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Abram Andreas Vogt
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Merchant, genealogist, community activist.
Born at Schoenwiese, Chortitza, Russia on 16 December 1887, fifth of ten children of Andreas Vogt (1854-1914) and Aganetha Block (1857-1930), brother of Maria Vogt, he worked as a teacher until he came to Canada in 1923 with his first wife, Elisabeth Epp (1900-1938). While learning English at the Mennonite Collegiate Institute at Gretna, his son Andrew Vogt (1923-1989) was born. They subsequently had three other children: Louise Vogt (1926-1983, wife of Peter J. Thiessen), Hanna Vogt (wife of Abram Rempel), and Margaret Vogt (wife of Jacob Kroeker).
Unable to find a teaching job due to his lack of profiency in English, he rented farmland near Stonewall until 1928 when he moved to Steinbach to open a general store in partnership with two of his brothers. He operated the Vogt Brothers Store until retirement in 1958, the last 16 years alone. He moved to Winnipeg in 1936 and purchased several small stores. In 1959, he married widow Maria Derksen Unger (1889-1977). He was a member of the First Mennonite Church in Winnipeg.
In 1928, he and his sister Maria founded the first Steinbach hospital and it operated privately until the Bethesda Hospital Society built a new hospital. The hospital was then converted into a home for invalids that was taken over by a Steinbach church in 1945. He was a director for the Westgate Mennonite Collegiate in Winnipeg from its origin in 1957 to his death.
After retirement in 1958, he devoted himself full time to Mennonite genealogy, accumulating records on over 150,000 people. In 1967, he built an office in Steinbach to facilitate research and public inquiry. The records were moved by his daughters in 1978 to the newly-built Mennonite Heritage Centre in Winnipeg.
He died at Steinbach on 26 September 1968 and was buried next to his first wife in the Steinbach Pioneer Cemetery.
Obituary [Abram A. Vogt], Winnipeg Free Press, 28 September 1968.
Obituary [Andrew Vogt], Winnipeg Free Press, 24 January 1989, page 32.
“Abram Andreas Vogt (1887-1968): Inspiring genealogist,” Mennonite Historian, Vol. 44, No. 1 (March 2018), pages 3, 8.
Obituary [Abram Rempel], Winnipeg Free Press, 24 March 2009.
Obituaries and burial transcriptions, Manitoba Genealogical Society.
Abram A. Vogt, FindAGrave.
This page was prepared by Gordon Goldsborough and Edward Krahn.
Page revised: 27 March 2023
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