Rosenort is celebrating its 150th anniversary this weekend alongside its annual Summer Festival. According to local historian Lorilee Scharfenberg, the twin villages of Rosenort and Rosenhoff were settled by 31 families in 1874, comprising of 80 people. She has a direct, family connection to that group.
"My great, great grandfather David Klassen was one of the men chosen by the Mennonites in his area (today known as Ukraine) to represent them, and to do a long trip through the Americas to try and find what their next home might be," she explained "So, they had a a meeting and he was sent off. They had a few delays. They came in through New York, and explored through Pennsylvania, Indiana, I believe all the way up to Fargo, North Dakota, and then came to the fairly new city of Winnipeg and to the Forks, and were shown around different parts of Manitoba. (He) did quite a lengthy exploration of the Portage area, all the way up to Riding Mountain, down into what is now known as the Winkler area, and into what is now the Steinbach area."
How did Klassen end up choosing the area along the Scratching River that ultimately led to the establishment of the twin villaages of Rosenort and Rosenheff?
"It's been debated for a while, but he (Klassen) was partial to the land near Portage, but there were a lot of Metis land claims going on, and they really wanted no part in that," noted Scharfenberg. "Mennonites were non-resistant pacifists who didn't want to fight with their neighbours. So, they were looking around. He was not very satisfied with the land in Steinbach, too stony and rocky with ridges, and he just didn't think it was ready for the plow, and he was correct. So he had also, I guess in passing, seen this little area on the river of the Scratching River. So, he negotiated for a little while in the land office on arrival. When they landed at the Forks he negotiated for a while, and was told they would set aside the land in this area for his family and some of the other families that had come."
And is it true the communities were named after the rose? The answer is, yes.
"Rosenhoff, which was the name I guess David Klassen created out of Low German words, which means 'yard of roses'," she shared. "Rosenort, which was 'place of roses', and he fell in love with the roses that were blooming when he came to visit in August of 1873. He saw that and thought it was rich and ready for the plow, so both agriculturally and otherwise, he thought it was a beautiful area."
Like other communities in the Red River Valley, Rosenort has been devastated by flooding over the years, but perhaps more so than others, a lot of its history has been claimed by those flood waters.
"There's a few items in the Morris Museum, but yeah, our older buildings, a lot of the tractors, a lot of the artifacts that most people have, a lot of people lost those in the floods through the years," she said. "We were hammered in '48, '50, '66, '79 just a lot of floods that have come through the area. David Klassen was warned about this. He actually had visited with a First Nations person early on his arrival in the area, and they warned him he could probably settle in this area, but it was called "the land of rushing waters" by them, and it just wasn't a place to really dwell permanently, because a lot of that would be removed."
Meanwhile, during this weekend’s Rosenort Summer Festival, Scharfenberg will be presenting a look back at the community’s beginning, how it's grown, faced challenges and become a key part of the Red River Valley’s fabric. She will narrate video featuring images describing the four main values held by residents in the early days as well as today.
"What I've tried to do in my presentation is to focus on four of the main values that are held by the communities of the twin villages of Rosenort and Rosenhoff, Riverside now, and those values are faith, family, education and enterprise," she explained. "We are strong believers in the freedom of all of those, and that's something we're centered on. I think, despite all the adversities, the fires, the floods, grasshopper plagues, very cold winters, crop failures, dirty '30s, all those things that we've lived through, what we still value today are those four values faith, family, education and enterprise."
You can join Lori Scharfenberg for her Rosenort 150th history presentation Saturday afternoon at 2pm and then again at 8pm on the stage at Westfield Community Park.
You can listen to her talk about the early history of Rosenort and Rosenhoff, as well as her particular favourite piece of history from the communities, in the interview below.