Dutch Mennonites fled for their lives in the sixteenth century. They entered German communities where tolerance for their religious belief and their renowned skill at recovering low land for agriculture, offered temporary protection. Over the course of three centuries, their Dutch language blended with their host's German until the amalgam gained a name of its own, Low German or Plautdietsch.

The earliest written record of specific individuals within these groups occurs in Mennonite church records from the lowlands of Poland's Vistula River. 1809 entries for Voth and Duerksen from Tragheimerweide Church, Barcici, Poland

Within a hundred years they escaped threatened military conscription by migrating again to the Zaporizhia Oblast in Ukraine where they farmed in small villages within in an isolated Mennonite Colony called Molotschna.

By the second half of the 19^th century many of those who came first had become wealthy and powerful. But the young people languished without similar prospects. In the 1860s military conscription threatened again. So they planned emigration again. This time their destination was America. In 1869 Anna Voth married Jacob Buller, a 28-year-old tailor, in the village of Waldheim. Their son Peter J. Buller was born in 1874. They were baptized into the new Mennonite Brethren congregation in 1877. In 1879 they joined Anna's parents, and many more of their fellow Russian Mennonites, and left for America. In 1880 they were living the life of immigrant pioneers on the prairies of Brotherfield Township near Parker, South Dakota.

Anna's uncle Abraham J. Voth had arrived earlier with his father-in-law Daniel Unruh who, with Tobias B. Unruh led a large group of immigrants from Crimea into Dakota Territory during 1873 and 1874. They were well ahead of the Mennonite exodus from Russia. Wealthy and influential, Unruh intended to establish a model village in the new land, similar to those in Russia. To this end he bought train carloads of materials and supplies for the group to build their homes nearby. But things did not go well.

Within a short time some were looking for land of their own elsewhere. Much of the group's initial capital having been spent, some were forced to homestead on free land further north.

It was no coincidence Abraham J Voth's brother Jacob, Anna's father, settled on an adjacent section of land. Many more relatives from Molotschna and Crimea were either here or soon to arrive. Among them were more Bullers, more Unruhs, Heinrichs, Dirksens, Walls, Funks, Adrians, Loewens, Peters, Isaacs, Sperlings and more from Molotschna and Crimea. Like the Buller family, many of these came as a result of their connection to Daniel Unruh. To illustrate with a only few examples, Daniel's older sister Anna married Heinrich Funk whose daughter and niece, Elisabeth and Sarah, married the Dirksen brothers Jacob and Abraham. The Funks and the Dirksens were 1820 pioneer settlers on adjacent farms in another Molotschna village called Alexanderthal where Daniel's three youngest siblings were born. His second daughter Anna Isaac, a Brotherfield immigrant, is buried in Shafter. His son Daniel Jr. followed the Brotherfield Adventists to New Home, where he is buried. Daniel's daughter Elisabeth married Henry Wall who, with his brother Peter, grew up on the Funk farm in Alexanderthal.

The new immigrants soon organized a Mennonite Brethren congregation. Their record book lists Anna's father Jacob, her Uncle Abraham J. Voth, David Toews, Peter Isaac, Peter Heinrich, Heinrich Wedel and many more. But the new congregations were widely scattered on the harsh Dakota prairie. As they had been drawn to a revision of their Mennonite faith and culture in 1860 Russia, they were inquisitive and susceptible to new ideas in America. In 1881 25-year-old Louis R. Conradi arrived to proselytize the Brotherfield Mennonites. His gospel efforts in large tents and visits in private homes precipitated four years of bitter struggle within the community. Some even slashed the buggy tops of others during evangelistic meetings. Anna's father and uncle were among the first to join the Adventists, eventually persuading seventy-seven of their Mennonite Brethren to join the new Brotherfield Seventh-day Adventist congregation in 1886.

As the local conflict subsided many, if not all, responded to organizational calls to join other Adventists in the rapidly growing new (1889) state of North Dakota. The Brotherfield Adventists sold their land and moved to Richville in Logan County. The area was awash with incoming immigrants, but these were not relatives or neighbors from Molotschna and Crimea. As soon as their homesteaded land was Proved up they sold and moved further north to an area named Lowery Township, but which they called New Home. In 1954 Abraham Dirksen wrote, The first work of the (SDA) church in northwest Stutsman County was started at New Home. Henry Heinrichs, Cornelius Dirksen, my brother Henry Dirksen, and a few others, left Logan County to enter new government land south of Sykeston. Between 1897 and 1901 it was open for miles around. Soon others came, Peter Sperling and Dan Unruh (Daniel Unruh's son) with their families from South Dakota. David Funk, my stepfather Jacob Dirksen, Isaac Heinrichs and others from Richville, Logan County bought land and began to build. A church was organized. They met for a time in Mrs. Frank Wall's (sod) home. Later it was agreed that a church building be erected.

The church prospered, a post office was established, and a small village began to grow around it, but there was little opportunity for the immigrant's children. By 1912 it was clear the new railroad tracks, built some 30 miles to the south, would never reach New Home. The children, now 20 and 30 years old, drifted to railroad towns and beyond. The village buildings were abandoned, all now gone but the church. The children married and took their children to Minnesota, Canada, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma and a few came to California, where they began to gather in Shafter. In 1915 they formed an Adventist congregation and recorded their names in a book printed for the purpose by the Adventist conference.

The first Shafter German Church entry is for Peter J Buller, the son born in Russia to Jacob and Anna Voth Buller. After his wife comes the entry for New Home's Henry Heinrich (photo) and his wife Justina Fast. Like Peter, Henry was born in Russia. When his father became desperately ill, he and two older brothers (aged 9, 12 and 13) were sent to America with their mother Elisabeth Dirksen's siblings Eva Guenther, Cornelius, Abraham and Jacob Dirksen. They, like the Henry and Peter Wall families, were drawn to Brotherfield by marriage connections to Daniel Unruh.

The next entries are Peter's sisters Nettie, with husband Aaron Neufeld, and Lena with her husband J C Duerksen. J. C. and his brother C. C. Duerksen were born in Kansas, where their parents had arrived from Russia in 1880. They and their first cousins, the Dakota Dirksens, had lived on the same farm in Alexanderthal, originally settled in 1820 when their fathers, the only sons of the Prussian immigrant Johann Dircks, were children.

C.C. Duerksen's first wife Katie Wall (photo) was a daughter of Henry Wall who, with the 1876 Dakota Dirksen immigrants, had come to Brotherfield following his wife Anna Funk's father Heinrich Funk. Katie died suddenly in 1912 leaving C. C. with two babies. C. C. and second wife Lydia Dollinger's daughter Alice (1915) was the first baby born in Shafter. The next entry is 72-year-old Sister Annie Buller, mother of Peter J, Nettie and Lena. Her death is also recorded the same year. Then follows Henry Heinrich's son Julius. I do not know who the Sinner couple was. Line 13 is Julius Heinrich's sister Elisabeth, whose husband Peter Toews died only six months after their marriage. His brother Abraham B Toews would marry Julius' sister Hulda. Here are his parents and siblings with New Home's David Toews and Jacob and Sarah Dirksen (mother of A. A. Dirksen) in Escondido, CA 1908.

The first 1916 entries list William Neuman and his wife Susan Isaac. Susan's mother Anna Unruh Isaac was 30 years old when she arrived in Brotherfield with her father Daniel Unruh. She entered the Shafter church in 1917 and is buried there.

Photo of the Shafter Congregation