Jacob Hoover

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Jacob Hoover's Letter to Bishop Thielmann Meier (Dilman Moyer), 1862

In the mid-1800s Mennonite families of the Niagara District -- the Rainham congregation includes -- suffered a sharp identity crisis. All around them Protestants experienced glorious revivals and the mission emphasis took young men and women from Canada-West (now southern Ontario) to foreign fields far and wide. Many young Mennonites felt restless. In the Moyer congregation at Vineland Bishop Jacob Gross and minister Daniel Hoch led numerous families into "born again" fellowships where prayer and camp meetings attracted crowds from all denominations. Both Thielmann Meier and Jacob Hoover of Rainham shared deep concern and common distress on what was happening.

What good can come out of confusion? Out of worldliness, or careless living?

What happens when humility, nonconformity and obedience give way to religious emotionalism?

Jacob Hoover prayed much (see his obituary below), and not without reason. Of his eleven children, only three "stayed plain" (Daniel, Peter and Lydia). And the rest of them, inspired by the great revivals, all found their way into main-stream Canadian society.

Jacob wrote this letter in German, but it was later translated to English by Peter Boschart, an Amish-Mennonite brother from Milverton, Ontario, for the Rainham Mennonite Minister, A. Lewis Fretz.

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