Visiting His Bride

March 7, 1930  I was at Widow Heinrich Reimer.  For night I went to John H. Reimer.

On this day Cornelius went to the home of his future mother-in-law, Katharina (Barkman) Reimer.  Her husband, Heinrich F. Reimer, had died in 1923, so she was now known as the Widow Heinrich Reimer.  We assume that he spent the day with his bride, the daughter of the Widow Heinrich Reimer, Margaret, although again he mentions nothing.  This was probably not a marriage of love but of necessity.  He had been a widower for ten years since his first wife Katharina (Plett), or Katie as she was known, had died, and Mennonites customarily re-married very soon after losing a spouse. 

Cornelius had wanted to marry Katie’s younger sister Margaret, and they had courted for a long time.  But she would not agree to marry.  Finally, he started courting a lady from Herbert, Sask., where he had lived before.  On the day that their engagement was to be announced in church, Margaret Plett had come to him and said that she would still like to marry him.  Cornelius had told her that she had to be serious about it this time, and she had agreed.  So he had canceled the engagement, which would have caused a major scandal in the community, and started courting Margaret again.  But again she would not commit to marry, so Cornelius had finally ended the relationship.  (Eventually Margaret Plett married Cornelius’ nephew Peter W. Siemens.)  The scandal of his canceled engagement likely made it impossible for him to find a wife in Canada.  By the now the years were passing, his children were growing up without a mother, and he had no wife.  

Somehow, he heard of a single lady in Meade, Margaret H. Reimer.  Perhaps he remembered her from when he had lived nearby at Satanta, or maybe a common friend or relative suggested that he consider her.  In any case, they began to correspond, and they agreed to get married.  He had not seen Margaret for at least twelve years, from the time when he and his family had moved from Satanta back to Manitoba in 1918.  He had still been married then, so he probably had paid little attention to her.  By now he was 45, and she was 34, so neither was a spring chicken.  But she had two quarters of land (one quarter was considered a good family farm at the time), and each one needed a spouse.  And that is how Cornelius found himself in Meade, Kans., preparing to marry Margaret Reimer.