Old Order Mennonite Names

My Grandparents’ Generation, born 1890-1910

Male: Absalom Bennevel Manasseh Elias Recevius Christian Noah Amos Henry Menno Cyrus Wendell Reuben William Levi Angus Aaron Israel Samuel John Joseph Lincoln

Female: Phyanna Veronica Susannah Judith Angeline Levea Orillia Rachel Hannah Elizabeth Christina Hettie Sarah Lydia Rebecca Margaret Lydian Maryanne Anna Nancy Lovina

My Parents’ Generation, born 1920-1940

Male: Simon Simeon Leander Clayton Milton Elmer Harvey Delton Albert Ephraim Elam Cyrus Menno Sidney George Samuel John Joseph Eli Ivan Amon Abner Enos David Phares Israel Edwin Melvin Peter Paul Jacob Noah Amos Henry

Female: Amelia Ermina Ellanora Alice Elsie Seleda Beatrice Florence Agnes Nancy Susanna Delila Barbara Saloma Leah Selina Ada Melinda Lydia Veronica Ada Selina Lucinda Leah Rebecca Elisabeth Lovina

My Generation, born 1950-1970

Male: Sidney Ian Abram Clayton Pharis Gordon Eldon Wayne Daniel Alvin David John Samuel Joseph Abner Lester Cleon Allan Cleason Murray Ernie Donald Denis Stanley Edwin Melvin

Female: Eva Martha Seleda Erla Edna Erma Elmeda Esther Lydia Nancy Annie Lovina Alice Salema Minerva Lena Loreen Aleda Irene Viola Sharon Rita Verna Ruth Marilyn Delphine Laura Bertha

Children and Teens in 1990s

Male: Charles Lester Wayne William Delton Ivan Manasseh Clare Leroy Murray Vernon Mark Cleon Elvin Abner Isaac Earl Ervin Edwin Cleason Melvin Orvie Oscar Mahlon Landis Maynard

Female: Minerva Barbara Lovina Martha Nora Irene Nancy Ellen Arlene Elaine Ada Naomi Edna Erla Naomi Vera Rita Edna Dorcas Eileen Elvina Verna Lena Mary Nancy

Knot of Kinship: Focus/Theme

Focus on the difference between Mennonites and schtedla. At first, show the alienation, yet how inside their own culture “everyone is just people,” then gradually show people learning that “the other is no different,” till we come to the “knot of kinship.”

1. 1937: Mennonites and Methodists in Michigan school and church
2.  1946 approx.: Margaret Crowley argues with husband David why they should not live in Elmira with Mennonites.
3. Aug. 1956: Lizbet at the Sauder Sisters’s when David and Margaret Crowley visit with son, daughter-in-law and babies Pammie (Pamela) and Mickie (Malcolm).

Knot of Kinship: The Crises That Bind

Crisis 1:American Revolution: Bound Bishop Benj Eby and friends, including Pete Shallhorn’s grandfather, to their resolution that the American government was untrustworthy. When the Mennonites came to Pennsylvania fifty years earlier, it was with the promise of religious freedom, which included the freedom from military service. But during the revolution, Mennonite teamsters, along with their teams and wagons, were pressed into duty. Mabel Dunham’s book Trail of the Conestoga is a fictionalized account of the Eby’s move north.

With all this in mind, Pete Shallhorn refuses to pay Seth’s train ticket from Waterloo County, Ontario, to Petosky, Michigan to marry his sweetheart Kettie Detweiler. Seth, therefore, works his way there.

Crisis 2: Mam’s Remarriage: Bound Christina to the Mennonite way of life. Dat (Seth) died before Christina and Lizbet can remember, but life was good at home in Michigan. Then a Canadian widower Jonas Weber married her and moved the family to Canada. The transition was traumatic, what with Jonas’s daughter Amanda mocking their American accent and his married daughters cutting up Mam’s wedding dress.

Crisis 3: Dave Sauder’s Drowning: Bound both sisters, Lizbet and Christina, to their own guiding principles for the rest of their lives. This meant a deep chasm in their sisterly relationship. Seranus, the love of Christina’s life, had once in a fit of extreme frustration, gotten drunk on his deacon dad’s Communion wine. Deacon Joe, who had never really taken to Seranus, now turned against him and blamed him without evidence for Dave’s death. No longer able to tolerate the abuse, Seranus ran away to Kitchener. Still remembering the trauma of moving to Canada, Christina could not follow but she vowed not ever to let another man play with her curls and married Melvin, whom she knew would do her bidding.

Lizbet, who could never forget the wailing of their drunken neighbour’s wife and children back in Michigan, could not accept the fate she was certain would her sister’s life if she married “that drunkard Seranus.” She opposed the friendship at every turn and was deeply relieved when Seranus ran away. Years later, on learning from others that Christina had buried a stillborn child, she was deeply baffled and hurt that Christina had never told her and Mam.

Another fallout was Christina and Melvin’s first living child, Martha. Christina could never pinpoint what it was about Martha but from very early on, the child seemed drawn more to Lizbet than to her own mother. That rankled Christina’s feelings. Then, when she was more than old enough to get married, she turned down a young man because–so she claimed–she was having too many headaches. It was true that she was always lying around claiming to be sick. And Christina had to admit that she was sick. But there was no reason for it. She and Melvin did their best to make her see that it was only her notion that made her sick. All to no avail.

When Lizbet heard that Martha turned down a marriage proposal because of her headaches, she invited her niece to move in with her. Ever since Martha was a newborn, she had seen the resemblance to wise old Doddy Detweiler, whom she had last seen when she was eleven years old back home in Michigan. Of her dozens of nieces and nephews, Martha was special. Under her care, the young woman grew healthy, became her right-hand in the market garden business, and took a part time job in town. Later, Lizbet also took in Christina and Melvin’s youngest, Daniel, a young man whom she knew would never marry a woman and therefore never get Christina’s approval as a “traditional Old Order Mennonite.”

Neither had she. At family reunions, they talked about Christina’s garden and grandchildren and flowers. They never ever talked about Martha’s headaches or Daniel’s welding job. Or the latest news on Seranus’s life, though news did leak in from Kitchener. He had changed his name to Ray, married a worldly woman and had a batch of children. He never visited his parents but he and his family did go to church. It was an evangelical church that did not let its members drink alcohol. Lizbet realized she had been too harsh but did not know how to make it right.

Maybe it couldn’t be made right. Christina had changed. She and Melvin were very critical of Martha, which she blamed for Martha’s headaches. She was sure something just as bad would have happened to Daniel if she had not opened her doors. Christina favoured her second daughter, Anna, who married a loud-spoken man in Mount Forest and had a baby every year. Lizbet thought Anna did not seem to care as much for her babies as she did for her own mother’s adoration.

Crisis 4: Tilman Wideman’s Death: Bound the Mennonite and Kitchener communities in the common interest of dealing with the legalities of Tilman’s violent death under Terry McDonald’s truck, which he was driving for Ruppel’s Feed Mill of Wallenstein. Terry was a childhood friend of Constable Malcolm Crowley, grandson of Lizbet’s friends’ the Sauder Sisters’ first tenants. On her first visit to the Sauder Sisters’ home, she had met the Baby Malcolm and compared him to her newborn niece Martha, then forgot all about the Crowley family.

But Tilman’s death, ruled suicide by the authorities, changed that. Terry went berserk from the trauma of having killed a man. Malcolm, after trying for months to help his friend, turned in desperation to the Mennonites to live in with a family in an attempt to learn their beliefs and attitudes. The burning question for him: How could Tilman do this to Terry? Normally, people like Tilman jump in front of a truck on the highway, but Tilman handpicked this one on private property in a rainstorm. On top of everything else, the Mennonites were angry at the authorities–and denied their anger, claiming they were being persecuted–for ruling it a suicide.

Crisis 5: Mennonite Invasion of Malcolm’s Privacy: Bound Malcolm and the Mennonites in kinship and intimacy. For this to happen, Malcolm had to overcome his inner fear of sharing his deep commitment and friendship to Terry, a fear emanating from high school days. However, Lizbet sat him down and talked until he felt obligated to share. After that, he was surprised how the Mennonites opened up. That is, all except Lizbet’s cousin Preacher Aden Bauman. No matter how much Malcolm helped Aden and his son Sidney on the farm, Aden was convinced that Malcolm lived only to shoot off his gun.

Crisis 6: The Gordon Weber Accident: Tightened the knot of kinship and intimacy between Malcolm and the Mennonites. On Aden’s farm at the moment of the collision, Malcolm heard the crash and went to assist. That Malcolm helped at an emergency of Aden’s own people convinced Aden that this man who carried a gun to work did however care for real people–the horse and buggy Mennonites.

 

The Story: Everyone Is Just People

Everyone is just people.

Even if they carry a gun to work, the Mennonite Lizbet Shallhorn learns as an older adult.

Even if they have very little education and consider their culture superior to worldly knowledge, the highly educated former mental health counselor, now police officer, Malcolm Crowley learns from the same incident in middle age.

But Lizbet’s Canadian Grandpa had more important values to pass on to his children and grandchildren–values that his son Seth (who became Lizbet’s father) rejected. Seth traveled to Michigan to marry his sweetheart. After fathering five children, he was killed by a skittish horse that kicked him in the head when he was treating its sore hoof, leaving his widow Katie and children in the care of his American father-in-law.

Old Pete Shallhorn schemed for years to bring his grandchildren home to Canada before he died; when Jonas Weber’s wife died of pneumonia, he finally managed. Jonas already had ten children but they were older and he also had several farms. He opened his books to Pete and Pete was satisfied that Jonas could comfortably raise his American grandchildren. Fortunately, Seth’s window agreed. Pete was a sick old man, coughing and wheezing, when Jonas brought Katie and Seth’s children for a brief visit.

Summoning all his strength he passed on to his American grandchildren their Canadian heritage: In Canada, they were free to practice the faith but not in the States. The American government had, during the American Revolution, gone back on its promise made to the Mennonites regarding religious freedom and their belief in pacifism. They had been forced into service as teamsters. Many Mennonites moved north to British lands–now Waterloo County in Ontario–because of it, including Bishop Benj Eby and Pete’s own grandfather.

But for Lizbet and her siblings, the transition from Michigan to Jonas Weber’s large and tumultuous family in Ontario was traumatic. Not only did Jonas’s youngest daughter Amanda, who was about their age, mock them for their American accent. One day when they came home from school, Jonas’s married daughters were in the house cutting up Mam’s wedding dress. Mam explained she had known this would happen because her American pattern was wrong for a Canadian woman her age who had grown-up children. They sewed it back together with a few changes. But those changes made Mam look different. Lizbet couldn’t tell what was different but Canada made Mam look different. She wanted to go back home to Michigan.

There was no going back. Grandpa Detweiler, Mam’s father who had lived with them ever since she could remember, had moved in with Uncle Amos and family in Pennsylvania. Lizbet, and her twin sister Christina were only three when their father was killed and did not remember. Only their older brothers remembered some of it. But Reuben, the oldest, had been eight and now he was fifteen. He resented the story about Canadian heritage. All he wanted was his friends and farm back home in Michigan.

Life went on. Reuben made good friends with the young people in the Canadian Mennonite community and eventually married a wonderful woman. Jonas helped them settle on a farm. The money he inherited from Dat’s estate paid for part of it. But then came the terrible war in Europe. The entire world was at war. One didn’t know when the world would end, with all this fighting. It was just like Jesus’ prophesy in Matthew 24. His younger brothers, Wendal and Cyrus, were taken by the government to work camps in different parts of the land as alternative to service in the military. Rumours said they would never be allowed to return home.

The twins had to help Jonas on the farm. Clarence, Jonas’s youngest son, was allowed to stay home on his farm because the government liked farmers. Clarence helped Jonas with the heavy work and the girls helped with the milking. But then things started going wrong at home. Christina started dating Seranus Martin, Deacon Joe’s son who had gotten drunk on the Communion wine last spring, forcing Joe to get the man who sold wine to sell more wine on a Sunday morning for the Communion Service. That was against the law and very embarrassing, but God’s law for wine on Communion Sunday was more important.

The problem was having his own sister dating this young man. Seranus was home with his family because the doctor said he had a heart murmur and wasn’t physically fit. Christina said he was the only man not away in the work camps but that wasn’t true. Melvin Martin was also home working his father Solomon’s farm because Solomon was crippled so badly with arthritis. There was nothing Reuben could do about his sister because Mam and Jonas took her side, saying Seranus hadn’t touch alcohol since that one time back in the spring.

Lizbet, however, did have influence. She nagged at Christina. Things came to a head when the mentally retarded man Dave Sauder drowned in the gravel pit behind his parents’ farm. Seranus and some younger boys from the neighbourhood had been swimming after a long day in the hay fields. Dave wandered down when they were building a raft from trash found in the old pond. He demanded a ride on the raft. This happened in the hour after sundown.

Around midnight, Deacon Joe heard Seranus come into the house. Coming home so late from swimming meant only one thing; his son was shaming him again. How could he lead the church if his own son kept getting into trouble? The next morning at six o’clock, a neighbour was at the house with the message that Dave Sauder had drowned in the gravel pit where Seranus had been swimming. His world crashed. In Joe’s mind, Seranus had somehow been responsible. The boy tried to lie his way out of it, claiming he had taken the long way home, thinking about farms and settling down. Joe didn’t believe a word of it and forced him to go to the funeral as punishment.

Except, when the time came, Seranus wasn’t there. Later in the day, a neighbour who had a telephone came with the message that Seranus had run off to Kitchener, that big evil cesspool of sin. Christina had broken off her friendship with him, which he thought showed what a wise young woman she was.

There was much Joe didn’t know. He didn’t know that his daughter Rachel had confided in Christina about their father’s harsh treatment of Seranus, how he picked on him and made life unbearable, and that Seranus was really sorry for having broken into the wine but had been driven by exasperation because he was stuck at home when all the other boys got to either travel the world to work camps or serve in the military. The government wanted him for neither.

Joe didn’t know that Seranus had stopped in at the Jonas Weber farm and that he and Christina had had a long heart-to-heart talk about the future. The only reason Christina didn’t go to Kitchener with him was that she felt she could not go through another transition like the one from Michigan to Ontario. Women in Kitchener spoke another language and dressed even more differently from what she was used to. But she determined that no other man would ever play with her curls. She would marry the sour-faced Melvin Martin, a man would would definitely not be interested in her curls, and who would do as she told him.

If Lizbet had not been so set against Seranus, if she had not blocked the front door when he arrived and forbidden her to talk to him, possibly she would have taken her twin sister into confidence. She’d had to sneak out the backdoor and had no desire ever to tell Lizbet the truth. Deacon Joe had told Jonas that Seranus was guilty for Dave’s death but she herself had never believed it. Seranus was a gentle soul who loved to see the sunrise and listen to the birds sing. She knew the truth about Deacon Joe in a way most people didn’t. She knew it from knowing Seranus and from talking with Rachel. Jonas and Mam had both done what they could to change Lizbet’s mind but by blocking the door Lizbet proved herself unworthy of knowing the truth.

Lizbet was greatly relieved when Christina broke up with Seranus. She could never forget the life of the wife and children of their drunken neighbour back in Michigan. She didn’t think she could stand it if her own sister was doomed to that kind of life. And Seranus had once gotten really drunk. That meant only one thing: He was a drunkard. She didn’t believe that it was possible for a person to be like Seranus and then change completely. It worried her when Mam and Jonas took Christina’s side. Fortunately, Christina had finally come to her senses. Besides, the undisciplined young man had now run off to that evil city Kitchener.

What Lizbet did not understand was Mam’s solemn silence about the entire matter. It was as though nobody cared that Christina had been involved with a bad boy. Then, next thing she knew, her sister was dating Melvin Martin. It was as though she had to get married at any cost. Lizbet was sure Christina didn’t love Melvin. The war ended. The wedding came and went. Melvin and Christina never had babies but some people didn’t. Lizbet was too busy helping her other siblings with baby cases to give it much thought. Finally, after many years of marriage, they had a daughter Martha.

Lizbet took that baby case because she hoped to get closer to Christina again. It didn’t work. But there was something special about this baby, the way tiny Martha gazed into one’s eyes and listened to every sound, as though absorbing the very environment. The ache in her heart returned, the ache associated with Grandpa Detweiler and his wise old face. Martha was so like him.

After six weeks, Martha returned home to Jonas and Mam in the doddyhouse, a retirement house built onto the main farmhouse where Clarence and his wife now farmed with their family. Jonas was getting old and feeble. Lizbet had turned thirty and was ready to settle down and be an Old Maid. She wanted to care for Mam and Jonas in their old age and socialize with the other Old Maids in the church. On Sunday, she visited the Sauder Sisters, no relative to Dave Sauder, and found out that Christina had been keeping big secrets. Through Melvin’s side of the family, it had come out that Melvin and Christina had buried a stillborn, but it had been kept secret.

Lizbet was stunned and deeply hurt. Mam should have known.

Another thing happened on her visit to the Sauder Sisters. While they were sitting outside in the shade of a large tree, a family of city people came to visit, an old couple with their son and daughter-in-law and two very small children. The Sauder Sisters had a very large house and rented part of it. The old couple, David and Margaret Crowley from Toronto, had been their first tenants. Lizbet pitied the poor little children who had nothing but painted ladies for mother and grandmother, who had to grow up speaking in that artificial English language. She was glad when they left and life could go back to normal.

After quitting her work as housemaid for baby cases, Lizbet took a job at the sewing factory where the Sauder Sisters worked. At that job, she learned to know people who dressed and talked like the Crowleys. Many years later, when Martha grew up and was rejected by her own Mother, Lizbet took her in. One day, Martha came home with a city man who claimed he wanted to learn about Mennonite beliefs. Lizbet knew that people were always asking about Mennonite beliefs, so this made sense.

When she saw the big books Martha pulled off the shelf to explain Mennonite beliefs to the man, whose name was Malcom Crowley, Lizbet realized that Martha was truly wise like Grandpa Detweiler had been. In the end, Malcolm asked to board with them, saying he wanted to learn more about how they lived and believed. Seeing that Martha needed this kind of stimulation, she allowed it. But there was one problem.

Clarence and his wife had sold their part of the property, but she would need a room from the other part of the house if she was to board another person. The owner lived near St. Jacobs. Malcolm said he would take Martha and visit him. Much more came out of that visit that Lizbet expected. One of the owner’s grandchildren recognized Malcolm Crowley. He was a police officer! The police carried guns.

Lizbet remembered Grandpa Shallhorn’s story about Mennonites moving to Canada to get away from military service. She remembered all too well her own brothers being taken away to parts unknown by the police during the war. In the end, she decided to let him stay. But weeks passed and he never moved on or said what he wanted. Finally, she sat him down and made him talk. She used what she learned at the sewing factory about people who weren’t Mennonite, her knowledge that everyone was just people. Finally, he explained his reason for being there.

At first, Lizbet was shocked. Then she realized how very much everyone was alike. She could feel for him and let him stay.

Malcolm couldn’t believe the difference it made with his relations with the Mennonites when he finally opened up and shared about himself. At last they opened up and allowed him to see them as real people. They even let him learn their language.

 

Organizing Scenes

This is fun–going back through stuff written three years ago and choosing which scenes I want to keep and discard, how to organize the next step of my book. For the past few years I’ve been working on backstory. Now I can see how it will really enhance the old scenes that come later. And that is so satisfying. I can’t wait to get it all polished and written up.

Theme of Mennonite Summer

When Constable Malcolm Crowley’s best friend’s truck is used as a suicide weapon by a Mennonite man, Malcolm sets out to discover why the man targeted a stranger’s truck.

Though this plot is fictional, along with the characters, it brings together my two cultures–the Mennonites and contemporary North American society. This is my first novel and on this blog I will document the main mile stones of progress–which will probably include regress because that is the way life works. Much of life is one step forward and two steps back, though once in a while we manage five steps forward and one back. Otherwise, obviously, we’d never get anywhere. Right?

At the moment, I’ve got the first draft more or less written and am in the process of polishing it up. Chapter 1 is polished and now I’m working on Chapter 2. I guess real authors know when they start where they’re going–what the story is they want to tell. All I knew was that I wanted to write a story to show my two cultures. Yeah right! Something’s gotta happen. Otherwise, nobody’s going to read it because there’s no story. Not to worry. Malcolm is biting off more than he can eat, getting himself into tight corners and culture clashes–all the while thinking he’s the big guy who knows it all.

I *think* that’s the classical set-up for a suspenseful story. Ideas are welcome. Anecdotes of cross-cultural experiences and clashes are most helpful, especially how a big-city cop might see horse and buggy people.