The Orthodox Mennonite Church

I have sketched out the early history of the Orthodox Mennonite church in several other posts (“The Dave Martins” and “A Heartbreaking Saga“), but since then I have been learning everything I can about these people.

Early on, I acquired a copy of the General Records of the Orthodox Church, covering the years 1917 to 1991. It is interesting to note that the Orthodox seem to treat the David Martin Church as a sort of prologue to their own church; hence, the inclusion in their church records of the records of the Dave Martin church from its inception in 1917 until mid-1957, when a group of ex-Daves met to start what became the Orthodox church.

Initially, I used that document simply to find a record of events I already knew about, such as my grandparents’ baptisms, marriage, and excommunication from the church, and to discover when exactly other events occurred, including the formation of the Orthodox church and its division into the Elam and Hoover factions.  Later, I started to study the General Records much more closely, tracing particular families, finding how particular people were related to me and to each other, and becoming increasingly astonished at the tangled web—or knot—of relationships that define this remarkable community. Eventually, this past summer, I decided to transcribe the photocopied, hand-written records into a Word document, primarily so it would be easier to search for particular names.

I also read everything I could find out about the Orthodox church on-line. This included an interconnected set of entries in the GAMEO online encyclopedia written by Peter Hoover, as well as his essay “The Pure Church Movement” (which I’ve discussed here). I then bought a copy of the Directory of the Orthodox Mennonite Church in Canada and U.S.A., which lists the names and addresses and children’s names of all of the members of the church, as well as other information about each congregation.

In all of this, I kept coming back to Amos Sherk, partly because I heard from a number of people that he is a really approachable and interesting guy. Amos is my mother’s cousin, but he is only a few years older than me. His mother was my mother’s father’s sister, and his paternal grandmother was my mother’s maternal grandfather’s sister.

Amos was born in 1947, ten years before his parents and many others left the David Martin church to form the Orthodox. In 1975, he was ordained minister in the Hoover faction, and in 1976 he was made bishop. He was one of the few from the Hoover group who reunited with the Elam faction in 1987, and he has been a minister in that church ever since. So, he has been intimately connected with this group of my relatives throughout its history and provides a link back to the Daves, about whom we know so little.

I decided to visit Amos and his wife Annie at their place north of Wroxeter in September. It was a lovely early fall day, and Amos and I chatted for about half an hour outside their little produce store. Our visit kept getting interrupted by customers, so we really only started to get to know each other.

I went back at the beginning of November, on the last day their store would be open this year. This time we visited for over an hour. We told each other more about our lives, discussed a number of our relatives and common acquaintances, and laughed a lot. I was able to ask him a number of the questions that I’d been pondering about the history of his church. Before I left, he gave me a new edition of the General Records, one that he has revised and expanded, with entries right up to December of 2019.

I think I can now write something more accurate about the Orthodox Mennonites.

Beginnings

The David Martin group began when minister David B Martin and his son deacon David W Martin did not attend the Old Order ministers’ spring conference in 1917 and started to hold separate Sunday services with members of their extended family and a few friends. In 1918, the independent Daniel Brubacher group (made up mostly of the Brubacher extended family) joined them, and Daniel was made bishop.

One of the participants in their first communion (May 26 1918) was Peter Hoover, who had recently arrived in Waterloo County from the Old Order Mennonite community in Rainham township on the shore of Lake Erie near Dunnville. Later that year, Peter’s son Menno Hoover also became a member, along with his wife Leah Martin, grand-daughter of preacher David B Martin.

In 1920, the Daniel Brubacher family left the church en masse (minus my grandfather Peter B Martin and 3 of his siblings) to once again meet on their own. But that same year, Menno Sherk, another refugee from the Rainham community, was taken in as a member, with his wife Catherine Martin (daughter of David B) joining in 1921. Enoch Horst was made bishop to replace Daniel Brubacher.

Many other Old Order families joined with the David Martins in the first decade or so, including deacon Franklin Housser from the South Cayuga Old Order congregation near Rainham. Many young adults were baptized and married, and many children were born. My grandfather and his siblings Manoah, Lydia, and MaryAnn married children of John W Martin, David W Martin, and Menno Sherk. The community expanded fairly rapidly, and meetinghouses were built east of Wallenstein and northwest of St Jacobs. But there were also regular excommunications as the group hammered out its ultra-conservative Anabaptist Ordnung, and some members could not adhere to the evolving beliefs and practices.

Between 1930 and 1954, there was relative stability and continued growth. In 1934, my grandmother Lovina’s brother Elam S Martin was ordained minister, and in 1945 a new meetinghouse was built near their father’s place on the Linwood Road. The only excommunications recorded in the General Records in those years are those of my grandparents Peter and Lovina in 1938 (they had been “born again” through the evangelism of the Hawkesville Brethren) and Lovina’s sister Annie (who had fallen in love and run away with Henry Martin, a born-again Old Order) in 1941.

In 1953, however, Menno Hoover, his daughter Mary, and her husband Isaac Bauman were excommunicated. In 1954, Menno’s wife Leah, daughter Rebecca and her husband Daniel Bauman (Isaac’s brother), son Anson and his wife Sarah (daughter of my great-uncle and aunt Manoah and Salinda Martin), and son Abraham and his wife Sarah (daughter of my great-aunt and uncle MaryAnn and Emanuel Sherk) were all excommunicated. A few of these joined a conservative group in Pennsylvania, while the remainder met separately (without a minister, but under the leadership of Anson Hoover). In 1956, minister Elam S Martin and his wife Susie (aunt of Daniel and Isaac Bauman) were excommunicated from the Daves and joined with the Hoovers.

In April 1957, William C Martin, son of (by-now bishop) David W Martin and husband of my great-aunt Lydia Martin, was excommunicated. That September, a group of 8 couples and 12 single adults, under the leadership of deacon Samuel Horst, left the David Martin church and met in the home of great-uncle and aunt Emanuel and MaryAnn Sherk. In 1958, this group joined with the Anson Hoover/Elam S Martin group, as well as a few Reidenbach Mennonite families from Pennsylvania and some Old Colony Mennonites from Mexico, to form a new congregation. On April 6, 1958, twenty married couples and 17 single members held their first communion, with Elam S Martin officiating. This is the beginning of what became the Orthodox Mennonite church.

It seems that the issue that caused these many people to separate from the David Martin group was the interpretation of Matthew 18:15-18, where Jesus outlines how to deal with “sin” in the community:

15 If your brother or sister sins, go and point out their fault, just between the two of you. If they listen to you, you have won them over. 16 But if they will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’ 17 If they still refuse to listen, tell it to the church; and if they refuse to listen even to the church, treat them as you would a pagan or a tax collector. 18 Truly I tell you, whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven.

Traditionally, Mennonites have followed this process, with the intention of helping the sinner see the error of their ways and bring them back into fellowship: speak to them privately; if they don’t listen, take it to the church; if they don’t listen to the church, put them out.  There has been disagreement, however, about whether ex-communicants should also be shunned, or the degree to which they’ll be shunned.

From what I’ve been told, Bishop David Martin had decided that this process wasn’t required at all because those verses weren’t included in the “original” New Testament. I have been told that the people who left thought Bishop Dave was getting too lenient and too arbitrary in his application of church discipline. Elam S Martin and others publicly challenged him and so were put out of fellowship. Others who sided with Elam soon followed.

Early Years

Within the first year (1958-59), the four couples and two single adults from Pennsylvania left the church (and were excommunicated) because of an inability to come to agreement over the Ordnung of the new church. But several other families joined, and there were a number weddings and baptisms. Henry Bowman was ordained minister to work with Elam S Martin, who was made bishop.

In early 1962, the congregation registered themselves as the Orthodox Mennonite church. They also built a meeting house at the corner of Lawson Line and Moser Young Road, northwest of Hawkesville. The first worship service there was held on June 24, 1962 (coincidentally my 9th birthday), and the first funeral on July 21, 1963, when Jacob, the two-month-old son of Elam M (my mother’s cousin) and Annie Martin, was buried in the new cemetery.

Between 1960 and 1970, six married couples and seven single people were taken in as new members. There were 18 weddings, and 34 young adults were baptised. In 1965, Anson Hoover was ordained as minister to assist in the leadership of the growing congregation. On May 14, 1971, the meeting house was destroyed by fire (there was suspicion of arson), but by June 20 they were able to hold services in a new building.

In the mid-1960s, Anson Hoover, on behalf of the Orthodox congregation, joined with Old Order Mennonites and Amish to negotiate with the Ontario government in the creation of a separate parochial school system to serve their communities. Since the late 60s, Orthodox children have always attended these private schools, and congregations in new districts establish new schools before they build meeting houses.

The Elam/Hoover Division

Among the new members were Noah and Melinda (Weber) Brubacher and Ephraim and Saloma (Brubacher) Weber and their families, who joined the church in April 1967. These extended families had left the Old Order church several years earlier and associated first with John Dan Wenger, an ultra-conservative from Virginia (who had ordained Noah as a minister), then with the Reidenbach group of Pennsylvania.

These new members brought with them radical anabaptist ideas that they had absorbed from the Reidenbach group, who had separated themselves from the Groffdale Old Orders as early as 1942. They also brought connections to other radically conservative groups in the USA, including the Amish Christian group of Indiana (formed in the 1890s) and the Titus Hoover group of Pennsylvania (an offshoot of the Stauffer Mennonites). It seems that bishop Elam S Martin, who I’ve heard described as a “real reformer,” was very receptive to these ideas, but some in the congregation were not nearly as enthusiastic.

On February 25, 1974, twenty-five married couples and ten single members (more than half the church) withdrew “on account of serious upheaval … under the leadership of Elam S Martin.” I’ve been told that in the previous few years, there had been 30 significant changes to the Ordnung, and in early 1974 it had been decided that all male members would be required to wear a beard (as was usual among the Amish). This new requirement was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” for those who were weary of constant change.

From this date, there were two Orthodox congregations, usually known as the “Elams” (for bishop Elam S Martin) and the “Hoovers” (for minister Anson Hoover, who was accepted as a member a few weeks after the withdrawal). I am told that the two groups shared the Orthodox meeting house and cemetery (until the Elams moved to Huron County in the 1980s), and that there was no shunning between them. It appears to have been a friendly separation based on differences of biblical interpretation and practice.

The Elam S Martin Group

After the separation, the Elam group was left with 18 married couples and nine single members (45 in total). The leadership consisted of bishop Elam, three ministers, and a deacon, Samuel Horst. In 1978, John Sherk was ordained minister, and, in 1980, he was ordained bishop to assume the duties of the aging Elam S Martin.

This group seems to have continued to experience a fair amount of upheaval and disagreement. There was no communion held in the autumn of 1978, or in the spring or fall of 1979. In 1979, the Elams started to migrate to the area north of Gorrie and Wroxeter, in Huron County, initially buying up farms from members of a failed Old Order Amish settlement.

In 1980, the Noah Brubacher extended family (Noah himself had died in 1977) separated from the church, along with David and Minerva (Weber) Hoover and Sidney and Rebecca (Martin) Bauman. Most of the Noah Brubacher family rejoined the Elams in 1984-85. The David Hoovers and Sidney Baumans led a communal anabaptist community near Linwood in the early 1980s, but returned to the (re-uniting) Orthodox church in 1987.

By the end of 1986, there were about 65 members in the Elam group. Almost all of them were living in the Gorrie area.

The Hoover Group

In early 1974, the Hoover group had 62 members. Anson Hoover was the only ordained minister, and he was soon designated bishop so that he could marry, baptise, and ordain members. By October 1974, Tilman Hoover was ordained deacon, and in April 1975 Amos Sherk was ordained minister.

It appears that there was dissension from the beginning. In March 1976, Bishop Anson and Sarah Hoover, Minister Amos and Annie Sherk, Anson and Katie (Sherk) Martin, and several other couples and single members were excommunicated. By October, Amos and Annie Sherk, Menno and Nancy Brubacher, and Mary Bauman had been accepted back into the Hoover group. Anson and Sarah Hoover and Anson and Katie Martin (and perhaps others) ended up joining the Conservative Mennonite church.

In the absence of Bishop Anson Hoover, the congregation decided that Amos Sherk should “proceed as interim bishop,” and communion was held on October 17. Menno Brubacher and Jesse Bauman were ordained ministers In March 1978 and in October 1981, respectively.

After the 1976 turmoil, there were very few excommunications. Amos Sherk performed a number of weddings, many baptisms, and a few funerals. By the end of 1985, there were 100 baptised members. Amos told me, however, that there was always an undercurrent of dissension, with many members continually grumbling that they would be better off rejoining the David Martin church.

And that’s what happened in the early months of 1986. Several people were excommunicated, and there was open disagreement about whether to receive them back. People quickly started leaving and joining the David Martins, seventy members in total, including deacon Tilman Hoover. The ministers tried to hold services on three Sundays in August, but only one person showed up each time. In the fall of 1986, the ministers were in discussion with the Elam (or Gorrie) group about being accepted into that congregation.

A small number of people, however, were not interested in re-joining either the David Martins or the Elam S Martins. They continued to meet in homes in Waterloo County, under the leadership of Elam M Martin (my mother’s cousin, son of William C and Lydia P Martin). In 1993, they appointed Elam M as their minister, and he obtained a license to marry. Peter Hoover writes that, after Elam’s death (in 2000), some of the group sought membership with the Orthodox church. Elam is buried in the Wroxeter Orthodox Mennonite cemetery.

The Re-United Orthodox Mennonite Church

On April 25, 1987, Ministers Jesse Bauman, Amos Sherk, and Menno Brubacher and their spouses were accepted into fellowship with the Elam S Martin group (Amos gave up the position of bishop—and grew a beard “to keep peace in the family,” he says wryly, with a tug on his grey chin-fringe). The same day, Sidney and Rebecca Bauman and David and Minerva Hoover (who had left the Hoovers in 1980) were also taken in. In late December, the Elias Martin and Elam Sherk families also joined the Elams.

Bishop Elam S Martin was buried in the Howick Orthodox Mennonite cemetery on December 10, 1987.

In the past 30 years, the Orthodox church has expanded dramatically, not only from “natural increase” (they still do have very large families), but also through the absorption of “outsiders.” Throughout the 1990s, a number of families who rejected the progressive changes in the Old Order Mennonite church (allowing electricity and telephones, for example) joined the Orthodox church and moved to the Gorrie community.

There are now two meeting houses in the area, North Howick (on Glenannon Road north of Gorrie) and Wroxeter (on Orange Hill Road north of Wroxeter). Each of these districts is served by a bishop and two deacons; North Howick has four ministers, while Wroxeter has two. A third, smaller group, who live in North Turnberry Township, met in homes from 2000 to 2015, but now meet in the Triple Hills School on Jeffray Line northeast of Wingham. This congregation is served by ministers from the other two groups.

In 1999, at least 10 married couples and 14 single adults from a conservative Old Order community in Huron-Kinloss township in Bruce County (south of Kincardine) joined in two groups. Converts from that Old Order community have continued to filter in over the subsequent years. The Kinloss Orthodox congregation of well over 100 members has a meeting house on Hayes Lake Avenue, east of Holyrood, as well as several schools. It is served by three ministers and a deacon.

In the late 1990s, the Orthodox leadership started correspondence with several Mennonite groups in Kentucky and Pennsylvania. In 1997 and 1998, ministers from Ontario visited those communities and vice versa, with the result that three Orthodox congregations were established in the USA: Snyder County, PA, with one minister and only a handful of members; Trigg County, KY, with a bishop, a minister, and a deacon and about 60 member families; and Fairview (Christian and Todd Counties), KY, with two ministers and a deacon and about 30 member families. There has been a fair bit of travel and inter-marriage between the Canadian and American communities.

There are two extended families who are not from Mennonite backgrounds who have joined the Orthodox church. Christopher and Jacqueline Dyer and their 5 children joined in 1999, as part of the wave of Old Orders from Kinloss Township. Since then, they have had 4 more children. Their 3 oldest children have married into the established Mennonite families in Gorrie and Kinloss. David and Laura Drummond and their 7 children joined in 2000 and live in the Gorrie community. Two of their children are married into Gorrie families and one into a family originally from Kentucky.

In 2004, Orthodox families from southwestern Ontario started migrating to the Desbarats-Bruce Mines area east of Sault Ste Marie. They met in homes until 2010, when they built a meeting and school house on Government Road, Desbarats. They also run a produce market just across the road from the meeting house. About 75 member families are served by a bishop, 2 ministers, and a deacon.

Starting in 2014, about a dozen families have moved to the area around Eganville in Renfrew County, west of Ottawa. They still meet in homes and are served by ministers from southwestern Ontario.

When I went to visit the original Orthodox meeting house near Hawkesville in spring 2020, I was quite shocked to see that it wasn’t there (Google StreetView still shows it sitting rather forlornly in its field of long grass, as it did in June 2013). A quick Google search revealed that it burned down in a suspicious fire in August of the previous year, after being vacant for about 20 years. Thankfully, the old cemetery is still there, with the graves of a number of my relatives still well cared for.

The Wellesley Orthodox Meeting House on Google StreetView, Nov 21, 2020

Conclusion

It appears that after decades of turbulence in the David Martin and Orthodox Mennonite churches, the Orthodox have gained a remarkable level of stability. The church is growing in numbers (it has been suggested that it is the fastest-growing ethno-religious community in Canada), but also in distribution. The farms—even on land in Algoma that had never been farmed very successfully—appear to be prosperous. The records indicate that excommunications are very rare, and Amos Sherk claims that defections of young people are almost unheard of.

In all of this time and through all of this expansion, the Orthodox Mennonites have held to a radically conservative “Pure Church” line (to use Peter Hoover’s designation). They have made almost no accommodation to dominant cultural norms or new technologies. They still do not use tractors, rubber tires, bicycles, cars, electricity, or telephones (although they do ride in cars and use public telephones), and they continue to wear uniform dress in dark and drab colours. The men wear distinctive Amish beards, and the women wear head coverings and bonnets. They are, in short, the most conservative anabaptist group in Canada.

Unlike the David Martins, the Orthodox Mennonites do not shun outsiders or members of other Anabaptist groups, and they are quite open to talking about their beliefs, customs, and history. Thanks to this openness, I am able to write about their community in as much detail as this.

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Sources:

Draper, Barbara. The Mennonites of St Jacobs and Elmira. Kitchener: Pandora Press, 2010.

Ezra Eby Revived! Ontario Mennonite, Amish, and Brethren in Christ family History (http://ezraeby.com).

Hoover, Peter. “Anson Hoover Mennonites (Ontario, Canada).” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. July 2010. Web. 21 Nov 2020. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Anson_Hoover_Mennonites_(Ontario,_Canada)&oldid=162424

Hoover, Peter. “The Pure Church Movement.” Journal of Amish and Plain Anabaptist Studies 6(1):73-99. 2018 (https://kb.osu.edu/bitstream/handle/1811/86024/JAPAS_Hoover_vol6-issue1_pp73-99.pdf).

Hoover, Peter. “Orthodox Mennonite Church.” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. July 2010. Web. 21 Nov 2020. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Orthodox_Mennonite_Church&oldid=163740

Martin, Erwin W and Katie, eds. Directory of the Orthodox Mennonite Church in Canada and U.S.A. Sixth edition, January 1, 2017.

Martin, Jonathan H. “Reidenbach Mennonite Church (Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, USA).” Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. April 2010. Web. 21 Nov 2020. https://gameo.org/index.php?title=Reidenbach_Mennonite_Church_(Lancaster_County,_Pennsylvania,_USA)&oldid=114111

Sherk, Amos. private conversations, September and November 2020.

Sherk, Amos, ed. General Records of the Orthodox Mennonite Church. Unpublished, 2020.