I left off with recounting how the Hutterites were thriving and growing in numbers. It would not seem that they do this by enticing new members to join. Nearly all, say 99.9 percent, of their numerical growth comes through internal additions.
A popular question often asked by outsiders is, "How are marriages arranged?" The answer is that the boy and the girl do the arranging. There is one general rule to be followed. The boys court girls from another colony, not their own colony. If a boy and a girl do decide to marry, the colony as a whole makes the wedding arrangements, not the parents. Friends decorate the hall (church), prepare a dinner, pass out favors, and perform humorous skits. After marriage, the new wife will join her husband in his colony.
In spite of the obvious attempt to prevent the boy and the girl from being too closely related, the lines are, as we sometimes say, inbred. A DNA study of them would show the same ancestors over and over again. As a consequence, some genetic problems do occur. In the Hutterite community, it is rare to have a good pair of eyes.
Small communities do degenerate in their genetic heritage. The Amish, another fairly close group who has admitted very few outsiders for centuries, has genetic problems also.
The information on the Hutterites came from " German Life ", a magazine dedicated to helping English-speaking people become better acquainted with Germans. Sometimes, the articles will have a story about what Germans have done in America.
The Hutterites are a branch of the Anabaptists who are quite independent of the Amish and the Mennonites. The Anabaptists generally came in to existence in the decade after Martin Luther tacked his theses to the door. They were at their strongest in Switzerland, where the Reformed Church became very soon the State Church. The civil and the religious leaders opposed the Anabaptists actively, even to the extent of killing many of them. Another strategy was to expel the Anabaptists from Switzerland. This went on for two hundred years, even up to 1700.
About 1702, a Switzer by the name of Franz Michel thought that the Swiss might be able to establish colonies in America. He never expressly said that he had the Anabaptists in mind, but, when he and Graffenried did arrange to send some Swiss to America, there were Anabaptists in the group. In his explorations in America, Michel said that he had found silver. To pursue this, he needed miners. To find miners, an agent went to Siegen where he found willing people.
So, had the Anabaptists never arisen in Switzerland, there never would have been Germanna Colonists.
(06 Sep 02)
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.