Arrival of Mennonite Emigrants

Illustration

By: Anonymous

Date: September 6, 1873

Source: © Corbis.

About the Artist: This image was featured in Leslie's Illustrated Magazine, which was published from 1855 to 1922. One of the most popular magazines of its day, the periodical was begun by Frank Leslie. It printed serial fiction as well as news accounts and features. The artist is unknown. The image is part of the collection held by the Corbis Corporation.

INTRODUCTION

The Mennonites, descended from Swiss and Dutch Anabaptists, believed in a form of Christianity that did not include participation in military service or in government. For resisting government service and challenging government control of Christianity, they were persecuted. To escape, numbers of Mennonites migrated to other parts of Europe and eventually to the United States, typically settling in the West and Midwest.

The Mennonites are Anabaptists. The left wing of the Protestant Reformation, Anabaptists argued that only adults could make a free choice about religious faith, baptism, and entry into the Christian community. They took the Gospel literally and favored a return to a voluntary church that they considered existed among the earliest Christians. The Anabaptist belief that only a few people would experience an inner light necessary for membership in the church put the sect in direct opposition to the notion that the Christian community and the Christian state were identical. Additionally, they refused all public offices and would not serve in the armed forces. Absolute pacifism and opposition to state-run churches logically led to the separation of church and state and, ultimately, the complete secularization of society. Accordingly, the Anabaptists were viciously attacked in their homelands of Switzerland and Germany. They were banished or sometimes executed by burning, beating, or drowning.

In the late eighteenth century, Catherine the Great of Russia offered Mennonite settlers 165 acres of farm land per family, plus religious freedom and a guarantee that they would never have to serve in the Russian military. Catherine offered immigrants the opportunity to live in settlements where they could control their own education and local government. Beginning in 1789, Dutch Mennonites living in Prussia began settling in Russia. They prospered, but in 1871, the Russian government rescinded the exemption of Mennonites from military service. Canada and the U.S. both invited the Russian Mennonites to farm their plains. Both governments offered free land, religious freedom, and the right to control the education of their children. Canada also offered military exemption. From 1874 to 1890, about 10,000 Russian Mennonites settled in the Midwest and Great Plains states with another 8,000 settling in Manitoba, Canada.

PRIMARY SOURCE

ARRIVAL OF MENNONITE EMIGRANTS

See primary source image.

SIGNIFICANCE

In subsequent migrations of Mennonites, most immigrants went to Canada, Paraguay, or Brazil, because these countries were perceived as more welcoming than the U.S. Most of the Russian Mennonites who settled in the U.S. were more urban and progressive than the Swiss-German Mennonites who had established the older settlements in Pennsylvania and the Midwest. However, by the late twentieth century, most of these differences had disappeared.

Mennonite gradually became more of a religious categorization than a cultural description. While their Amish cousins have remained distinctly separate from American society, Mennonites have largely assimilated.