Claas Epp Jr.

Claas Epp Jr.[1] (21 September 1838 – 19 January 1913) was a Russian Mennonite minister known for leading his followers into Central Asia where he predicted Christ would return in 1889.

His son, Claas Epp III migrated to Beatrice, Nebraska, in 1891, and his numerous descendants live in the United States.

The Russian government announced in 1870 that it would end all special privileges granted to colonists by 1880, including the exemption from military service, which was so important to nonresistant Mennonites.

A party traveled to Saint Petersburg where they obtained permission to settle near Tashkent from Konstantin Petrovich Von Kaufman, the first Governor-General of Russian Turkestan.

After much traveling back and forth in the border area of Bukhara and Turkestan, the group was invited to settle near the Laudan canal on the upper Amu Darya river in the Khanate of Khiva.

The khan offered a permanent solution by inviting the Mennonites to relocate in a walled garden called Ak Metchet a dozen kilometers southeast of Khiva.