Benjamin Andreas V. DIRKS

Benjamin A. Dircks was born in the village of Karolswalde on the Russian/Ukraine border to Andreas Dircks and Wilhelmina (Foth) Dircks.Benjamin immigrated with his parents as a young boy to America onthe SS City of London out of England and landed in New York harbor on Nov. 18, 1874.The Dircks families arrived in Kansas and shortly moved to properties at Marion, South Dakota where they lived at the time of their marriage on March 10, 1892. Three sibling families, Benjamin A., Henry A. and Augusta (Buller) migrated to Canada, arriving at Rosthern, Saskatchewan 7 April 1899. They found homesteads in the Salem district, 17 miles west of Rosthern near Waldheim.After they filled the Homestead requirements in three years time they returned to Rosthern. The Story of Rosthern - Olde and New Furrows pg. 356 makes some observations. Benjamin became a butcher, Henry remained childless and worked at Peter Wiebe's Flour Mill, Buller (husband of Augusta) owned a shop in which among other things hesold a popular nailing machine.They participated in 1902 as the Evangelical (later the Evangelical United Brethren - EUB) Church was forming. At the January 1903 organizational meeting J.D.Buller (ordained in 1915 as minister of the Zoar Mennonite Church in Waldheim) and Benjamin Dircks were named two of its first trustees. Mr. Buller became its first Sunday School Superintendent.In 1906 the threemoved back to their homesteads northwest of Waldheim. A railroad spur reaching north from Dalmeny, Saskatchewan, passed through the Town of Waldheim in 1908. Henry Dirks soon moved to the Town of Waldheim settling just east of the railway tracks and opened a general merchandise store. Buller opened the town's patent medicine drug store.

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