Mennonite Quarterly Review Biographical Dictionary European Church Leaders 1824

Introduction

Aganetha Reimer, born in 1863, was a community midwife in Steinbach, Manitoba until 1938 when, after a infirmary was built, her career gradually came to an stop. She had taken a three-calendar week course in birthing and the use of home remedies from a Minnesota adult female, who was summoned to Manitoba in the tardily 19th century when the demand for a midwife amidst the new immigrants was felt "very badly." Aganetha assisted at the delivery of close to 700 babies, in i case attending a birth just three days after giving birth herself. She also performed the function of undertaker, bathing and clothing the bodies of the dead, and helping to adjust their coffins.ⁱⁱ

Sarah Dekker was born in 1878 in a German-Mennonite hamlet in Due south Russia (present-day Ukraine). She married David Thielman in 1911, and they moved to a settlement called Barnaul in Siberia. They moved to Canada in 1929, in the final year of a significant migration that saw about 21,000 Russian Mennonites re-found themselves mainly in Ontario and the prairie provinces. The Thielmans settled commencement at Glenbush, Saskatchewan – about 200 kilometers (125 miles) northwest of Saskatoon − so moved to Beamsville, Ontario, near St. Catharines, in 1941. In the early years of the 20th century, Sarah had gone to St. Petersburg to be trained equally a midwife and in 1909, still a single woman, she began recording the births at which she assisted in a midwife'southward journal, a carefully mitt-written document in High german gothic script.³

When the periodical entries end in 1941, Sarah had assisted at 1,450 births, or at least these were the ones recorded. Afterwards moving to Ontario, she ceased her labor as a midwife but continued offering her chiropractic and other healing skills to the local community.^iv As a multi-faceted healthcare provider, Sarah was sometimes referred to every bit a zurechtmacherin, meaning "ane who puts things dorsum" or "makes things right" – hence the championship of this lecture.⁵

Notwithstanding another such midwife-healer, and indeed spiritual leader, was Barbara Bowman Shuh, built-in in 1857, an Ontario woman who exercised her gifts and abilities in both sanctioned and unconventional spheres of activity. Non just was Barbara the first chairwoman of the sewing circle organized at Berlin Mennonite Church building in 1908, and a cheese-maker, she was also well-known as a midwife and ane who had inherited the gift of charming, a traditional spiritual healing art, which she used primarily to treat bleeding, burns, and scalds.⁶

For almost of human history, women accept given birth in their ain homes, either alone, or assisted by family members or neighbors, by lay or professional midwives, or by trained doctors. In Canada, homebirths predominated until simply before the Second Earth State of war. Prior to the hospitalization and medicalization of childbirth, a process documented by Wendy Mitchinson in her history Giving Nascency in Canada, the community midwife was a primal figure in the lives and households of women giving nascency.^vii Even while the "decline" of midwifery in Canada was occurring in the first half of the 20th century, midwives in rural and ethnic communities continued to fulfill this role somewhat longer. For some immigrant and culturally distinct groups, Mennonites included, the practices and functions of community midwives were among a range of beliefs and traditions that were maintained through the process of leaving the homeland for new horizons.

Maintaining "one-time country" practices of midwife-assisted births in one case in Canada – and indeed in the Russian Empire and in Latin America, for case − helped groups like the Mennonites conserve an important sense of group and cultural identity. For Mennonites who emigrated from Pennsylvania to Upper Canada starting time in the late 18th century, for those who arrived from the Russian Empire near the finish of the 19th century and from the Soviet Matrimony beginning in the 1920s, and for those who established settlements in Mexico and Latin America, the community midwife served multiple purposes. Not only did she assist at numerous births when infirmary deliveries and physicians were rare or inaccessible, she too provided a wide range of essential healthcare services crucial to individuals and families experiencing the trauma of uprooting and the challenges of rural settlement.

The fact that midwives were adequately plentiful and midwife-assisted childbirth mutual amid Mennonites perhaps longer than in the general population relates to a number of factors: their rural isolation, their strong kinship relationships, their desire for separation from non-Mennonite services and institutions, and their preference for healthcare providers who shared their language, organized religion, and cultural ethos.

Just it also may well have related to the sheer number of births that took identify in Mennonite households. Until well-nigh the 1970s, Mennonite nascence rates were forty to 50 per cent higher than national rates in North America, at which betoken they began to refuse to meet societal averages.⁸ Mennonite women, especially those who were rural immigrants, sustained pregnancy and childbirth in numbers that are amazing for near 21st-century women to consider. For instance, Barbara Schultz Oesch, an Amish Mennonite woman who migrated direct from Europe to Wilmot Township, Upper Canada in 1824, gave birth to 18 children, xv of them in Canada, and still outlived her married man by xxx years.^nine In at least 64 of the births attended by Sarah Dekker Thielman, the mother had already delivered ten or more babies.¹⁰

Large families seemed especially common amongst Mennonites who migrated from Russian federation to Manitoba in the late 19th century, the socalled Kanadier Mennonites; indeed birthrates seem to have increased later migration. Judith Klassen Neufeld, the youngest in a family unit of 15 children, was five years old when she immigrated and would herself carry 10 children over 19 years. Maria Stoesz Klassen bore 16 children, 12 of whom were girls, and immigrant midwife Maria Reimer Unger bore 13 children. Such birthrates surely kept the local midwives busy.

Midwives in Earlier Eras

The story of Mennonite midwifery does not begin, or terminate, in Canada. Bits of research evidence tell united states that the midwife may have held crucial religious functions within Anabaptist communities of the 16th century. William Klassen and Walter Klaassen, in their recent volume on Pilgram Marpeck, point out that there were a "big number" of midwives amidst the Anabaptists in Strasbourg and Augsburg, including possibly Marpeck's wife Anna.¹¹ Because they opposed baby baptism equally unscriptural, Anabaptist midwives were accused of not baptizing newborn children in danger of dying, as nascency attendants were immune to do at the time. Within this clandestine and destructive community, the desire to use the services of midwives who shared the Anabaptists' faith was based on their demand for assurance that the attending midwife would not conduct an emergency baptism on a sickly newborn child. 1 example is Elsbeth Hersberger, imprisoned for her Anabaptist beliefs several times in the 1530s, who reportedly "influenced numerous parents not to have their children baptized."¹²

The tradition of community midwifery continued as Mennonites, in this case the Dutch-Russian diversity, made their way from Prussia/Poland to Russian federation. Wilhelmina Ratzlaff, born in 1854, was a trained midwife who delivered many babies in the Wymyschle area of Poland and had 12 children of her own.¹³ Another Prussian midwife was Justina Schulz Harder, who died in 1856, and about whom her son Abraham wrote: "My female parent had been a very decorated woman. Her hands had never lain idle in her lap. She had served as midwife in the community. She had made many a herb tea from different plants for sick people. We did not have doctors in those days as we take at present. On wintertime evenings when she was knitting or sewing, I had to read to her out of a doctor'due south book or health book."¹⁴

While there are limited available sources on the practice of midwifery among Mennonites in 19th-century Russia, one historian has concluded that childbirth was the domain of the midwife, non male doctors. That community midwives may have been quite plentiful inside the Mennonite settlements of southward Russia is implied in the diary of one Mennonite church building leader whose wife was assisted by iv different midwives for five births in an 11- yr period.^fifteen And in the numerous family and settlement histories that give account of the Russian Mennonite story, cursory mentions of midwife-assisted births are common, though often offering fiddling more a proper name, if that. Given the tumultuous events of the early 20th century in the Russian empire and so Soviet Union that brought crunch to Mennonite families and settlements, midwives on occasion found themselves in circumstances they would never face in Canada. Susanna Epp, trained as a midwife in Prussia in 1906, traveled with 4 armed men when she was summoned to aid women in labor during the years of revolution, civil state of war, and anarchy that followed. In one case, Makhnovite anarchists threatened to shoot her if she did not help at a hard birth or if the female parent died. Susanna (in photograph at left) insisted that a witness be nowadays, and, although the kid was stillborn, she was able to salve the female parent. Plain, the Makhnovites so gave her a alphabetic character which immune her to travel unhindered. Susanna immigrated to Canada in 1924 where she "had plenty to do in the nursing field."¹⁶

Skill and Training

I of the significant questions of debate surrounding the history of midwifery revolves around the level of training and skill held by women who "caught babies." Because birth itself was viewed as a natural action, and because some midwives were cocky-trained or informally trained, the skill required to properly assist a adult female in labor has besides been viewed as natural, something that every woman surely carried within herself. This kind of essentialist thinking contributed to the predominant portrayal of midwives every bit women who had given nativity themselves, had obtained their childbirth cognition informally through experience or as apprentices, and had assisted at a relatively small number of childbirths throughout their lifetime, mainly within their ain neighborhood of family unit and friends. Hence, the term "neighbour" midwife was often used. Certainly cocky-trained or informally trained "neighbor," "lay," or "traditional"¹⁷ midwives were present and utilized in Mennonite communities, especially in the earliest years of settlement in remote places. For case, in the Menno Colony established in cardinal Paraguay in 1929, women who knew well-nigh nativity and "had enough backbone" qualified as midwives. If they adult the special skill of "turning" a baby in the womb for a cephalic presentation, they were especially valued.¹⁸

Nevertheless the career of Sarah Dekker Thielman (in photo at right), like that of some other Mennonite midwives, reveals that professional person training and skill in childbirth procedures were mutual, fifty-fifty within 19th and early 20th-century immigrant communities in Canada. In Sarah'southward case, she left dwelling equally a single young woman in the first decade of the 20th century to obtain midwifery training in Petrograd, several thousand kilometers from her family unit. Katherina Born Thiessen (below), born in 1842 in South Russia, studied midwifery, bone-setting, and naturopathy in Prussia in about 1860, also studying to "catch babies" well before she bore any of her own. After immigrating to Manitoba in the 1880s, she sought further medical preparation in Cincinnati, Ohio. Somewhen, an expanded medical practice and newly-built house included a reception area, pharmacy, operating room, and overnight rooms for her patients.¹⁹ Elizabeth Harder Harms, later on training for two years in the city of Riga, was certified in 1912 and the next year was hired to be the official village midwife in the Mennonite village of Schoenfeld in Russia. When Elizabeth immigrated with her married man to Canada in 1925, she continued to practice customs midwifery, although her husband did not consider it proper for her to work in a hospital when she was offered such a job.²⁰

While some women were certified in public institutions far from home, others obtained their skills in health care centers established by Mennonites. Marie Braun emigrated from the Soviet Union to Kitchener, Ontario with her parents in 1924, finding work in a shirt factory merely also delivering babies in people'southward homes. She had trained as a nurse-midwife at the Morija Deaconness Home in Neu-Halbstadt − in the Russian Mennonite settlement of Molotschna − which opened in 1909. Also trained at Morija (at left) was Kathe Neumann, who arrived in Canada in 1948 with her sister and the five children of their blood brother who had died in a Soviet labor military camp with his wife. She was addressed as Sister Kathe and wore a uniform consisting of a starched white caput covering and apron and blackness dress, a garb she wore fifty-fifty to church in British Columbia, a habit that her niece plant very odd simply undoubtedly reinforced Kathe'south professional stature, for herself and for others.²¹

Training also occurred in non-institutional ways. The 1870s Mennonite settlers in Manitoba brought a midwife from a Mennonite customs in Minnesota to provide a few weeks of training to several Canadian women. Selma Schwartzentruber, of the Due east Zorra Mennonite Church building community in Ontario, took the Chicago Home Nurse's Course by correspondence so, to quote historian Lorraine Roth, "helped in diverse homes at the birth of a baby."²² Margarete Dueck apprenticed as a nurse-midwife with a Mennonite dr. in Russia, then immigrated to Winnipeg with her family unit in 1927. She initially earned money doing housework, simply according to her obituary "had no satisfaction" at this labor, and then spent the next decade working as a nurse and midwife in Africa and S America.²³ Helena Klassen Eidse, only 13 years sometime, began to assist at deliveries when a local medico enlisted her as an interpreter when he was called to Germanspeaking Mennonite homes in Manitoba. Gradually he trained her in the basics of medical intendance, and she went on to a 63-year career as a midwife, chiropractor, nurse, and undertaker.²⁴ Barbara Zehr Schultz, an Ontario Amish Mennonite woman, learned midwifery from her grandfather, who trained every bit a medical practitioner in French republic before immigrating to Canada in the 1830s.²⁵

The few personal archival collections of women who worked every bit midwives include medical textbooks, obstetrical manuals, and more full general books of medical knowledge, further evidence that they sought out technical noesis across the personally experiential or what was obtained through apprenticeships. Sarah Dekker Thielman's midwife journal is one case. The contents of midwives' medical numberless too betoken to a profession with standard tools of the trade. For example, Helena Klassen Eidse's chocolate-brown leather medical bag contained such items equally pills for fever, liquid medicine to stop hemorrhaging, scissors and ties for the umbilical cord, needle and thread, olive oil for greasing the nascence passage, rubbing alcohol, and nonchildbirth related medical items.²⁶

Furthermore, the sheer number of births at which some Mennonite midwives assisted confirms that for these women, midwifery was a career and not just an occasional act of caring volunteerism for a neighbour and relative. At least i historian's conclusion about the pocket-sized practices of immigrant midwives²⁷ does not hold true for all Mennonite infant-catchers, some of whom had very prolific careers: Sarah Thielman, who delivered over i,400 infants in a 32-year catamenia; Anna Toews, who delivered 942 babies; Aganetha Reimer, who assisted at shut to 700 births; and others. A midwife who defenseless near ane,000 babies in a 25-year career would have averaged forty births per year, a pregnant number when ane thinks of the rural distances and challenging weather condition conditions of Canada.

Even those midwives who were formally trained and recognized for their skills were for the most role willing to work cooperatively with physicians to ensure the best possible effect for both mother and babe. The historical and contemporary literature on midwifery often assumes a dynamic of hostility between midwife and physician. Many early investigations emphasized turf wars in which midwives and medical schooleducated physicians each tried to claim their superior skill in assisting a woman in childbirth. More contempo studies, all the same, advise that the dynamic between midwives and doctors was more circuitous, more than variable, and was at times mutually benign when information technology came to maximizing support for women in childbirth.²⁸ In sparsely settled rural areas, in that location may have been more than of an alliance between midwives and doctors, as both tried to serve families with loftier fertility rates beyond large distances.

For instance, Sarah Dekker Thielman, an experienced and highly trained practitioner, chosen for the assistance of a physician at difficult births on a few occasions, though judging from her journal (source of drawings at left) it was more likely that a second midwife would arrive to assistance. Within the thirty pages of "teaching material" that precedes Sarah's journal of birth records are notes describing birthing complications that require the involvement of a physician; a section titled "When is a Md Needed?" lists thirteen complications that range from "Persistent vomiting during pregnancy" to "Every miscarriage with haemorrhage . . ." to "Chills during the postpartum menses."²⁹ Furthermore, in the oftentimes cooperative relationship between midwife and physician, it was also true that physicians on occasion summoned midwives for assist. For instance, about Manitoba midwife Katherina Born Thiessen it has been said that "doctors called her to help with infant deliveries when they were desperate."³⁰ If there were at times clashes of authorization, feel (and gender) between midwife and medico, there were likewise numerous relationships of reciprocity and substitution of skill.

Although many midwives had professional training and viewed their work equally a career or vocation, few were motivated by the income that resulted from their work. Though non a lucrative career by whatsoever means, the meager earnings that a midwife brought into her household made life slightly less difficult for Mennonite families, some of whom could just barely sustain themselves, whether they were early pioneers or survivors of the Depression. Some midwives were satisfied with payment in the form of chickens, garden produce, or a sack of flour, especially during hard economic times, while others had set up fees. Many were likely willing to take whatever was offered, while the "neighbor" midwife or relative might await nothing at all. Helena Klassen Eidse (at left) initially charged 25 cents per delivery, but in later years that sum rose to 2 dollars. Recalling that some people were indignant when she charged money for her services, apparently Helena had remarked that information technology seemed "babies aren't worth salt on an egg."³¹ Agatha Schellenberg, a well-reputed midwife in rural Saskatchewan in the 1930s, didn't accuse a specific amount but took what was offered. One family unit paid her six, 8, and 7 dollars respectively for three of their children, probably what they were able to pay in each instance.³²

Regardless of how much they were paid, midwives spent a considerable amount of time with their "patients" both earlier and subsequently the birth, and saw their role equally greater than only the commitment of babies. Katherina Hiebert regularly brought bedding, infant clothes, and food forth to deliveries.³³ The services of Aganetha Reimer (at right) included baking biscuits and making chicken noodle soup.³⁴ Midwives besides offered women knowledge about non-medicinal methods to deal with the harsh effects on their bodies of about constant childbirth: this included such things as chamomile tea to ease cracked nipples during breastfeeding, and rubbing squealer fat on bellies and legs to "loosen everything" in anticipation of labor.³⁵

That a midwifery and healing practice was a full-time occupation for many of these women meant that gender roles in some families were inevitably unsettled. The daughter of Maria Reimer Unger, midwife in early 20th-century Manitoba, recalled that her mother's midwifery career meant their father took a more agile role in childcare than most fathers: "Quite often he would take her to a identify for such an consequence during the night, come back domicile, and in the morning start breakfast for usa and go things going."³⁶ Midwife Anna Toews regularly drove their Model T automobile considering her hubby Peter was reportedly "likewise nervous to drive" and so was always seen in the rider seat. Merely she relied on him to crank-first the car, and so he ofttimes accompanied her on her midwife visits merely to do that.³⁷ Midwives were as well known to scold husbands for inappropriate behavior. In his small manual of sex education, minister Jacob H. Janzen describes how one Mennonite midwife chastized a married man for his weakness and desire to abscond the birthing room, reminding him that he had been readily there for the offset office – formulation – and at present must be there for the end as well.³⁸

Not unlike what was experienced by the families of church ministers, the families of midwives coped with the ramifications of a parent's enervating career and with the frequent and sudden disruptions to family life that occurred when mother was called away to "catch" a babe. Margaretha Enns'south daughters expressed some resentment toward the extra household duties they had considering of their mother'south work: "The family unit frequently felt that everything revolved around their mother'southward career; family birthdays and Christmas gatherings were often interrupted when she was chosen away. Relatives who attended these gatherings recall her existence summoned while she was in the midst of distributing Christmas gifts and homemade fudge to the grandchildren. She would drib everything, pick up her brown bag, and leave on her mission."³⁹

Multi-Faceted Roles

Birthing was often the primary, just rarely the but, wellness service offered by women described as midwives, many of whom had learned the healing arts in their state of origin. With trained medical personnel most non-existent in early rural immigrant communities, and hospitals and doctors many kilometers away, the midwife was often "the nearly important medical person in the community."⁴⁰ Sarah Dekker Thielman, in the midst of an manifestly very decorated midwifery practice, was called on for many treatments other than assisting at childbirth. Her nifty-niece recalled that "When there was an injury, sprain, or sore back, we collection to [come across] Tante Sarah who performed chiropractic, massage therapy and midwifery. She had wonderfully warm hands. Her optics were keen and very observant."⁴¹ Her grand-daughter recalled that cars were often lined up in the driveway with people waiting to run into Sarah at her Ontario home.⁴² The descriptor of Sarah as one who "makes things correct" is similar to the proper noun given to some aboriginal midwives who were referred to, non every bit midwives, only equally women "who can do everything."⁴³ "Handywoman" was another label for the midwife-healer.

Mennonite women who "made things right" included Agnes Meyer Hunsberger, mother of 14 and emigrant from Pennsylvania to Ontario in 1800, who was "remarkably gifted in the healing art" and "answered all calls every bit dr. or nurse." According to a family unit genealogy of 1896, she visited the sick on her "favorite chestnut mare, a most intelligent beast [that] carried her safely through the wilderness at all hours of day or night on her errands of mercy."⁴⁴ Marie Nickel Neufeld, who immigrated from South Dakota to rural Saskatchewan in 1893 and was mother to 13 children, carried the "double part of physician and nurse" and was called "near and far" to alleviate suffering.⁴⁵ Women sometimes began their practices by assisting at childbirth, but once their skills and apprehending were verified, people would seek them out for other services, such equally pulling teeth, tending to injuries, and offering advice and treatment for various maladies that included breadbasket ailments, headaches, irregularity, and nervous disorders, for instance. Bonesetting, a precursor of 20th-century chiropractic, in particular, was a common accompaniment to a midwifery practice. Amid Ontario Swiss or Amish Mennonite women, the historic European practise of charming – also called "pow-powing" or braucherei – was utilized equally a healing fine art, alongside the practice of baby-catching.

Another example of multi-functionality is Katherina Hiebert (in photo at right), who became peradventure the first midwife to serve the pioneer women of southern Manitoba after emigrating from Russia in 1875. She was known to roam the wood and meadows collecting "Swedish bitters, chamomile, and thyme"⁴⁶ for her medicines, and was mainly self-taught, ordering medical books from Germany and the United States likewise as receiving advice from ancient women. Her daughter recalled that "She was e'er away, day and nighttime, summer and wintertime, tending the sick."⁴⁷ Elizabeth Harder Harms plant herself providing a wide assortment of medical care when she moved to the immigrant community of Yarrow, British Columbia in the early 1930s. She mixed her ain pharmaceutical compounds, and created a successful remedy to treat a unique infection under the fingernails caused by the strong cleaning solutions that plagued Mennonite women working as domestic assistance in Vancouver.⁴⁸

In addition to their varied expertise and services in providing health care, midwives quite often held another important part, that of undertaker, which might include certifying deaths and, especially, preparing bodies for burial. Anganetha Dyck Bergen was a Saskatchewan immigrant woman who had no formal training but wore the hat of nurse, midwife, and undertaker as needed in her rural customs; the latter task involved confirming a death, and cleaning, dressing, and preparing bodies for burial.⁴⁹

In the Mennonite settlement at Yarrow, British Columbia, information technology was "customary for midwives . . . to prepare the bodies for burial, which included closing the eyes and tying a scarf under the chin to proceed the mouth closed. This had to be done immediately, before rigor mortis set in. They done the body with alcohol to clean the skin and prevent an odour, and then packed the trunk in water ice."^l Midwives would then dress the bodies in vesture chosen past the family. Information technology was precisely their versatility in healing services, and their knowledge of the body, that fabricated midwives well-suited to deal with the duties of death. In reflecting on Aganetha Reimer's life, her grandson commented: "It seems entirely fitting to me that in pioneer times the local midwife commonly served also as an unofficial, behind-the-scenes undertaker. Who would understand better than a midwife that the squirming, squalling new homo emerging and then eagerly from the womb must someday terminate in the marble nobility of the dead, all care, woes and fleeting joys gone forever."⁵¹

Other examples of a combined vocation include Elisabeth Rempel Reimer, described as "midwife, nurse, and undertaker." She likewise had a fur glaze and hat-making business in Russia prior to coming to Canada.⁵² Anna Martens (in photo at left), midwife in rural Saskatchewan at the turn of the century, helped birth 280 babies during her career, only she as well prepared bodies for burial, and maintained a garden of medicinal herbs which she would harvest and dispense for the community.⁵³ The roles that women played as undertakers in early settlement communities in Canada were replicated when certain groups of Mennonites migrated to primal and South America in the first one-half of the 20th century. In those regions, female predominance over burial preparations continued throughout the century. One woman recalled that the customs followed in the 1920s in Manitoba were almost identical to those maintained in Paraguay in 1980.⁵⁴

The practical linkage of birth and death in the varied skills of midwifeundertakers arose not merely from questions of expediency and sensibility: the midwife every bit healer already possessed the supplies and physiological cognition useful for both functions. The collapsing of vocational roles too made explicit, in a kind of pre-modern sense, the close life-cycle ties between birth and death. Writing about 18th-century France, historian Jacques Gélis observed that midwives were called to help at births and also to attend to the laying out of the dead: "By presiding at births and preparing people for their last journeying, the midwife held both ends of the thread of life," he noted.⁵⁵ These connections reinforce the crucial role that Anabaptist midwives played at a bedside where birth and death were meeting confront to face.

The vocational linkage also indicated the very existent possibility of expiry – for either mother or infant – in childbirth. In eras and geographic locales where hospitals or other medical help were distant, "the midwife lonely stood between life and death."⁵⁶ Prior to the Second World War, maternal bloodshed rates in Canada were loftier and childbirth-related death was 2d only to tuberculosis equally the crusade of female deaths. The fearfulness of death in childbirth was heightened in rural, isolated areas, where assistance by either midwife or physician, or both, was far away.

Cottage Hospitals

By the late 1930s and onwards, hospital births became more and more common. The shift from abode to hospital for childbirth during the kickoff half of the 20th century was dramatic; in 1926, 17.8 per cent of Canadian
births occurred in hospitals, while in 1950 that percent increased to 76.⁵⁷ Amongst some Mennonites, for instance, Tina Schulz'southward eighth and last child was the showtime to be born in a hospital in 1937 in Manitoba, as was Elizabeth Klippenstein's tenth child in Saskatchewan.⁵⁸ Anna Barkman's terminal of fourteen children was the kickoff born in a hospital in 1931.⁵⁹ Sawatzky remarked that as her family grew, going to the hospital to give nascency was preferable, since taking 6 or viii children away from abode during the nativity was increasingly problematic.⁶⁰

The increased medicalization of healthcare, as well as the greater accessibility many midwives. When Steinbach, Manitoba's infirmary opened in 1938, Aganetha Reimer'south local career as a midwife began gradually to see its end.⁶¹ made a signal of beingness at the habitation of a new mother when she and the infant returned from the infirmary, even though she stopped attention the actual births herself.⁶²

In the midst of the overall trend towards infirmary births through the 20th century, some aberrations to this direction did occur. For instance, in the transition between dwelling births assisted past midwives and physician-attended infirmary births, some communities established birthing homes, sometimes referred to as "cottage hospitals," that had the function of creating a setting away from home in which women could give birth. The cottage hospital was also a concession to mod trends while all the same maintaining some Mennonite boundaries.

In Gretna, Manitoba, sisters Helen and Sarah Heinrichs ran such a home, while ten kilometers abroad in Altona the Nickel sisters offered such a service.⁶³ In Waterloo, Ontario, Justina Goetz presided equally midwife at a birthing home.⁶⁴

In 1928 a group of Mennonites in n Winnipeg decided to open a five-bed maternity hospital specifically to service a new neighborhood of Mennonite settlers, a project initially directed past two sisters, Sara and Tina Koop, hired because, every bit the hospital's history says, they were willing to take relatively low rates of remuneration.⁶⁵ Sara was trained as a nurse-midwife in the Morija Deaconness Home in due south Russia, so connected that labor in rural Saskatchewan after her family immigrated in 1924. In after years, from 1941 until 1954, the two sisters operated a birthing home in Vineland, Ontario, where 732 babies were born. The sisters spent their showtime months in Ontario in waged jobs in club to renovate and furnish the 9-room house. While Sara was responsible for healthcare at the home, Tina looked after the significant labor of laundry and meals. While the dwelling house was run by the Koops, physicians were called to preside at the births, though Sara reportedly resisted summoning a medico any earlier than necessary in order that he non be required to wait around. When the home airtight in the mid-1950s, it was not for lack of women who may have wanted to give nascence in that location but rather considering the Koop sisters wanted to retire.⁶⁶

Mennonite Particularity

One reason for the establishment of these birthing homes in towns and cities may have been that they represented a compromise betwixt modernization and Mennonite particularity. While technical preparation and skill on the function of midwives were important in Mennonite settlement communities, ethnoreligious identity was also (perhaps equally) valued. The importance of indigenous commonality betwixt midwife and woman in labor, pointed out by a few scholars of immigration in North America, seems very true for the Mennonites as well. A survey of the nascency records in Sarah Dekker Thielman'south journal chop-chop reveals a large majority of ethnic Mennonite names, though it is interesting that non-Mennonite names are more prevalent in the Canadian setting than in the Siberian locale.⁶⁷ A profile of midwife-healer Katherina Built-in Thiessen notes that fifty-fifty after some local physicians sought a court gild to preclude her from providing healthcare services because she didn't have a medical license, Mennonites connected to seek her expertise "because they trusted her and she spoke their language, Depression German."⁶⁸

The sister to Sara and Tina Koop – the women who operated birthing homes in Winnipeg and Vineland – recalled that a major reason for establishing the homes was in social club for Mennonite women to give birth "amidst their ain," where linguistic communication was shared, and because they were poor.⁶⁹ Other cultural signifiers shared by a midwife and the woman in labor would take included a mutual knowledge of kinship relationships and commonage memory of immigrant and settlement experiences. A midwife who shared the female parent'due south ethnicity would accept known exactly how to gear up the foods that would comfort and nourish the woman and her family in the aftermath of birth, also equally particular cultural and religious norms and sensibilities that influenced how ane expressed the physical pain and extremes of emotion that inevitably accompany childbirth.

For some midwives, especially those who considered their activeness to be a lifetime career, their work took on religious dimensions as they considered themselves engaged in a kind of "ministry building." Like certain African- American "granny midwives,"⁷⁰ some Mennonite midwives felt a religious calling. While Mennonite midwife-healers did not constitute the kind of identifiable religious order of nursing that has been profiled elsewhere – though some were in fact trained equally deaconesses in Russia – neither were they strictly lay caregivers, since within Mennonite communities the lines betwixt "religious" and "lay" were blurred, if they existed at all.⁷¹ The midwife thus oftentimes functioned as a spiritual caregiver as well, specially when the presence of a male minister – a man of any kind – was considered inappropriate in the birthing room.

Unproblematic celebrated references point to this: for example, Margareta Neufeld Thiessen attended to the "spiritual and physical needs" of residents of the village of Klippenfeld in Russian federation. At one occasion, she was called to a woman'due south bedside and, while dealing with her concrete needs, also responded to the adult female'due south feet over personal conservancy and reportedly left her in peace.⁷² One woman recalled that the midwife who attended her prayed throughout the unabridged nascence process: ". . . and once the babe was built-in, she knelt down beside the bed and thanked God for being with the states and that the babe had come into the world, and that child and mother were alive."⁷³ That a certain common spiritual demeanor was required of both midwife and undertaker is implied, though non stated explicitly, in the following clarification of Barbara Shuh: "In her function as a mid-wife ministering at the birth of a kid she rejoiced with the family. When the death of a loved one in the domicile was imminent, Barbara . . . without hesitation, joined the family in their walk through the valley of sorrow."⁷⁴ Barbara'due south role as community midwife clearly carried religious significance as well, whether she was charming away a malady, assisting a adult female in childbirth, or attention at a deathbed.

Mennonite rurality – which for the majority persisted until after the mid-20th century – besides enhanced the midwife's part within this item community. I chronicler of Mennonite funeral practices in pioneer settings observed that in villages with less then 500 people, the only professional care for the sick and dying was a "self-trained midwife."⁷⁵ Pelee Island in Lake Erie, where several dozen Mennonite families sharecropped tobacco beginning in the late 1920s, was one customs that relied on several midwives for healthcare, peculiarly during the long winter months when access to the mainland was express or impossible. My ain female parent was born on the island with the assistance of Anna Wiebe, who trained as a nurse in Russia and served the islanders for 25 years.⁷⁶ Similarly, when a small grouping of Mennonites established a remote settlement at Reesor in northern Ontario in 1925, the nearest hospital was in the town of Hearst, 27 miles away and attainable only by a daily train. And, since the "main support needed was at the fourth dimension of birthing," the small immigrant group soon looked to women within their own community to serve as midwives. One of these was Frieda Isaak, who had prior midwifery experience in Ukraine, and whose first commitment in Reesor was a gear up of twins born after a very difficult labor. Isaak, who was chosen an "affections of mercy," traveled on skis or with canis familiaris and sled with supplies on her back when called to a childbirth during the long winters of northern Ontario.⁷⁷

While the midwifery skills of Mennonite women contributed to ethnic cohesion within their own religious communities – indeed were crucial to the existence of separatist communities – and thus helped to maintain definitional and identity boundaries for the Mennonites, such skills also drew them exterior of those boundaries towards interaction with their neighbors. Sarah Dekker Thielman's obituary notes that i highlight of her midwifery career in Siberia was being able to assist Russians, Kyrgyzstanis, and other peoples of the region.⁷⁸ In Canada, Katharina Hiebert offered her services to French, English language, and possibly Métis women, as did midwife Anna Toews.⁷⁹ The immigrant midwife thus nurtured ethnic stability amongst her own people, and offered continuity of custom and tradition through the immigrant experience, but she also created a context for positive interactions and relationships to develop with non-Mennonite neighbors in Canada. Midwives helped to maintain ethnic and religious homogeneity in the birthing room but, significantly, they likewise served every bit conduits to the exterior globe.

Given the important position that midwives held in Mennonite communities, it is peradventure not surprising that it was a Mennonite midwife who led the manner in moving a revitalized midwifery profession towards recognition and licensing in Ontario in the early 1990s. Elsie Cressman, at present retired in New Hamburg, has been described as "the woman who pioneered the field of midwifery in Canada," at least in the modernistic era.⁸⁰ Later on obtaining a nursing degree in Kitchener, she spent close to 25 years in Africa nether the auspices of a Mennonite missions agency, where she defenseless hundreds of babies. Later formal midwifery grooming in England, Elsie returned to Canada, where she discovered a potent desire for dwelling births amid the Old Order communities in Waterloo region, a wish that was also growing in the full general population. At that bespeak, she basically "hung out her shingle" and let information technology exist known she was trained and prepared to offering women midwife-assisted births at home. By now, hundreds of women have followed in her footsteps and are working as professional midwives in the province.

Decision

According to her 1968 obituary, Sarah Dekker Thielman suffered from depression in the last years of her life. Written by "The Leftbehind Ones," presumably her family, the cursory commodity in the Mennonitische Rundschau says that "During this fourth dimension, the Lord revealed to her the futileness of life, and how unfit she was for the heavenly life."⁸¹ What a distressing attestation to a adult female who had helped to bring into the world so many new lives, and whose professional skills and presence had been anything but of futile value to communities in Siberia, Saskatchewan, and Ontario. One of Sarah's nieces, reflecting on the inadequate credit given to her aunt compared to her uncle, said that "information technology e'er seemed to me that [being a preacher] was recognized as being more than important, and given more recognition than the healing and midwifery of a placidity wise healer that was Tante Sarah."⁸² Well, I believe Sarah was quite fit for life in heaven and on world. As an immigrant woman, she contributed to the shaping of Canada by helping rural and culturally distinct women to give birth with a piffling less fear of the difficulties and isolation that was their daily existence. Farther exploration of the life and work of Sarah Dekker Thielman, and other women who "made things right," will add more than to our historic understanding of midwifery every bit a circuitous assemblage of labor skills, shaped in item by the degree of training acquired, the location of action, and the ethnicity and other cultural identifiers of the practitioner. While midwife-healers have received scant attention in studies of settlement processes or immigrant community identity, one might surmise that, in the context of groups that chose geographic isolation, a significant degree of ethnic separation, and self-reliance at many levels, the multifaceted services offered past these women were crucial to the well-being of households and ethnic communities. The professionally and informally trained Mennonite midwife offered a Mennonite adult female in labor both the confidence that her birthing assistant was knowledgeable in the techniques of childbirth – including the complications that could arise – and the condolement that a kindred spirit in culture, historical sojourn, and religious sensibility could readily offer.

Notes

Portions of this lecture take appeared or are forthcoming in the post-obit publications: "Midwife-Healers in Canadian Mennonite Immigrant Communities: Women who 'fabricated things right,'" Histoire Sociale/Social History 80 (November 2007): 323-44; Mennonite Women in Canada: A History (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 2008), chapter two; "Catching Babies and Delivering the Dead: Midwives and Undertakers in Mennonite Settlement Communities" in Myra Rutherdale, ed. Caregiving on the Periphery: Historical Perspectives on Nursing and Midwifery in Canada (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 2010). I would similar to acknowledge enquiry assistance from Anna-Lina Aschemeyer, Bethany Leis, Agatha Klassen, and Conrad Stoesz.
^two Katharine Martens and Heidi Harms, In Her Own Voice: Childbirth Stories from Mennonite Women (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1997), 27. See likewise Harvey Kroeker, "Aganetha Barkman Reimer," Preservings 5 (June 1995): 23-24.
³ Sarah Dekker Thielman personal collection, Volume 1057. Eye for Mennonite Brethren Studies (hereafter CMBS), Winnipeg, Manitoba.
^four Biographical information for Sarah Dekker Thielman is taken from the following sources: "Biographical Sketch," in Sarah Dekker Thielman personal collection, Volume 1057, CMBS; Obituary of Sarah Thielman, Mennonitische Rundschau (17 February 1968):11; Alfred H. Redekopp, Jacob Thielmann and Helena Kroeker: A Family History and Genealogy of their Descendants (Winnipeg: A.H. Redekopp, 1988).
^five Letter from Katherine Jantz, Oct four, 2004.
^vi Lorraine Roth, Willing Service: Stories of Ontario Mennonite Women (Waterloo: Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario, 1992), 28-thirty.
⁷ Wendy Mitchinson, Giving Nascence in Canada, 1900-1950 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2002), Table 1, 175.
⁸ J. Howard Kauffman, "Mennonite: Family Life every bit Christian Customs," in Phyllis D. Airhart and Margaret Lamberts Bendroth, eds., Faith Traditions and the Family (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1996), forty-41.
⁹ Lorraine Roth, The Amish and Their Neighbours: The High german Block, Wilmot Township, 1822-1860 (Waterloo: Mennonite Historical Society of Ontario, 1998), 44.
^x Birth Records, Sarah Dekker Thielman personal collection, Book 1057. CMBS, Winnipeg.
¹¹ Walter Klaassen and William Klassen, Marpeck: A Life of Dissent and Conformity (Waterloo and Scottdale: Herald Press, 2008), 243.
¹² Guy F. Hershberger, "Hershberger (Hersberg, Hersberger, Herschberger, Hirschberger, Harshberger, Harshbarger)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1956. Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 5 March 2007
¹³ Ella Neufeldt, Ella's Story: The Journey of a Mennonite Daughter from Poland to Canada (Coaldale, AB: past the author, 2003), 3.
¹⁴ Delbert F. Plett, Johann Plett: A Mennonite Family unit Saga (Steinbach, MB: Crossway Publications, 2003), 108. Quotes are from Leland Harder, The Blumstein Legacy, 13.
¹⁵ John B. Toews, "Childbirth, Affliction and Death Among the Mennonites in Nineteenth- Century Russia," in Mennonite Quarterly Review lx. three (July 1986): 462.
¹⁶ Anna Ens, ed., The House of Heinrich: The Story of Heinrich Epp (1811-1863) of Rosenort, Molotschna and His Descendants (Winnipeg: Epp Book Committee, 1980), 129.
¹⁷ Cecilia Benoit and Dena Carroll'south survey of Canadian midwifery focuses on the traditional and lay aspect of midwifery in settlement communities. See "Canadian Midwifery: Blending Traditional and Mod Practices," in Christina Bates, Dianne Dodd, and Nicole Rousseau, eds., On All Frontiers: Four Centuries of Canadian Nursing (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Printing, 2005), 27-41.
¹⁸ Regine Breuninger de Guenther, Geburtshilfe in der Anfangszeit der Kolonie Menno (Loma Plata: Geschichtskomitee der Kolonie Menno, 2004), 25.
¹⁹ Shirley B. Bergen, "Life of Mrs. Dr. Thiessen (nee Catherine Bornn) – 1842-1915," unpublished manuscript, Mennonite Heritage Middle, Winnipeg, Manitoba.
^twenty Irma Epp, Lillian Harms, and Lora Sawatsky, "Midwifery: A Ministry," in Hamlet of Unsettled Yearnings. Yarrow, British Columbia: Mennonite Promise, ed. Leonard Neufeldt (Victoria, BC: TouchWood Editions, 2002), 17-22.
²¹ Anne Konrad, And in Their Silent Beauty Speak: A Mennonite Family in Russian federation and Canada, 1790-1990 (Toronto: by the writer, 2004), 159, 422-23.
²² Roth, Willing Service, 50.
²³ Obituary of Margarete Siemens Dueck, Mennonite Brethren Herald, 20 Apr 1990, 27.
²⁴ Lorilee G. Scharfenberg, "Helena (Klassen) Eidse (1861-1938)," Preservings eight (June 1996): 51-54.
²⁵ Roth, Willing Service, 216-7.
²⁶ Lori Scharfenberg, "Helena Eidses' Medical Bag," Preservings 9 (December 1996): 53.
²⁷ Charlotte One thousand. Borst, Communicable Babies: The Professionalization of Childbirth, 1870-1920 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Printing, 1995).
²⁸ See peculiarly Mitchinson, Giving Nascency in Canada. The contend is also explored in Deborah Gorham, "Birth and History," Histoire Sociale/Social History 17.34 (November 1984): 383- 94.
²⁹ Teaching Material to Accompany Nascence Records, Sarah Dekker Thielman personal collection, Volume 1057. CMBS, Winnipeg.
³⁰ Shirley Bergen, "Dr. Katherina Born Thiessen: A Woman Who Fabricated a Departure," Mennonite Historian (September 1997): eight.
³¹ Scharfenberg, "Helena (Klassen) Eidse (1861-1938)," Preservings 8 (June 1996): 51-54.
³² Hilda J. Born, Maria's Century: A Family Saga (Abbotsford, BC: by the writer, 1997), 35.
³³ Regina Doerksen Neufeld, "Katharina Hiebert (1855-1910): Midwife," Preservings ten (June 1997): 15.
³⁴ Kroeker, "Aganetha Barkman Reimer."
³⁵ Luann Practiced Gingrich, "A Mother's Garden: Planting Seeds of Promise" (unpublished manuscript, 1997), iii, 5.
³⁶ Plett, Johann Plett, 536. For story about Maria Reimer Unger by Sara Loewen, see A. C. Reimer, Peter R. Reimer 1845-1915 Family Book (Steinbach, MB: np, 1984), 72.
³⁷ Cathy Barkman, "Anna Toews (1868-1933): Midwife," Preservings 10 (June 1997): 51.
³⁸ Jacob H. Janzen, Leben und Tod (Waterloo: by the author, 1946), 6.
³⁹ Epp, et al., "Midwifery: A Ministry," 27.
⁴⁰ Royden K. Loewen, Blumenort: A Mennonite Community in Transition, 1874-1982 (Steinbach, MB: The Blumenort Mennonite Historical Society, 1983), 219.
⁴¹ Letter from Katherine Jantz, October 4, 2004.
⁴² Telephone chat with Irene Dyck, December 2006.
⁴³ Mitchinson, Giving Birth in Canada, 345, northward 81.
⁴⁴ Lorraine Roth, Willing Service: Stories of Ontario Mennonite Women (Waterloo: Mennonite Historical Lodge of Ontario, 1992), 210.
⁴⁵ "Waldheim Residents to Celebrate 70th Wedding Ceremony May 18," newspaper clipping, source unknown, dated 1939. Volume 1159, Mennonite Heritage Centre, Winnipeg.
⁴⁶ Regina Doerksen Neufeld, "Katharina Hiebert: Manitoban Pioneer Midwife," Mennonite Historical Message 61 (July 2000):4.
⁴⁷ Regina Doerksen Neufeld, "Katherina Hiebert (1855-1910): Midwife," Preservings x (June 1997):14.
⁴⁸ Epp, et al., "Midwifery: A Ministry," 20.
⁴⁹ Margaret Klassen Neufeld, "My Grandmother was an Undertaker: A Tribute to Anganetha Dyck Bergen Baerg (1859-1942)," Mennonite Historian 24.one (March 1998): 2, nine.
^fifty Esther Epp Harder, "Rites of Dying, Death, and Burial" in Hamlet of Unsettled Yearnings. Yarrow, British Columbia: Mennonite Promise, ed. Leonard N. Neufeldt (Victoria, BC: TouchWood Editions, 2002), half dozen.
⁵¹ Al Reimer, "Johann R. Reimer (1848–1918): Steinbach Pioneer," in Preservings nine (1996): 41.
⁵² D. Plett, "Elisabeth Rempel Reimer: Matriarch of Steinbach," Preservings 9 (December 1996): five.
⁵³ J. Grand. Guenter, ed., Osler ... The Early Years and the One Room Schoolhouse #1238 (1905-1947) (Osler, SK: Osler Historical Museum, 1999), 54.
⁵⁴ Linda Buhler, "Mennonite Burial Customs," Preservings seven (Dec 1995): 51.
⁵⁵ Gélis, quoted in Brian Burtch, Trials of Labour: The Re-emergence of Midwifery (Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1994), 55. Actual source is Jacques Gélis, History of Childbirth: Fertility, Pregnancy and Nascency in early on Modern Europe (Cambridge, Britain: Polity Press, 1991), 110.
⁵⁶ Toews, "Childbirth, Disease and Decease," 462.
⁵⁷ Mitchinson, Giving Birth in Canada, 175.
⁵⁸ LaVerna Klippenstein, "The Diary of Tina Schulz," Retention Memories: Settling in Western Canada, ed. Lawrence Klippenstein and Julius Grand. Toews (Winnipeg: Centennial Publications, 1977), 231; Henry Klippenstein, Thicker than Water: The Uncensored, Unabridged and Completely Unbiased Account of the Life and Times of the Dietrich Klippenstein Family unit (North Vancouver: Loon Books, 2004), 84.
⁵⁹ Linda Buhler, "The Apple tree," Preservings half-dozen (June 1995): 27.
⁶⁰ Martens, In Her Own Voice, fourteen.
⁶¹ Ibid., 28.
⁶² Roth, Willing Service, 221-22.
⁶³ Martens, In Her Ain Vox, 14.
⁶⁴ Due east-mail to the author from John Rempel, Nov xiii, 2008.
⁶⁵ Abe J. Dueck, Concordia Hospital, 1928-1978 (Winnipeg: Christian Press, 1978), three.
⁶⁶ The to a higher place information is from an interview by the author with Lydia Wichert, Vineland, Ontario, November 1, 2008.
⁶⁷ Nascency Records, Sarah Dekker Thielman personal collection, Volume 1057. CMBS, Winnipeg.
⁶⁸ Bergen, "Dr. Katherina Born Thiessen," 8.
⁶⁹ Interview, Lydia Wichert.
⁷⁰ Detrice Chiliad. Barry and Joyceen S. Boyle, "An Ethnohistory of a Granny Midwife," Journal of Transcultural Nursing 8.ane (July-December 1996): 13-18.
⁷¹ For discussions that differentiate betwixt religious and lay nursing, see essays in Christina Bates, Dianne Dodd, and Nicole Rousseau, eds., On All Frontiers: Four Centuries of Canadian Nursing (Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 2005), peculiarly Judith Immature and Nicole Rousseau, "Lay Nursing from the New France Era to the Cease of the Nineteenth Century (1608-1981)," 11-25, and Pauline Paul, "Religious Nursing Orders of Canada: A Presence on All Western Frontiers," 125-38.
⁷² Esther Epp-Tiessen, J.J. Thiessen: A Leader for His Fourth dimension (Winnipeg: CMBC Publications, 2001), 3.
⁷³ Martens, In Her Own Phonation, 12.
⁷⁴ "Excerpts from Diaries of Barbara (Bowman) Shuh, 1904-1920," in Diaries of our Pennsylvania High german Ancestors, 1846-1925 (Kitchener: The Pennsylvania German Folklore Social club of Ontario, 2002), 45.
⁷⁵ Ben Fast, "Mennonite Pioneer Funeral Practices," Saskatchewan Mennonite Historian 5. one (March 2000):13.
⁷⁶ N. North. Driedger, The Leamington United Mennonite Church: Institution and Evolution, 1925-1972 (Altona, MB: D.Due west. Friesen, 1973), 168-69; Astrid Koop, The Mennonite Settlement on Pelee Isle, Ontario: Memories of Life on "The Isle," 1925- 1950 (Leamington, ON: Essex-Kent Historical Association, 1999).
⁷⁷ Hedy Lepp Dennis, Memories of Reesor: The Mennonite Settlement in Northern Ontario, 1925-1948 (Leamington, ON: Essex-Kent Historical Clan, 2001), 131-33.
⁷⁸ Obituary of Sarah Thielman, Mennonitische Rundschau (17 Feb 1968), 11.
⁷⁹ Regina Doerksen Neufeld, "Katherina Hiebert (1855-1910): Midwife," Preservings 10 (June 1997):fourteen.
⁸⁰ "Elsie Cressman: A Legacy of Birth," MediaMedia Documentary Proposal: Elsie Cressman, no engagement. See as well www.mediamedia.ca.
⁸¹ Obituary of Sarah Thielman, Mennonitische Rundschau (17 February 1968), xi.
⁸² Alphabetic character from Katherine Jantz, Oct four, 2004.

Photograph Credits

Susanna Epp: Anna Ens, ed., The House of Heinrich: The Story of Heinrich Epp (1811-1863) of Rosenort, Molotschna and His Descendants (Winnipeg: Epp Volume Committee, 1980).
Sarah Dekker Thielman: Courtesy of Carol Nickel
Morija Deaconess House: Mennonite Church Us Archives (Bethel College, Northward Newton, KS)
Sarah Dekker Thielman's midwife journal graphic: Eye for Mennonite Brethren Studies, Winnipeg, MB
Helena Klassen Eidse: Preservings (D.F. Plett Historical Inquiry Foundation, Winnipeg, MB)
Aganetha Barkman Reimer: Preservings (D.F. Plett Historical Inquiry Foundation, Winnipeg, MB)
Katherine Hiebert: Preservings (D.F. Plett Historical Research Foundation, Winnipeg, MB)
Anna Martens: From J. M. Guenter, ed., Osler ... The Early Years and the Ane Room School #1238 (1905-1947) (Osler, SK: Osler Historical Museum, 1999).

Marlene Epp is Associate Professor of History and Peace and Conflict Studies at Conrad Grebel Academy Higher. Her research and writing accept focused on the historic lives and experiences of Mennonite women. She is the author of Mennonite Women in Canada: A History (University of Manitoba Printing, 2008) and Women without Men: Mennonite Refugees of the 2d Globe War (Academy of Toronto Press, 2000).

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Source: https://uwaterloo.ca/grebel/publications/conrad-grebel-review/issues/winter-2010/women-who-made-things-right-midwife-healers-canadian