side of present-day Main Street along the creek, where they founded the village of Steinbach, taking the name "Steinbach" from the village where they lived in Borosenko. Contrary to the preferences of the Canadian government, the early settlers of Steinbach, like other Mennonite villages, organized the village into a Strassendorf, or street village, with each family occupying a long narrow strip known as a Wirtschaft. In the first year they built temporary shelters known as semlin, before building more permanent housebarns. Most of the settlers were farmers, but in a somewhat urban setting, and lived, to some degree, communally, and shared a common pasture at the end of the village. They started a school in the first year, and in the following year of 1875 built a school and teacherage. Steinbach's Main Street was hacked out of thick poplar bush along the creek, where a bison trail ran, a trail that was still used by Indigenous people during Steinbach's early years. In June 1875, Steinbach's spiritual leader Rev. Jakob Barkman, who had led the Kleine Gemeinde to Canada, drowned in the Red River, along with Jakob K. Friesen on a trip to Winnipeg for supplies. This left the community without religious leadership for some time. After a plague of grasshoppers destroyed the crops in 1876, residents of Steinbach met in Blumenort to discuss the possibility of migrating to Minnesota or Nebraska. However, 60-year-old matriarch Elizabeth Rempel Reimer persuaded the group to stay in Steinbach, a stirring and historically significant speech which signified the important role of women in the community and resulted in Steinbach's continued survival as a community, unlike dozens of other East Reserve villages which have since disappeared. In 1877, Lord Dufferin toured Manitoba's new Mennonite settlements and stopped just west of Steinbach where he could see "half a dozen villages" in the distance. A crowd of 1000 people greeted his arrival. That same year, the first windmill in the town was built by Abraham S. Friesen. The death of Rev. Barkman left Steinbach without religious leadership for a number of years, creating a vacuum that made the villagers receptive to John Holdeman when he visited in 1881. After Holdeman's visit, many locals from the Kleine Gemeinde joined his new church, Church of God in Christ, Mennonite. This was the first of many schisms and revivals in Steinbach and eventually the town would be known for having dozens