Biographical Sketch

Abraham Kroeker, minister and writer of the Mennonite Brethren Church, was born in Rosenort, Molotschna, south Russia on December 11, 1863, to Jacob Kroeker and Sarah Wiens. He received some secondary education by private instruction. By the time he was seventeen he began teaching in the Mennonite villages, which he did from 1881–1888. At the age of nineteen he joined the Mennonite Brethren church and in 1891, he went to Rumania for three years as a missionary. He married Agatha Langemann on September 10, 1892, and to them nine children were born.

In 1894, he moved his family to Spat, Crimea where his chief occupation for the next ten years was farming. In 1897 he began to enter the publication work with his cousin Jacob Kroeker. In this year the two began to publish the Christlicher Familien Kalendar which they did until 1918. From 1900–1905 they published the Christliches Jahrbuch, and 1899–1917 the Christlicher Abreisskalender, which were all widely circulated among the Mennonites in Russia and America. He moved to Halbstadt in 1904. A year earlier, in 1903, they began to publish the Friedensstimme, a Mennonite Brethren based paper. This paper continued until 1920. In 1904, he was one of the founding members of the publishing house, Raduga, based in Halbstadt.

In 1921, Kroeker left Russia and arrived in America in 1922. He lived in Winnipeg for a year and then moved to Mountain Lake, Minnesota. His family joined him in 1924. Here he operated a book store and helped edit Der Mithelfer with N.N. Hiebert. He edited and wrote no less than seven books. He died in Mountain Lake, Minnesota on November 22, 1944.

Based on Mennonite Encyclopedia.