The DRAPER, BROWN, CARPENTERS and our other early families who settled in the New England Colonies were founders, settlers, soldiers, philosophers, and preachers. Their lives were devoted to their religious beliefs and  most led a "Hard Scrabble" existence. Their descendants fought in the French and Indian War, American Revolution, the Civil War, "tamed the Old West", and eventually settled all over North America.

The WARKENTIN family were Mennonites. They moved from the Netherlands in the 16th century to Western Prussia where Johann was born in the village of Blumenort in 1760. In 1782 Catherine the Great of Russia invited the Mennonite people to settle on land that was being opened up in the southern Ukraine. In 1804 while Napoleon's Armies were rampaging across Europe, Johann and his family started the long trek to their new home in the Ukraine.

Just seventy one years later in 1875, Jacob Warkentin, Johann's great grandson along his foster parents and thousands of other Mennonites migrated to North America and settled in Manitoba, Minnesota, Kansas, Nebraska. Jacob settled in Manitoba. The migration saved thousands of families from the horrors of the Russian revolution and its aftermath forty two years later. 

Our Mennonite Families - This section includes the Warkentin and all related families including, Braun, Doerksen, Friesen, Hiebert, Thiessen.

 Our New England Families - This section includes the Draper and all related families including, Bender, Brown, Camp, Carpenter, Choque, Crouch, Jackson, Pennock, Worster