John Blankenbaker's Germanna History Notes

Note 214

In the thirteenth edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, an article on the Anabaptists by Frederick Cornwallis Conybeare, Doctor of Theology and one-time Fellow of University College, Oxford, states that the name Anabaptist means re-baptizer and is taken from the Greek.  Dr. Conybeare also states that in the time of Martin Luther the term was used derisively by the enemies of the Anabaptists because the Anabaptists denied the validity of infant baptism.  Consider also the German word for Anabaptist which is Wiedertäufer.  This means one who baptizes anew or again.

Anabaptist thought spread rapidly from Switzerland down the Danube to Vienna and down the Rhine River to Rotterdam.  Though there was no central head of the body, individual groups cooperated.  In Friesland and Holland, a Catholic priest, Menno Simons, left the Catholic Church in 1536 and became very active in the Anabaptist movement.  Besides preaching, he wrote much, signing his own name to his tracts.  Adherents to the Anabaptist beliefs became known as Mennonists, which in English became Mennonites.  One elder of the Mennonites disagreed with the other leaders on the question of church discipline.  This was Jacob Ammann who finally broke away from the Mennonites in the 1690's.  His followers are called Amish.  Clearly, the Mennonites and Amish spring from the same common root which they fully shared for 170 years.  These two groups are the major divisions of the Anabaptist thought and practice but each has divided into smaller groups.

Though Anabaptists were in many countries of Europe, it is the Swiss Anabaptists who sent, directly and indirectly, the most people to America.  The first years were very hard for the Anabaptists in Europe with thousands of martyrs created by the combination of the established Catholic, Lutheran, or Reformed Church, in conjunction with the civil authorities; however, the Anabaptists remained a movement to be considered in Switzerland, southern Germany, and among the Dutch.  Something of an accommodation was reached between the Dutch civil authorities and the Anabaptists but the persecution in Switzerland continued for at least two centuries.  Had there been no persecution in 1709, there would not have been a Germanna.  How this came about is one of those strange twists of fate.

In the year 1709, the city fathers of Bern decided to rid themselves of a number of Anabaptists and hired one Christoph von Graffenried to forcibly take a number of the Bernese Anabaptists and find homes for them elsewhere.  Graffenried saw America as the logical outlet for these people and so he visited London that summer seeking a home for them.  While there he happened to met Francis Michel, just back from America.  Michel's tale of precious metals in the back country of Virginia spurred Graffenried to start a new endeavor in which miners from the Nassau-Siegen area would be useful.

Backing up to the time of the Thirty Years' War, 1618 to 1648, much of Germany lay in desolation, especially the areas along the Rhine and in south Germany.  The rulers saw their tax receipts fall sharply due to the population decrease.  They invited people from other regions to move in and occupy some of the vacant farm land and homes.  Some of the Anabaptists moved at this time to Germany while others were expelled by the Swiss.  Life was easier in Germany but restrictions still hurt the group.  They had to pay special taxes, serve in the army (very much against their principles), and restrict the size of their meetings.  Nor could they have a meeting place.  William Penn offered two things which these agrarian people wanted, cheap land and free exercise of religion.  Thus, was the great migration to Pennsylvania started.  Hans Herr and the other members of his party were in the forefront of this rural group when they left in 1709.  They came from Germany, very much in the heart of the area from which the Second Germanna Colony came.  Here was another coincidence between the Anabaptists and our Germanna colonists.