNER 15th OCT. 1874 - 12th FEB. 1920 HELEN EFLRIEDE ALLEN 29th JUN. 1908 - 28th NOV. 1982 INTERRED WANDLEBURY RING CAMBRIDGE, ENGLAND

Gerhard Hiebert worked for his father-in-law Erdmann Penner in the latter's business enterprises as a young man before going on to medical studies in Minnesota⁽⁴⁾. Both men had their origin in the Bergthal Colony. Dr. Gerhard Hiebert initially had a medical practice in Winnipeg, before being appointed to the position of Chief Surgeon at Winnipeg General Hospital. His former employer and father-in-law was a very prosperous businessman, first in Winnipeg, then near Niverville and in Gretna⁽⁵⁾, where he was mayor, and in Morden⁽⁶⁾.

Helen (Penner) Hiebert's memoirs constitute a significant source for Gretna centennial history. It is extremely probable that Hespeler and Erdmann Penner knew each other. Hespeler served for fifteen years as President of Winnipeg General Hospital. The inter-connectedness of historical events, and of people, not least of all Mennonite affairs, becomes even more palpable when we note that the location of Erdmann Penner's "Branch No.1," the Town of Morden, became the main "urban" centre of the Canuck protagonists int he "Difficulty". It was a difficulty which William Hespeler, in this capacity as a trouble-shooter for the Department of Agriculture, helped to resolve in 1877/1878. That is a fascinating story which remains to be told.

Endnotes