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- in Brotherfield 1874 - 1884
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Brotherfield, SD
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New Home, ND
- Location and Plat Map
Shafter, CA
- 1953 Duerksen Reunion
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Mennonite Brethren
- Origin of Brotherfield MB
Seventh-day Adventist
- Origin of Brotherfield SDA
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Early photographs of the Brotherfield Russian Mennonite Immigrants indicate some adapted quickly to American culture. The formal portraits were taken in the Parker, SD Kidder Gallery. Clearly they were abandoning modest "Old country" clothes for more elaborate fashions. They began to attend meetings where Adventist proselytizers presented "Bible Truths" with large colorfully illustrated charts and literature, printed in German, specifically for the "Mission Fields at Home" described by Adventist leader Ellen G. White.

The first Adventist gospel tent in Dakota Territory had been erected in Elk Point, SD a month before the train carrying Guenthers, Walls and Dirksens passed by in late July of 1876. On the way to uncle Daniel Unruh's home, they passed through Swan Lake where a Seventh-day Adventist congregation was well established. By 1878 fifty-two members worshiped there in a large new church. In 1879 Seymour Whitney organized the Dakota SDA Tract and Missionary Society to distribute Adventist literature throughout the Territory. That same year the first Dakota Territory Adventist Camp Meeting was held thirty miles east of Brotherfield, in Sioux Falls. James and Ellen G. White were present. They received the first issues of a new German missionary journal, Die Stimme Der Warheit (The Voice of Truth), printed specifically for the the German-Russian immigrants. They also began the organization of the scattered Adventist congregations into a Dakota Conference.

"In November of 1881, German-born Louis Richard Conradi came to Dakota to work among the Germans. Beginning his work among Sunday-keeping Mennonites at Brotherfield, eight miles north of Parker, Conradi initially had little success because of 'the use of stimulants and the great prejudice against immersion' on the part of the group with whom he had begun working. Among the obstacles Conradi listed that had to be overcome....were an aversion to the ordinance of humility (foot washing), ...their convictions against taking judicial oaths, ...their requirement that the heads of women be covered in public, ownership of guns by the Adventist believers, use by the Germans of fermented wine...(and the) wearing of hats and ruffles on dresses by some Adventist women." Nothing To Fear 1983 - Robert DuPuy

"Another of the early German workers was L. R. Conradi, who as a young Catholic, had accepted the truth in Iowa. He started working by taking subscriptions for "Die Stimme Der Wahrheit." In 1881 he was sent to foster the interest among the German people in South Dakota and begun working among the German Mennonites, immigrants from Russia, near Brotherfield and Childstown. Within a few months a Seventh-day Adventist church of thirty members was organized in Brotherfield. One of the charter members was A. J. Voth." Mission Fields at Home" p. 52 - L. M. Halswick.

After 1886 the Brotherfield Adventists moved to Logan County in North Dakota. They came in response to Adventist leaders urging them to settle new land in the north, where new German speaking immigrants were arriving. Joseph A. Coulter wrote, "In the spring of 1885...homesteaders (mostly Russian-Germans) flocked in and began to take up homesteads all around us..."

The Brotherfield Adventists located a few miles east of Napoleon, near Richville in German Township, Logan County. They stayed only long enough to prove their land then sold out and moved further north to new land northwest of Jamestown in Stutsman County.

By 1899 at least thirty-nine new Adventist settlers were in Lowery Township where they formed the New Home congregation. They met for a time in Mrs. Frank Wall's sod house. They are described in this 1938 letter written by A. A. Dirksen and published on pages 57 and 58 of Dakota Pioneers.

In 1903 a new frame church building was constructed on the Wentland property. It served as the New Home SDA Church until 1953 when it, and all contents, were destroyed in a fire. Within one year a new church had been built.

The May 8, 1954 dedication included a reading of this History of the New Home Church which includes names of the founding families. Combining these with names listed in A. A. Dirksen's 1938 letter and Dakota historian George Barron's List of 1900 Lowery Township settlers provides this alphabetical list of the earliest New Home Adventist pioneers:

Abraham (A. A.) Dirksen	Christina Huget Dirksen	Henry Dirksen	Justina Dirksen Dirksen	Jacob Dirksen	Sarah Funk Dirksen	John Dirksen	Hanna Ulrich Dirksen	David Funk	Mary Fast Funk
Henry Heinrichs	Justina Fast Heinrichs	Isaac Heinrichs	Minnie Mattheis Heinrichs	Peter Hiebert	Minnie Buller Hiebert	Mary Dirksen Hiebert and husband John	Jake Thiesen	Anna Funk Thiesen	David Toews
Maria Kroeker Toews	Dan Unruh	Catharina Teichgraef Unruh	Maria Fast Unruh and husband Daniel	John Voth	Ida Fast Voth	Mary Wall	Frank Wall	Annie Toews Wall

Included, but not pictured, are New Home Adventist Pioneers Heinrich Bohl, Cornelius Dirksen, Elisabeth Dirksen Heinrichs, John and Nettie Funk Rau, Frank and Lena Richert, Andrew Schmidt, Peter and Mary Richert Sperling, George Sperling and Michael Stern.

In 1910 the railroad bypassed New Home in favor of a line through Woodworth. Many of the New Home Adventists began to migrate toward Woodworth, Jamestown, Oregon, Kansas, Oklahoma and Shafter, California, where many can be found in the 1915 - 1923 Shafter German Church record book.

Today nothing remains of the New home Village and post office. The New Home Church and Cemetery is still where it was first built in 1903, preserved by an active congregation.