"Initially in both the Chortitza and Molotschna settlements the structured and formalized piety of the Old Church gave way to the intimacy of private homes, informal Bible discussions, hymn singing, and prayers. In this fashion the Old Church house fellowships of the 1850s became the Brethren churches of the 1860s." John B. Toews.

On January 6, 1860 eighteen people gathered in Elisabethal and signed a document that initiated the formal beginnings of the Mennonite Brethren congregation in Russia.

The origins of Mennonite Brethren in Dakota Territory were advanced in Alexanderthal where three married couples were baptized together on April 26, 1874. The brides were from the Funk farm (#12). Elisabeth, Anna and Sarah, married Abraham and Jacob from the Johann Cornelius Duerksen (Dircks in Prussia) farm and cousin Heinrich Wall, an orphaned son of father Funk's sister, who had been raised with them. A few months later Abraham and Jacob's little sister Eva married Cornelius Guenther.

These four couples chose to emigrate together, following the lead of Elisabeth and Anna's uncle Daniel Unruh who had left Crimea for America in 1873. They and several hundred other Russian Mennonites aboard the SS Vaderland arrived in Philadelphia on July 28, 1876. Within four days they arrived at the railroad's end in Yankton, Dakota Territory. Guenther filed that day for homestead land then the Alexanderthal couples went directly to the home of the Funk women's uncle Daniel Unruh. Jacob and Elisabeth's infant daughter died soon after they arrived. Abraham and Sarah's four year old daughter would also soon die. Without enough money to buy land, as uncle Daniel had done, they moved north to homestead land in an area that would be called Brotherfield.

"They came with the 1860 scars (secession of the Mennonite Brethren) and so distanced themselves from other Mennonites." - Paul Toews

The next year, on May 17, 1877, they formed the Brotherfield Mennonite Brethren, electing Cornelius Guenther and sixteen year old David Funk as leaders. Four days later eight young people joined the congregation through baptism. They were Isaac and Justina Adrian Loewen, Heinrich and Helena Loewen Adrian and their children Peter, Sarah and sixteen year old Katharina, who would marry David Funk the next year. Also baptized that day was Elisabeth Pankratz from Bruderfeld, Crimea.

Cornelius Guenther

David Funk

Eva Dirksen

Heinrich Wall

Jacob Dirksen

Abraham Dirksen

Sarah Funk

Isaac Loewen

Justina Adrian

Having organized the congregation they soon elected Isaac Loewen's brother-in-law Heinrich Adrian to be minister of their new Brotherfield MB Church.

"Mennonites began to arrive in southern Dakota sixteen years before the territory was admitted into the Union in 1889. The great bulk of the immigrants arriving from Russia in the 1870's and 1880's settled in Turner and Hutchinson counties, some thirty miles north of Yankton. Among the settlers that came to Turner County were several M. B. families who began to meet in homes for fellowship as early as 1876. The congregation was organized in 1878 with Heinrich Adrian as leading minister. Adrian, who was ordained as elder in 1881 by Abraham Schellenberg, guided the young and struggling congregation for more than twenty-five years until he moved to Kansas in 1904." A History Of the Mennonite Brethren Church p. 141 - John A. Toews

Similar events were taking place elsewhere on the prairie. In 1879 leaders of several fledgling MB congregations from Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota ad South Dakota gathered at Henderson, Nebraska to organize a conference.
"The purpose for organizing was to build up the churches in their spiritual life, to give expression to the position the Church holds on various points, and to work unitedly in the various church activities." Silver Lake History - Tabor College

The pioneers endured many difficulties. Among them were their MB congregation's internal conflicts which contributed to the loss of many to the Seventh-day Adventists.

"More than any other M. B. church, it appears, this congregation has suffered from the inroads of Seventh-Day Adventism. After a short period of growth and prosperity, thirty-one members left and joined the Adventists because of internal tensions. The church recuperated from this loss and experienced an increase in membership as a result of revivals. An even more severe blow to the church came in 1886, when more than half of its membership, seventy-nine in number, left and joined the Adventists. The congregation also survived this crises but its center shifted further west to Silver Lake.. In 1891 a church was constructed near Silver lake and about three miles southwest of Dolton." A History Of the Mennonite Brethren Church p. 141 - John A. Toews

Heinrich Adrian later wrote,

Many of the remaining Mennonite Brethren began to leave for new land opportunities. Some went to Canada where they became founding members of a new Brotherfield MB Church near Waldheim. By 1913 the few remaining Brotherfield MB had transferred to the Silver lake Church and the old Brotherfield church building was sold. The Silver Lake MB Church disbanded in 2003.

Starting soon after 1886, the Adventists began to Brotherfield. Leaders in the newly organized SDA Dakota Conference were urging them to settle land newly available in Logan County, North Dakota. By the early 1900s they were moving further north again. This time to Lowery Township in Stutsman County. They called this area New Home.

Pages 118 and 119 from A Tale of three Cities: Marion Dolton Monroe