Western Kansas world. [volume] (WaKeeney, Kan.) 1885-current, 1906-12-08
MENNON|TES MOVE
YOUNGER GENERATION SEEK
is NEW HOMES IN WESTERN
KANSAS.
Their Fathers Came to Kansas in the
: Early Days, Conquered the Will
derness and Became Well-to-
Do-Sons Will Go and Do
Likewise.


Fifty or more Mennonite families,
from Marion County, lately have come
to Hamilton County, on the Santa Fe,
and preempted homesteads. They are
established in all parts of the county,
but the most of them have their farms
on the upland, adjacent to Bear Creek
valley in the Southeastern part
They are well established, as Men,
nonites always begin, with comfort
able, although not pretentious, habita-
lions, and their stock is equally well
sheltered.
They are young married people just
beginning life, and they have come to
this region, because the Government,
by its homestead law, invited them
to take free homes in the public do
main.
They are of the second generation,
some of them perhaps the third, of
race of German Russians, who were
brought to this country by the Atchi-
son, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway
Company in 1874 and 1875. About
that time there was a great exodus
of the Cars German subjects out of
Observation-Disclosures Lutherans and
Catholics the tide was set to-
ward Western America The United
States public domain and the railroad
land grants especially were inviting.
Kansas received a vast army of these
immigrants, and for two years they
were on the move across the Missouri
river. They temporarily camped at
Topeka and other land offices and land
grant towns. For many months these
towns, until the newcomers were To-
Gated on homesteads, abounded with
EhnnnSEiU flow
ing petticoats and cooking utensils pc
culiarly Russian.
Finally they chose their homes, and
the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe,
with it's usual good luck, got the most
of them. The Lutherans and the Cath
Olics chose adjoining counties in the
upper valleys of the Smoky, and the
Mennonites, who outnumbered the
others about four to one, followed the
old Santa Fee Trail, and took lands in
the valleys of the Cottonwood and the
Arkansas, in the counties of Marion,
Mcpherson, Harvey, Reno and Bar
ton. They began with sod houses, but
soon they substituted wood, brick, or
stone, and now by thrift and good
farming, they have become among the
first citizens of the communities in
which they live, and, besides farming,
do much of the banking, merchandise
ing and milling.
These people brought with them
seed for gardens and field, especially
wheat seed, and by it they wrought
a complete change in the wheat crop.
They also brought the mulberry
tree and the silk worm, expecting to
Introduce here silk culture, as they
had learned it in Russia. But the
silk worm in Kansas has been fail
ure, and for the present at least has
been abandoned. The mulberry tree,
however, has come to stay, and from
the original Mennonite settlements it
has spread all over the Southwest,
making shelter and food for birds,
shade for children, and firewood for
the family
In addition they brought from Rus
STA their religion. and in the genera
ton or more that has elapsed, they
have not departed from it one jot or
little, they, nor their children, nor
their childrens children. Never has
a more God-fearing and Industrious
people come to Kansas to make duti-
full and thrifty citizens.
And now, younger generation of
these excellent people have departed
from the homes of their immediate ia
theirs and moved westward to a new