The world around the migrations: Europe, Russia, the US and Canada

Christopher asked (2026-10-31) what else was going on in Europe, the US, Canada and Russia that shaped how everything happened. Companion to Plague, Reformation and the Peasants’ War - where the family stands. This is historical context, not evidence about individual ancestors.

1. Climate, hunger and disease

• The Little Ice Age (c.1300–1850) brought colder summers and repeated harvest failures. The worst years line up with migration waves: the famine of 1693–94, the Great Frost of 1709 (thousands of Palatines to London and New York), and the “Year Without a Summer” of 1816 after the Tambora eruption, which caused famine in Switzerland and southern Germany and a rush to America in 1816–17.
• Plague kept returning for 300 years after 1348. Each outbreak emptied land that rulers then wanted resettled.

2. Europe: wars, kings and the business of settlers

• The printing press (1450s) made the Reformation possible, and the Anabaptists’ own books: the Ausbund hymnal, the Martyrs Mirror (1660), the Froschauer Bible. It is how scattered congregations kept a shared identity.
• The Dutch Golden Age (1600s). After 1579 the Netherlands became the richest and most tolerant country in Europe. Dutch Mennonites grew wealthy in trade and funded their persecuted brethren: Amsterdam paid for the 1711 Rhine ships (1711 The Rhine exodus from Bern) and sent aid to Prussia.
• The Baltic grain trade tied Amsterdam and Danzig together, which is why Dutch refugees went to the Vistula. Danzig had the money and the swamps; the Dutch had the drainage skills (The Wiebe faith trail - Friesland to the Vistula).
• Louis XIV’s wars. French armies burned the Palatinate in 1689, and Louis expelled the Anabaptists from Alsace in 1712 (1712 Louis XIV expels the Anabaptists from Alsace). Each scattered the Swiss and Amish families who had fled there from Bern.
• Rulers wanted settlers, on their own terms. After the Thirty Years’ War the Palatinate’s ruler invited Mennonites in (1664). Prussia’s kings did the same, then restricted them: the Edict of 1789 froze Mennonite land purchases and sent the first Prussian Mennonites to Russia (1789 First Prussian Mennonites settle in Russia).
• Conscription spread. Prussia’s recruiting system, then Napoleon’s levies (1798–1815), made military service hard to avoid. For the Ramseyers in the French Doubs, that pressure is part of the background to the 1835 sailing (1835 The Ramseyers sail on the Richmond).
• 1798: France invaded Switzerland and imposed religious freedom (1798 Old Bern falls; religious freedom). Persecution in Bern ended, but most Anabaptist families had already gone.
• 1867: the North German Confederation ended the Prussian Mennonites’ military exemption: the background to 1869 The Fieguths move from Prussia to Am Trakt.

3. Russia: the invitation and the reversal

• 1763: Catherine the Great invited foreign settlers. Mennonites came from 1789 (Chortitza), then Molotschna (1804), with land, self-government, German schools and no military service.
• Am Trakt (1853) and Alt-Samara (1859) on the Volga were founded by later Prussian arrivals. Lysanderhöh, where Gerhard A. Wiebe (1873–1942) was born in 1873, is in Am Trakt. The Wiebe and Fieguth lines went Prussia → Russia → Nebraska, staying in Russia only a few years.
• 1870–74: Alexander II’s reforms brought universal military service and pressure toward Russian schools. About 18,000 Mennonites left for North America in 1874–80 (1874 Military service ends the exemptions). Those who stayed later got alternative forestry service (1880).
• Later, for relatives who stayed: revolution, civil war, the famine of 1921–22, collectivization and deportations under Stalin. The Mennonite Central Committee was founded in 1920 to feed Russian Mennonites; about 21,000 more reached Canada in 1923–30.

4. The United States: land, liberty and wars they wouldn’t fight

• 1681: William Penn’s Pennsylvania offered religious freedom and good land. Swiss Mennonites settled Lancaster from the 1710s; the Amish came in the 1730s–60s, among them the Hochstetlers in 1738 (1738 The Charming Nancy).
• The French and Indian War (1754–63) put frontier families in the line of fire (1757 The Hochstetler massacre).
• The Revolution (1775–83): pacifists were fined and suspected for refusing to fight or swear oaths.
• Westward land: the Northwest Ordinance (1787), Ohio statehood (1803), $1.25-an-acre federal land (1820) and the canals pulled families into Ohio and Indiana: Sonnenberg in Wayne County (1819), Putnam County (1833) (1833 First Swiss Mennonite settler in Putnam County, Ohio), Berne, Indiana (1852) (1852 Swiss Mennonites found Berne, Indiana), and the Amish moves from Somerset County to Ohio.
• The Civil War (1861–65): draftees could hire a substitute or pay $300, which many Mennonites did.
• The Homestead Act (1862) and the railroads. The Santa Fe and Burlington railroads recruited the 1874 Mennonites with agents, cheap fares and land on credit. That filled Kansas, led to Bethel College (1887), and brought West Prussian Mennonites to Beatrice (Nebraska) in 1876–77, where Anna Bertha Wiebe (1914–2010) was born.
• World War I: German-speaking pacifists were harassed, some conscientious objectors were abused in army camps, and congregations switched to English quickly. A. C. Ramseyer’s 1904 peace oration came just before. World War II brought Civilian Public Service (1941–47) as the alternative to fighting; if anyone in the family served, those records survive.

5. Canada: the other door

• 1786 onward: Pennsylvania Mennonites moved to Upper Canada (Waterloo County from 1800). Amish from Bavaria and Hesse followed in 1824, the same networks as the Hessian Amish on the Miller side.
• 1873: Canada promised the Russian Mennonites military exemption, their own schools and reserved land blocks in Manitoba. About 7,000 of the 1874 emigrants chose Manitoba, mostly the more conservative groups; the rest went to Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota and Dakota, where the Wiebes and Claassens and many of Christopher’s Bethel classmates’ families went.
• 1920s: some conservative Manitoba groups moved to Mexico over English-language schooling, while the Russian refugees of the 1920s came in.

The common thread

Each move happened where two forces met: a government took away the freedom not to fight, or a harvest failed, and another government or company offered land in return for skill. The families answered that offer five times: Danzig in 1547, the Palatinate after 1648, Pennsylvania in the 1700s, Russia from 1789, and the American plains in 1874.

Record compiled 31 October 2026.

About this research

Supporting documentation is linked throughout. This project is an exercise in AI-assisted research and development, and I haven’t manually verified every link or conclusion. All transcriptions and translations of Swiss parish records were made with AI, and their accuracy should be treated accordingly.