Arizona republican., 1908-08-25
LED THE MfNNONITES
 IN GREAT MIGRATI0NS
Peter Jansen Finds Second Colony of His Making Prosperous in Canada as First Did in Nebraska.


 tryman who over thirty years ago gave the first impulse to the immigration of that thrifty German sect from south
 ern Russia, for the first time has told his story of the Mennonite migration by which great districts in Nebraska and Kansas and around Rosthern. in Saskatchewan, Canada, have been peopled.
 Il When Jansen, in the role of Moses, arrived in Chicago on a spring day in 1874 with the first colony of his peo- l pie. he was a poor man, who spoke
 English but brokenly himself and was | strange to the ways of a city. He was here a few days ago a millionaire guest at the biggest hotel, a keen, wholesome | man of affairs. The change in his con- l dition had been wrought by his divin- ation of the value of the land he in | vestigated, first the prairies of Neb- raska and again the prairies of Sas- i gatchewan. divination that was back ed up. of course, by the industry of l himself and his people. His riches which are in lands and crops and herds 1 stand typical of the riches of devel- ed fertile west.
 The first memorable colony of 300 to 400, which proved the advance guard | of the great Mennonite horde, Jansen | located upon a tract of land in south 1 ern Nebraska that was bought from | the Union Pacific railway at $3 to $4 l an acre. In the midst of that tract the town of Jansen was located and Peter Jansen still counts Jansen, Neb, l his home He had come to this coun- | try in 1873 and picked out the place for settlement in that rich region near Beatrice where land that he bought for l s is now worth from $60 an acre up.
 The first colony was the beginning 1 of the exodus from Russia of the Men 1 nOnites. who were of German descent, | until 5000 of them had made homes in ] Nebraska and Kansas, and grown rich. | The Union Pacific sold them the alter
 nate sections which comprised its ! grant. Then the Mennonite settlers
 bought the even numbered sections in | between, but with the influx or more and still more and the rapid multiply
 ing of all, the day came when there l was no longer room for expansion,
 there was no land for the second gen
 eration and no nearby lands awaited
 settlement. It was then that Peter l Jansen was again set the task of find | ing a region as good as Nebraska had | proved but where conditions were
 somewhat as those on the prairie of
 Nebraska thirty years before.
 Tn 1903" related MT. Jansen, '1 found what we wanted up in the un- | broken reaches of Saskatchewan and in 1904 I took the first new party again 300 souls-to lands bought from | the Canadian Northern railway, some | seventy-five miles from Rosthern l These three hundred were mostly of | American birth, and young. About one l in every three was a grown man, and | over half these were heads of families | They all had money household gear farm machinery and live stock. I had negotiated with the Canadian Northern for lands in its own grant, at from $3
 to $5 per acre.
 These lands, like those in Nebras-
 ka, were in alternate sections along
 the railway line, the Canadian govern
 ment owning the intervening sections. The government sections being open to homesteading, the settlers entered upon
 them under the homestead laws, so
 that in the average each iamfly now
 has a farm of about three quarter sec
 tions.
 Tn that same spring, 1904, land was
 broken and a crop was raised that
 year. In the four years since then there
 has been a steady growth, and good crops have been harvested every sea son Othere settlers have come in
 from England, from the states and from
 the eastern dominions of Canada,
 until the whle region has been well oc-
 cupied. With this and the extension
 of railways over that part of the pro-
 vince. Rosthern, that was an outpost
 when first saw it five years ago, has
 become the largest primary wheat
 market in North America-a distinc-
 tion that until 1906 belonged to a point
 in South Dakota" - Mir Jansen had just returned from Rosthern, both proud and well pleased with what he saw on his hecent trip We have a thriving town at our own door up there now" said he, the town of Lanigan, and our people are really as much in touch with the world as they were in Nebraska. They are firmly established and doing well in every way. We had some idea at first that the change from this country would be more or less of a wrench but it hasn't turned out so. All ouI people speak English Most of then were born to it, and it is used in oul schools and newspapers, though oul worship is still in German. So you see it was not as though they had
 found themselves among strangers ir q strange country, speaking another \ tongue. The laws of Canada are the same the government seems to bt < the same. the customs. the school sys- tenn, and in fact all things are just about what they are in our own west . ern states. Political boundaries are q invisible. In this case you would never know you had crossed one. Only the flags are different, and on the ! Fourth of July. when had to make 6 speech at our celebration, the flags oi < America and England were flying side z by side all around us. Our Englisf < neighbors had just celebrated theil
 own anniversary on July l, and they < mixed in with ours"
 l The climate of Saskatchewan, MT