Читать книгу Mennonites in the World War - Jonas Smucker Hartzler - Страница 17

At the invitation to Catharine II, Czarina of Russia, a great many Mennonites moved from Ger many to her country with the promise of freedom of worship, freedom from military service, freedom of education, and exemption from certain taxes on conditions that they settle in a part of the country which required a great deal of work to bring under cultivation This began in 1788 and continued at intervals, so that (according to J. J. Wiens, an evangelist from that country) there were at the beginning of the late war, eight settlements in Russia and three in Siberia, several of them quite large. Considering the fact that there was a large exodus of Mennonites from Russia to America, Germany must have lost thousands of these people to Russia. From Europe to America

For various reasons there were periods of un rest in Germany. During one of these, thirteen Mennonite families left there and settled in what is now Germantown, Pa., in 1683. During the next thirteen years quite a number more came. William Penn offered the Mennonites of Europe freedom of worship and exemption from military service if they would move to Pennsylvania. The news spread rapidly and between 1710 and 1735 possibly five hundred families left Europe, most of them from Germany and Switzerland, and settled in Lancaster county, Pennsylvania. Still later the Napoleonic idea of conscription aroused the nonresistant people again, and while there was no immediate danger, many people felt that this was their time to leave and turned their minds toward America. Between 1800 and 1850 a large number left Europe and settled in different parts of the United States.