I asked our host, “Have you no history of your society?”
“No,” he answered; “we just hand it down.”
I have since heard, however, that there are papers or written records in charge of a person who lives at some distance from me. From certain printed records I have been able to trace a streamlet of history from its source in Switzerland, where the Anabaptists suffered persecution in Berne, Zurich, etc. I have read of their exile into Alsace and the Palatinate; of the aid afforded to them by their fellow-believers, the Mennonites of Holland; and of their final colonization in Pennsylvania, where they also are called Mennonites. The Amish, however, seem to have been a body of a more rigid rule, with a preacher named Amen, from whom they are called. It has been stated that they took their rise in Alsace in 1693.
Nearly all the congregation had departed when my driver at last arrived. I shook hands with those that were left, and kissed the pleasant mother of our host.
SWISS EXILES.
The plain people among whom I live, Quaker-like in appearance, and, like the Quakers, opposed to oaths and to war, are to a great extent descendants of Swiss Baptists or Anabaptists, who were banished from their country for refusing to conform to the established Reformed Church.[9]
Some of the early exiles took refuge in Alsace and the Palatinate, and afterwards came to Pennsylvania, settling in Lancaster County, under the kind patronage of our distinguished first proprietor. William Penn’s sympathy for them was doubtless increased by their resembling himself in so many important particulars. Mennonites from Holland were also among the early settlers at Germantown.
If any one inclines to investigate the traditions of these people, let him ask the plain old men of the county whence they originated. I think that a great part of the Amish and other Mennonites will tell him of their Swiss origin.