Discussing Wedding Plans

March 5, 1936  We took A. E. Friesens visiting.  Went to Jacob F. Isaacs for dinner.  For faspa to P. F. Rempels, then for a little bit to Mrs. M. Doersken and to Mrs. C. J. Claasen.  Then we took A. E. Friesens to John J. Reimers. 

Bonus post for March 5.

The Siemens took the Abram E. Friesens visiting.  They went first to the Jacob F. Isaacs for dinner, the noon meal.  Here they no doubt had an important discussion.  Their son Jake was planning to marry the Abram Friesen’s daughter Anna, but Anna was not a member of the Kleine Gemeinde fellowship at Meade.  Instead, when she had moved back to Meade on her own a few years before, she had joined the Holdeman (officially Church of God in Christ, Mennonite) church at Montezuma, Kans., because they had treated her nicely when she worked for families there.  

But when they learned that she was planning to marry someone from outside the Holdemans, they excommunicated her.  Generally, all Mennonites recognized each other's baptisms and church memberships, but there was bad blood between the KG and the Holdemans going back to the 1880s in Manitoba when the Holdemans had poached a third of the members and most of the leadership of the KG church there.  So now she was not a member of any church.  

First she would need to be accepted as a member of the Meade KG, and then she and Jake could marry.  Since she could not transfer her membership from the Holdeman church, it is likely that the Abram E. Friesens brought a letter from their KG church in Mexico attesting to her good standing so that she could join the Meade KG.  Since this was something of an unusual situation, they likely needed to discuss it first with Jacob F. Isaac, the elder of the Meade KG.  It seems that the discussion went well.