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Mennonites in Canada: the History of a Separate People

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Mennonites in Canada: the History of a Separate People Provenance This digital scan Mennonites in Canada, 1986-1920: The History of a Separate People is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. This monograph was digitized by the Milton Good Library at Conrad Grebel University College in 2020, with the permission of the Mennonite Historical Society of Canada and the family of Frank H. Epp. \ »^1 /'t •h,f "J -»' ;'t «•• < t r n ^ •; •y- •f yu^r-.^•{^ ^^ *r^-/.r y. .* >..' ^ ^^- <A. «: 3^ <t & ^- '^^ 't ^ >*. t.: t ,••• •vs' '<. •« >^ f tf \ ^ <*• \ h. 'f>. ^ 1. ^ 1 c ^ y^s- ^; 7/M -^ ^3^ .'• '^f^'l ^^^ *•»• ^ /-•/ I^ \ ^I1 / Trek to Upper Canada 2. On to V^fssia andganada The fnovement of the Mennonites into Canada from, the United States . coincided with that of the United Empire Loyalists, yet theirs was a deeper -purpose, a religious loyalty which wavers not nor fails because of changing sentiwients of political impact only — s. F. COFFMAN1 s THE lyoos drew to a close, thousands of Mennonites in A8Pennsylvania and Prussia were on the move, once again seeking a new homeland which might offer them a greater measure of liberty, security and prosperity. This search on each side of the Atlantic led in an opposite geographic direction, although the new migrations and settlement experiences produced some re- markable parallels. Unknown to the Dutch-German Mennonites in Prussia migrating east and south and to the Swiss-German Mennonites in Pennsylvania moving west and north, their com- man search predestined the joining of their respective eastern and western histories less than loo years later. The historic circumstances and political developments leading up to the two migrations were similar; in both situations, national ambitions and revolutionary ferment produced much uncertainty and insecurity for the Mennonites. However, in both settings the discomfort was not so great or so complete that they were forced to move on. If, at the time of their rising anxieties, they had not been confronted with settlement ofFers from the Russian 47 48 MENNONITES IN CANADA, 1786-1920 Tsar and the British King, the Mennonites could have remained a while longer in their old homes without too much distress. Indeed, the majority of them did. This fact alone makes the sort- ing out of motives and causes for resettlement somewhat problem- atical. Long-term considerations, however, were crucial. In the distant and even near future, the Mennonites could see themselves in- creasingly crowded in the sense of both geographic opportunity and religious liberty. In Prussia the two factors were intimately related. The military reign of Frederick the Great (1740-1786) had produced many concessions for the Mennonites. As respect- able and appreciative citizens, they presented their best gifts to him — on one occasion their two best oxen, 400 pounds of butter and 20 cakes of cheese. Nevertheless, they remained a problem for an ambitious monarch who could not easily allow so many large families with so many non-military sons to expand into farm after farm in the kingdom he was enlarging and consolidating. The reign of his father, Frederick I (1688-1740), the first king of Prussia, had already produced a strong army which Frederick II (the Great) now intended to improve and expand. Believing that might made right, he renamed his tax collectors war commissars and his cabinet members war ministers, as he insisted on authority and discipline from top to bottom. Then he seized Silesia from Austria and, in the reversal of European alli- ances that followed, Prussia found herself confronting, and being confronted by, France, Austria, Russia, Saxony and Sweden. Only Britain, which was fighting France in the Seven Years War (1756-1763), remained friendly. Even with a powerful ally, however, Frederick's continental enemies could be overwhelming and so the militarization of his regime continued. In this policy he was loyally supported by the Lutheran state clergy. Thus, once more, church and state stood out against the Mennonites. By 1774 the industrious noncon- formists were being limited in their land acquisitions, and by 1780 they were being taxed 5,000 thaler annually for the support of military schools. The impact of these impositions was ameliorated by Frederick's basic goodwill toward his enterprising citizens, whose own internal discipline he could appreciate. The time after Frederick's death in 1786, therefore, became an ominous one for the IVIennonites. In the same year they dis- patched a delegation to the new eastern land of promise from which the Tsarina, Catherine the Great, had sent a special emis- ON TO RUSSIA AND CANADA 49 sary inviting western and central European agriculturists to settle in her lands. Such invitations had been extended prior to her time and not only by the Russian tsars. The Hapsburgs of Austria, for instance, were similarly settling their province of Galicia, and here also Mennonites were involved. Thousands of colonists from some of the small German states were leading pioneers in the Middle Volga region. This time there was a special invitation from Russia for the Mennonites in Prussia. Having just been seized from the Turks, the particular lands to be domesti- cated (to ensure long-term Russian control) were known as new Russia, north of the Black Sea.2 Two years later, in 1788, 228 families — most of them poor and already landless — set out to found the Colony of Chortitza east of the Dnieper River and near the present city of Zaparozhe. They were delayed en route by renewed fighting between the Russians and the Turks and forced to endure a most oppressive winter in temporary camps. Yet, in spite of these troubles and a switch in settlement plans due to Turkish intervention in the areas originally chosen, as well as other seemingly endless hard- ships, the decision appeared to be a good one. They arrived at the revised destination in July 1789, the same year the Prussian land- purchase restrictions were completed. In the face of such militarism, the eastern solution seemed to be right for the nearly 10,000 Prussian Mennonites who migrated to Russia over a period of 60 years and more. In 1803 they founded the Molotschna Colony, about 100 miles across the Dnieper River, east of Chortitza. And later, when the new Prussian constitution failed to provide. for military exemption on religious grounds, two additional colonies were established east of the Volga River in the Saratov region, also known as the Middle Volga area. Indeed, the eastern movements had not yet run their course when the sons of the pioneer immigrants to Russia were looking westward for an even better destiny. In British North America, the Swiss-German Mennonites were slowly though unwittingly preparing and being prepared to re- ceive the Dutch-German Mennonites from Russia. To begin with, they were steadily pushing forward the frontiers of economic opportunity and religious liberty, both essential elements of that preparation. In southeastern Pennsylvania the good land had been rapidly bought up, and already in the middle of the lyoos there was movement to new and cheaper lands, offering ample room for expansion. These were found in Virginia to the south; in 50 MENNONITES IN CANADA, 1786-1920 western Pennsylvania and Ohio to the west; ultimately in In- diana, Illinois, and Iowa; and beyond the Mississippi to regions almost unknown then. Most important for our story was the discovery of Ontario or Upper Canada. Although the first permanent Mennonite settlements in Canada were founded as a direct result of the American Revolution, the possibility that Anabaptists were present in the Maritimes in the mid-eighteenth century must not be overlooked. The same move- ments which produced the larger German and Quaker colonies in Pennsylvania brought Germans from the Rhineland and the Palatinate, Quakers and Baptists from England, and Anabaptist groups to New England and the Maritimes.3 In 1754 an Anglican rector in Lunenburg, Nova Scotia, made specific mention of Anabaptists in his area, and these were subsequently linked to the Anabaptists of the Reformation.4 It does appear that such small groups, if they were indeed Anabaptists, were quickly absorbed either by the Quakers or by the Baptists. Anabaptists have also been identified in New Brunswick, but here too they were so "closely aligned dogmatically with the Society of Friends or Quakers that, for religious purposes, they joined forces. ° Some Anabaptists apparently came to the Maritimes as part of the post-revolution loyalist movements. At St. John's River in Nova Scotia, for instance, there appeared in 1783, alongside a Quaker Company of 102 persons, an "Anabaptist Company of 47 persons of which 20 were adult men, 11 women, and 16 child- ren."6 But again, no subsequent record of a continuing separate identity has been discovered, so that a disintegration or absorp- tion into the community can be assumed in this case. The movements that endured were those to Upper Canada, aided and abetted by the thirteen American colonies' declaring themselves independent from the British in 1776. Their revolu- tion against the king resulted in the creation of a republican state, the United States of America. Like the nationalist kingdoms of Europe, the U.S.A, had expansive ambitions of its own. Within its first generation the new republic would reach out for more British-American land in the north precisely at the time when her ally, France, was reaching eastward as far as possible. In Prussia, as in Pennsylvania, the Mennonites had difficulty for- getting the benefits of monarchical friendships. Political promises, in addition to the abundance of land to which the British govern- ment was inviting them, led about 2,000 to migrate to Upper ON TO RUSSIA AND CANADA 5i Canada beginning in 1786, the very year the Prussian delegation was entering Russia.
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