Peter Janzen, elder of the Memrik Mennonite Church, was born in the village of Rudnerweide in the Molotschna settlement in South Russia, the son of Wilhelm Janzen and Agnes Siebert. He was the second child in the family and had two brothers and two sisters. Peter Janzen married Margaretha Isaak and became the father of three sons and five daughters.

In 1885, when the Memrik Mennonite settlement was founded in the province of Ekaterinoslav, Peter Janzen was one of the settlers, locating in the village of Michailovka. In August 1885 Janzen was one of four preachers elected by the settlers, and two years later he was chosen as leading minister of the Memrik Mennonite Church. On 28 June 1888, Peter Janzen was ordained as elder by Elder Goerz. His oldest son Peter became a preacher in the Memrik church in the later 1920s but he emigrated to Mexico.

Peter Janzen served his church faithfully and was loved and respected by his congregation until his death by typhoid fever on 17 November 1918. Because of the civil war raging in Russia, the funeral had to be conducted under great difficulty in the school building of his home village Michailovka, interment taking place in the cemetery of the same village.

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 3, p. 96. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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