The Quiet in the Land - Film about Christopher Dock and the German Martyrs Mirror Printing

[Ernie]

Here is a link to a film from the early 70's that I first viewed nearly 20 years ago.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ko-NhvQxPI0&t=9s
This film stars John L. Ruth as Christopher Dock and shows the need for a German Martyrs Mirror in America.

At the time, I was doing research in preparation for publishing The Great Book Series of children's books on the saga of the first Martyrs Mirror Printing in America.

The Continental army needed paper for wadding in muskets and the Continental Congress learned that the print shop at Ephrata Cloisters had a lot of paper. (unbound printed copies of the German Martyrs Mirror.)
The army, under George Washington's orders, seized about 325 copies of the Martyr Book, and converted about 150 copies into murder books to be used against their British brothers.

"Thus, two wagons and six soldiers
arrived, seizing the martyr books
but correctly paying for them.
This caused great offense in the
land, and many people felt that
the war would not end favorably
for the country because the
testimonies of the holy martyrs
had been quite maltreated."
-Peter Miller

10 years later, Joseph von Gundy, who appears to have been a convert to Anabaptism, was part of a delegation to Philadelphia to pick up the 175 copies that were not used for wadding. Some of these copies had missing pages but were bound and sold anyhow, inserting blank paper in place of the missing pages. (setting up a print press to print some missing pages would not have been worth the time. A person could always handwrite the missing pages later if they wished) Some of these recovered Martyrs Mirrors can be viewed at that Ohio Amish Library and Muddy Creek Farm Library.

Read more here.
https://ohioamishlibrary.org/wp-content ... Mirror.pdf

[barnhart]

I learned something today. Thanks for the history lesson.

[JayP]

Similar to the story of during the battle of Springfield in NJ during the revolution, the Patriots were short on wadding.
So the local minister when back to his church, grabbed the hymnals, and as the soldiers used them for wadding he cried out “Give them Watts, boys!”

Ephrata Cloisters is an interesting field trip. Highly recommend it (although they were not Anabaptists but German Pietists.

[Ernie]

Similar to the story of during the battle of Springfield in NJ during the revolution, the Patriots were short on wadding.
So the local minister when back to his church, grabbed the hymnals, and as the soldiers used them for wadding he cried out “Give them Watts, boys!”

I think there are very few similarities other than that religious material was used for musket wadding.
The one involved "Christians" cheering the military and donating hymnbooks with songs written by "Christians" who typically supported those who killed each other with the sword.
The other involved "Christians", Deists, and others seizing books by force from Christians who did not support violence, and books that told the stories of those who were willing to die rather than fight for their rights.