Today's subject was chosen because I will be working at the Hans Herr House tomorrow as a tour leader. Also, for that reason there will be no note tomorrow.
Hans Herr came to Pennsylvania in 1710 with his own family and other families. They were all Mennonites, the first of the agrarian Mennonites to come to America. Earlier, Mennonites had come to Pennsylvania and founded Germantown outside Philadelphia, but these people were not farmers.
Anabaptist thought originated in Switzerland at the time of the Protestant Reformation. At the same time, Switzerland generally converted to the principles of the Reformed religion, which in the major cities, such as Bern, became the state church. The Anabaptists were opposed to an interaction between the church and state and were not welcomed by either the church or the state in Switzerland.
Efforts to stamp out the Anabaptists were quite severe across Europe. The two surviving centers for Anabaptist practice were Switzerland and the Netherlands. (Menno Simon, a Dutch member of the Anabaptists, gave his name to the branch which became the Mennonites.) One of the techniques of oppressing the Anabaptists in Switzerland was to ship them out of the country. Some were sent to German, some to Alsace, and some to America. (Christopher de Graffenried got his start in the colonization business by taking Anabaptists from Bern to North Carolina.)
After the Thirty Years' War, in 1648, opportunities for settlement in Germany were good because of the loss of population during the war. During this period, many Anabaptists moved to Baden and Wuerttemberg, regions where many Second Germanna Colonists lived. While life here was better than in Switzerland, there were still repressive measures. Special taxes were levied on them, they could not recruit new members, they could not have meeting places, and they had to serve in the army which they detested. Therefore, they listened very attentively when William Penn and his agents talked of the opportunities in Penn's Woods.
The Herr party left in 1709 and seemed to be independent of the mass of Germans who went to England that year. The Herr party did find that the trip was more expensive than had been anticipated. They were enabled to come with the financial help of the Dutch Mennonites.
On landing in Philadelphia, the party seems to have spent no time at all there but started immediately for the frontier. When the roads faded, they used the Indian trail. Finally, in what is today Lancaster County, they liked the land (giant trees in the forests) and the water. There were far enough beyond civilization that they had no difficulty in claiming several thousand acres of land.
Hans Herr was a minister, besides being a farmer, and his son Christian was also a minister and farmer. Hans was old enough that he had no desire to build a large home. Christian's family was growing and he needed a place also to use as a meeting place. So in 1719, the community built a large house which became the home of Christian's family and the meeting house for the community. It is believed that Hans Herr lived with Christian. Because Hans was so respected, the house became known as the Hans Herr House, though it was owned by Christian and used by the community. Today, Hans Herr House is considered to be the oldest Mennonite Meeting House in the Americas. It is the oldest existing building in Lancaster County. The architectural principles of the house are strictly southwestern German.
(From April through November, the visiting hours are Monday through Saturday from nine to four.)
We gratefully acknowledge the work of John Blankenbaker who published over 2,500 Germanna History Notes via the Germanna-L@rootsweb.com email list from 1997 to 2008. We are equally thankful to George Durman (Sgt. George) for hosting the list and republishing the notes via rootsweb.com.