Mennonite Migration from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania to Ontario, Canada

Paper presented to Genealogy Club, Ramblers Rest Resort, Venice, FL January 30, 2003

by Jay D. Weaver

 

Note to Reader: Most of the information gleaned for this paper can be credited to John Ruth1. His book has become an invaluable contribution to the history of Lancaster Conference Mennonites. The remainder of the information was gleaned from various sources on the Internet.

 

The Mennonites have held to the doctrine of defenselessness or nonresistance (Wehrlosigkeit) since their earliest beginnings in 1525. Yet there were always a few who chose the opportunity to participate in armed conflict. The Mennonites of Eastern, PA had spent sixty years clearing land, establishing farms and various business enterprises. Consequently, they had neglected to keep in mind the crucible that had forged their faith. They were ill prepared to deal with children who got caught up in the war-fever in 1775. John Ruth[2] says, “By failing to remember this part of their own story, even conservative Mennonites allowed a vacuum in their own identity, into which could gradually creep the myth of a God-ordained United States of America, born of the matrix of the Revolutionary War.”

 

On May 1, 1775, Lancaster’s Committee of Observation put out the following statement: We do most solemnly agree and associate to defend…the religious and civil rights of this and sister colonies, with our lives and fortunes…And…to acquaint ourselves with military discipline, and learn the art of war. Among the nearly three dozen signatures was twenty-eight-year-old John Witmer, Jr., a Mennonite inn-keeper.

 

This whole issue began to tear apart the county of Lancaster, which had a rather large Mennonite population in and around Earl Twp. and a large Scottish Presbyterian population in the area of Donegal Twp. After July 4, 1776, those who supported the revolution were called Whigs and those who refused to give up their loyalty to the king were branded as Tories. Ruth says, “In this simplistic polarity, the Mennonites were clearly Tories.

 

On March 17, 1777 a military draft law was passed, requiring all able-bodied men to enroll in a militia. Those who refused had to either pay a fine or find a substitute. Most Mennonites did not comply. On June 13, there was a second new law, requiring every white male to take an affirmation or oath of loyalty to the new Continental government. Mennonites could not in conscience “renounce and refuse all allegiance to George the Third, King of Great Britain,” since they had already promised to do the opposite.

 

In the spring of 1788, General Howe made an offer of 50 acres to any able-bodied men who were willing to join in the King’s army. A young Mennonite by the name of Herman Hostetter threw in his lot with the king’s army. Shortly thereafter, when Howe withdrew from Philadelphia, Hostetter purchased a farm in Nova Scotia among other loyalists and was later given land as a loyalist in Upper Canada (Now Ontario).

 

By December of 1778, those who refused the loyalty test were barred from voting or being elected to any office. A decade later, many Mennonites were packing up and leaving for Upper Canada. An Abraham Beam who was arrested for expressing loyalist tendencies, lost all his possessions, and made a successful claim as a loyalist for a land grant in Upper Canada near the village of Chippewa. There he and his son Martin became prosperous and eventually owned 1450 acres.

 

By 1788, Mennonites and River Brethren led by Hans Winger, a minister of the River Brethren, were settling along the shore of Lake Erie from Fort Erie to a point 60 miles west of there. Gradually they settled up the Grand River on both sides of the long tract recently granted to the Indians of the Six Nations. Abraham Beam was part of this group.  Some of the other names in this migration were Neff, Stoner, Savitz, Shope, Hoover, and Sherch. There were two Amish brothers, Christian and John Troyer from Somerset Co., Pa., who joined this group. Christian eventually moved to Holmes Co., Ohio.

 

By 1794, the peninsula had so many settlers, that Jacob Burkholder had to go all the way to what is now Hamilton, Ontario to find land. There already was a Mennonite living there by the name of Peter Horning. He had come from the Skippack near Philadelphia.

 

There was an unscrupulous chief of the Six Nations (Cayugas, Mohawks, Oneidas, Onandagas, and Senecas as well as the original owners, the Mississauga tribe), who set up land deals that drew vast numbers of Mennonites to the northern end of the reservation. This is the area known today as Waterloo County. Brant claimed he needed to sell off land to raise money to support the impoverished Indians. Although Brant did not have clear title, he sold 94,012 (the future Waterloo County) acres to a land speculator by the name of Richard Beasley. He in turn sold the land to the Mennonites.

 

Now Beasley held a large mortgage on this land without a clear title. A young bachelor Mennonite by the name of Sam Bricker and some others began talking about raising 10,000 pounds to purchase 60,000 acres. This would at least help Beasley pay off the mortgage and perhaps gain them clear title.

 

Young Bricker made an appeal to the well-to-do Mennonite Eby family in Lancaster County. Bishop Johannes Eby made a speech at a meeting where the matter was discussed, and swayed the group to invest in the land as a means of helping out their fellow brethren in need. His younger brother Benjamin attended that meeting. Eventually 10,000 pounds in silver was taken to Beasley over a period of a year. The silver was carried in kegs guarded by four men. And so the deal was sealed, and the settlement in Waterloo County was secured.

 

In the spring of 1806, young Benjamin Eby traveled to Ontario and purchased lot number two.  After clearing several acres and planting some wheat, he returned home and married Maria Brubacher. In May of 1807, Ben and his Maria in the company of sixteen others returned to Canada with a substantial amount of gold and silver to pay for a second block of land.

 

This group named their new settlement Conestogo. Ben set to work on his own homestead. However, being slight of build, he was not really cut out for physical work, so he became a teacher. He was also soon chosen as a minister, and deeply impressed the congregation with his sermons. On October 18, 1812 he was ordained a bishop.

 

The Mennonite community would rise to some 12,000 by 1826.Among the later settlers were Martins and Webers (Weavers). These were the children of some of my ancestors. Hence, I have cousins in this settlement whose migration began in Zurich, Switzerland, through the Palatinate and Holland, to Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and now in Waterloo County, Canada.  I wonder, will those of us who still practice pacifism and non-resistance eventually have to move on again? Only time will tell.