The current group primarily consists of Plautdietsch-speaking Russian Mennonites in Belize, Mexico and Bolivia, as well as a small presence in Canada and the United States.
The Kleine Gemeinde was founded in 1812 by a small group of Mennonites dissatisfied with the state of the existing church in the Molotschna colony settlement of then south Russia (present-day Ukraine).
Reimer felt Mennonites of the area were too lax in doctrine and piety, and began to hold meetings in homes in 1812.
Third, to a disloyalty charge, they reaffirmed their submission to the government while maintaining a stance against any involvement with detaining or punishing offenders.
Its final criticism was aimed at sermons and eulogies at funerals, practices that had recently been adopted from Catholics and Lutherans.
[4] In 1870 the Russian government issued a proclamation stating the intention to end all special privileges granted to German colonists by 1880.
Alarmed at the possibility of losing control of their schools and military exemption, a delegation of Mennonite and Hutterite leaders, including Cornelius Toews, Aeltester Friesen and David Klassen of the Kleine Gemeinde, visited North America in 1873 to investigate resettlement possibilities.
In 1874–75, the main group proceeded to migrate to North America, the more conservative part settling in Manitoba, Canada, and the more liberal to Jefferson County, near the town of Jansen, Nebraska, US.
[citation needed] In 1948 conservative members of the Kleine Gemeinde migrated from Canada to Los Jagueyes (also known as Quellen Kolonie)[6] some 100 km north of Cuauhtémoc, Chihuahua in Mexico.