The Origin of Plain Anabaptists

[ken_sylvania]

Both sets of my grandparents from PA in their youth looked like regular people, replete with bow ties, stylish looking hats, etc. And interestingly, both were from the OO, in their youth. And the pic or two of my great grandparents also...

These photos were from before they joined church? Or afterward?

[joshuabgood]

Both sets of my grandparents from PA in their youth looked like regular people, replete with bow ties, stylish looking hats, etc. And interestingly, both were from the OO, in their youth. And the pic or two of my great grandparents also...

These photos were from before they joined church? Or afterward?

I am not sure.

[ohio jones]

And then we have to be honest with assessing historic data. Let me use just one personal example. Early on after I was ordained I was making a serious study of our Anabaptist history. At that point with my my Amish upbringing and the development of my conscience when it comes to separation and nonconformity, I still had a lot of questions about how I ought to live and how Christians ought to live in then 20th century America. And when I discovered that the Anabaptists did not have a uniform dress or even a distinctly separate dress from the culture in which they lived for over 200 years, actually close to three, I wanted to get on a time machine and go back and straighten them out.

...Prior to the 1890s there was very little difference between Amish and Mennonites except if you got close enough you could tell whether there were buttons or hooks and eyes. But they still wore basically the same coverings. The women did. And Protestant women wore nearly the same coverings as Amish and Mennonites.

...You could have walked the streets of Plain City and from across the street you would not have known which one was Amish and which
one was Methodist.... If you'd have gotten closer you would have seen a plain wedding band, maybe on a few of her dresses, a little bit of lace, and you'd have seen buttons instead of pins. Otherwise, you couldn't have told the difference.

And I found this extremely interesting that Amish men began to wear neck ties after the Civil War. And it wasn't thought to be any big deal, I guess. But then in the '90s, neck wear just went kind of through the roof in showiness. And at that point, the Amish and even some Mennonites raised the question about whether we should be wearing neckties. After all, there's no real utility in a necktie. It's basically just for for looks, for show. And so they raised questions about that.

...A few of the Amish kept on wearing bow ties, but they had to be small and homemade. And my father, the only picture I have of mom and dad before they married, he's wearing a long tie. I told him kiddingly one time, not too long before he died. I said, "Dad, you grew up Amish and been Amish all your life and you've worn a tie. And I'm Mennonite, been Mennonite most of my life and I've never worn a tie. Don't you think I ought to have just a slightly bigger mansion than you?" And he enjoyed that. And it was not a big deal with him. But that was common at that time that they would do that. Now, once they joined church, they weren't supposed to wear ties anymore. But even then, they wore lapel coats. In some circles, our community was a bit more liberal than some. And so, some of them had they were homemade, but it was like a plain suit, but they ironed it back a bit and they had a lapel coat.

And you had that kind of beginning dress changes, nonconformity in dress and uniformity in dress. But that's really pretty recent in our history.

[ken_sylvania]

Both sets of my grandparents from PA in their youth looked like regular people, replete with bow ties, stylish looking hats, etc. And interestingly, both were from the OO, in their youth. And the pic or two of my great grandparents also...

These photos were from before they joined church? Or afterward?

I am not sure.

For many years it was common for the young folks from Mennonite families to dress according to popular fashion, then change to Plain clothing upon joining church. I think that the trend toward earlier church membership was appropriate (I'm aware you feel differently) but regardless, it would be quite a stretch to use photos of non-members to support an argument that the Mennonites didn't practice distinctive garb until the late 19th century. I know you didn't make that claim, but since you brought up those photo in the context of this discussion...

[joshuabgood]

These photos were from before they joined church? Or afterward?

I am not sure.

For many years it was common for the young folks from Mennonite families to dress according to popular fashion, then change to Plain clothing upon joining church. I think that the trend toward earlier church membership was appropriate (I'm aware you feel differently) but regardless, it would be quite a stretch to use photos of non-members to support an argument that the Mennonites didn't practice distinctive garb until the late 19th century. I know you didn't make that claim, but since you brought up those photo in the context of this discussion...

Fair question. I am going to try and find out the answer to that in my specific cases. I am curious.

[Grace]

These photos were from before they joined church? Or afterward?

I am not sure.

For many years it was common for the young folks from Mennonite families to dress according to popular fashion, then change to Plain clothing upon joining church. I think that the trend toward earlier church membership was appropriate (I'm aware you feel differently) but regardless, it would be quite a stretch to use photos of non-members to support an argument that the Mennonites didn't practice distinctive garb until the late 19th century. I know you didn't make that claim, but since you brought up those photo in the context of this discussion...

Before the turn of the century many Mennonite (mostly Lancaster Conference Mennonites) young people dressed like the world, often not espousing the plain dress until joining the church around the times of their marriages, usually in their twenties. However, that whole tradition was brought into question when a horrible tragic accident happened in the wee morning hours of July 26,1896.

It happened after a Saturday evening party near the village of Witmer, PA. The party included many young people from a radius of about fifteen miles. Many of the young people had Mennonite parents but weren’t members of the Mennonite church.

Around midnight three homeward bound couples drove along the Old Philadelphia Pike which crossed a railroad track, the couples were chatting loudly from buggy to buggy not hearing the train, bearing down on them behind a curve. The first buggy made it across, but second buggy which contained twenty-three-year-old Enos Barge and eighteen-year-old Barbara Hershey, did not because the train frightened the horse and he reared and stood still on the tracks. When the train hit, the horse was hurled aside, and the buggy was smashed. Barbara Hershey was cut to pieces, her head unrecognizable. Enos was found thirty feet away from his right arm. He lingered in agony for a day, then he too died.

That incident brought an awakening to the Lancaster Conference Mennonite community that questioned the concept of waiting until someone was in adulthood to make a commitment to the Lord and becoming church members. It was estimated that about 500 young people were ushered into the churches later that summer.

It took a while until other conferences, such as Weaverland conference caught on to this new awakening/tradition.

Source: The Earth is the Lord’s, by John Ruth

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the- ... /44402491/

[Neto]

I am not sure.

For many years it was common for the young folks from Mennonite families to dress according to popular fashion, then change to Plain clothing upon joining church. I think that the trend toward earlier church membership was appropriate (I'm aware you feel differently) but regardless, it would be quite a stretch to use photos of non-members to support an argument that the Mennonites didn't practice distinctive garb until the late 19th century. I know you didn't make that claim, but since you brought up those photo in the context of this discussion...

Before the turn of the century many Mennonite (mostly Lancaster Conference Mennonites) young people dressed like the world, often not espousing the plain dress until joining the church around the times of their marriages, usually in their twenties. However, that whole tradition was brought into question when a horrible tragic accident happened in the wee morning hours of July 26,1896.

It happened after a Saturday evening party near the village of Witmer, PA. The party included many young people from a radius of about fifteen miles. Many of the young people had Mennonite parents but weren’t members of the Mennonite church.

Around midnight three homeward bound couples drove along the Old Philadelphia Pike which crossed a railroad track, the couples were chatting loudly from buggy to buggy not hearing the train, bearing down on them behind a curve. The first buggy made it across, but second buggy which contained twenty-three-year-old Enos Barge and eighteen-year-old Barbara Hershey, did not because the train frightened the horse and he reared and stood still on the tracks. When the train hit, the horse was hurled aside, and the buggy was smashed. Barbara Hershey was cut to pieces, her head unrecognizable. Enos was found thirty feet away from his right arm. He lingered in agony for a day, then he too died.

That incident brought an awakening to the Lancaster Conference Mennonite community that questioned the concept of waiting until someone was in adulthood to make a commitment to the Lord and becoming church members. It was estimated that about 500 young people were ushered into the churches later that summer.

It took a while until other conferences, such as Weaverland conference caught on to this new awakening/tradition.

Source: The Earth is the Lord’s, by John Ruth

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the- ... /44402491/

This was also the period in which 'revival meetings' became common in eastern US Mennonite communities, was it not? (Not my people, so I'm just now learning about this. In my own background, the revival movement took place around the 1850's & 60's.)

[ken_sylvania]

For many years it was common for the young folks from Mennonite families to dress according to popular fashion, then change to Plain clothing upon joining church. I think that the trend toward earlier church membership was appropriate (I'm aware you feel differently) but regardless, it would be quite a stretch to use photos of non-members to support an argument that the Mennonites didn't practice distinctive garb until the late 19th century. I know you didn't make that claim, but since you brought up those photo in the context of this discussion...

Before the turn of the century many Mennonite (mostly Lancaster Conference Mennonites) young people dressed like the world, often not espousing the plain dress until joining the church around the times of their marriages, usually in their twenties. However, that whole tradition was brought into question when a horrible tragic accident happened in the wee morning hours of July 26,1896.

It happened after a Saturday evening party near the village of Witmer, PA. The party included many young people from a radius of about fifteen miles. Many of the young people had Mennonite parents but weren’t members of the Mennonite church.

Around midnight three homeward bound couples drove along the Old Philadelphia Pike which crossed a railroad track, the couples were chatting loudly from buggy to buggy not hearing the train, bearing down on them behind a curve. The first buggy made it across, but second buggy which contained twenty-three-year-old Enos Barge and eighteen-year-old Barbara Hershey, did not because the train frightened the horse and he reared and stood still on the tracks. When the train hit, the horse was hurled aside, and the buggy was smashed. Barbara Hershey was cut to pieces, her head unrecognizable. Enos was found thirty feet away from his right arm. He lingered in agony for a day, then he too died.

That incident brought an awakening to the Lancaster Conference Mennonite community that questioned the concept of waiting until someone was in adulthood to make a commitment to the Lord and becoming church members. It was estimated that about 500 young people were ushered into the churches later that summer.

It took a while until other conferences, such as Weaverland conference caught on to this new awakening/tradition.

Source: The Earth is the Lord’s, by John Ruth

https://www.newspapers.com/article/the- ... /44402491/

This was also the period in which 'revival meetings' became common in eastern US Mennonite communities, was it not? (Not my people, so I'm just now learning about this. In my own background, the revival movement took place around the 1850's & 60's.)

Same general timeframe, yes. Varied from community to community - some were more receptive than others.

[JohnH]

Given that plainer Anabaptists used to (and some still do) have a stance against photography, it seems particularly unlikely that plain Anabaptists would have consented to be photographed (or gone to the effort to spend expensive sums of money on going to the trouble to get such protraits taken).