Monthly Archives: May 2026

Better angels of our nature

Digging deep to help immigrants

Beginning in 1874, over 1,200 families from Ukraine sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to New York and traveled by train to Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska. Russian Tsar Alexander II had revoked some religious freedoms for thousands of Mennonites and required military service. So, the families, whose ancestors had migrated for religious freedom from the Netherlands to Prussia and then to Russia, picked up and moved again, this time to the U.S. and Canada.

 Because so many families moved at about the same time, farm prices were depressed when they sold, and the farmers arrived in New York with little money. In the better angels of their nature, hundreds of Mennonites in the United States gave money to help pay ship crossing fares and to help them buy land in the American Midwest.

“In a Strange Land–Asking the Way.” Mennonite group from Odesa, Russia (Ukraine), bound for Nebraska or Dakota. Harper’s Weekly, 1874 May 30, p. 452, Library of Congress

I was startled recently by how deep some families in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia dug to help pay ship crossing fares and enable farm families from Russia who spoke no English to buy land. In 1874, four small Mennonite congregations just north of Harrisonburg, Va., raised $195 to help pay ship passage fees and offered $245 in loans to help two families buy land in Kansas and Oklahoma. The immigrant family names were Unruh and Schmidt.

Earlier this year, I reviewed a folder of previously unanalyzed primary source material from Jacob Geil, a Mennonite deacon, who kept good records. The financial notes that Geil issued to Mennonites from Russia were for seven years. The correspondence includes letters that Geil wrote to Unruh and Schmidt seven years later, inquiring about repayment. I figured that about two dozen farm families in the Shenandoah Valley, in the four small congregations, collected over $12,000 in today’s money to help.

Money given and loans made to immigrants in the 1870s, combined with the economic incentives offered by the Santa Fe Railroad Company, helped them prosper and flourish. The settlers repaid the loans from Mennonites whom they did not know, making Kansas a breadbasket for the world.

House where Jacob Geil and family lived in the 1870s, Linville, Va. (photo by Elwood Yoder)

In October 2024, I took two grandsons, ages 5 and 8, to visit a heritage museum in Goessel, Kansas, one of the centers where Russian immigrants settled 150 years ago. We learned history, sat on old farm machinery, learned about wheat threshing stones, and had fun.

We paused to examine and talk about a swords-into-plowshares outdoor metal sculpture created to mark the centennial in 1974 of the first wave of Mennonite arrivals from Ukraine. These immigrant farm families believed in the way of peace and nonviolence. To the credit of President Ulysses S. Grant and Canadian Prime Minister John A. Macdonald, who welcomed immigrants, the Mennonites turned the ground with plowshares and grew acres of wheat. Many of their descendants rejected violence when Uncle Sam went to war.

Swords into Plowshares sculpture, Goessel, KS (Elwood Yoder photo)

My wife and I have six grandchildren who live in eastern Kansas. They are growing up where thousands of Russian immigrants settled and prospered. One lesson I want to help teach them is that the better angels of our nature should embolden those of us who have been here a while to, in turn, assist immigrants and help them get started in their new lives. And we may need to dig deep.

Better angels of our nature

Washhouse Politics

Decades of interactions in an old washhouse demonstrate how people with different goals and backgrounds can live together in concord and peace. In 1840, the Burkholders, a Mennonite family in Rockingham County, Va., built a washhouse. Since then, many have used the building, and today it is a fun learning station during K-1st-grade field trips at the Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center in Harrisonburg, Va.

From 1840 to 1865, ten percent of those in the Shenandoah Valley were enslaved, though the Burkholder family did not use them to work in their washhouse. If they had, their Mennonite church would have removed them from membership. In 1860, Rebecca Burkholder suffered the death of her husband, Martin, and lost two children to influenza. When the Civil War began in 1861, widow Burkholder had four small children in her care, and neighbors and family helped her farm the fields.

Burkholder-Myers house (left), 1854, and washhouse, 1840, Harrisonburg, Va.

The Burkholder family washed their clothes in their washhouse, using water heated in a large metal pot that hung over the fire. They used homemade lye soap, hung clean clothes outside on a line to dry, and poured the wash water on the garden plants. The washhouse also served as a butcher house, where cattle and hog meat were cured and smoked.

Rebecca Burkholder hid men at her home during the Civil War who, for religious reasons, would not fight for the Confederacy. No one knows where she hid the men, but the basement or attic in the washhouse is a likely guess.

In 2026, well over 100 K-1st-grade children will visit the washhouse each week in April and May. Many parents, teachers, and chaperones follow their children. They come from public, private, and homeschool groups. On April 23, 2026, in the washhouse, education students from a nearby university and two faculty observed the guides. I led a Connecticut tourist couple into the smoky wash house, where logs burned in the fireplace, and they were delighted to watch children actively learning.

Burkholder-Myers washhouse, Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.

The washhouse guides demonstrated how 19th-century families washed their clothes. The kids used a washboard to clean socks, then went outside and learned to hang wet clothes on a clothesline.

During lunch, when the kids ate their packed lunches outside, the 40-50 adult volunteers ate a delicious lunch delivered by a local Mennonite church.

In the washhouse, Confederate scouts searched for Mennonite men who hid from conscription, and the Burkholders washed, ironed, folded their clean clothes, and prepared summer meals over the fireplace. In recent years, thousands of elementary students have learned about the tasks performed in a 19th-century washhouse. Amid these many people, cultures, and beliefs, the washhouse has been a great setting for diverse people to learn from one another. For me, “washhouse politics,” where people interact with good intentions and respect one another, is how I’d like to see our U.S. society work together and get along.

Washhouse at Brethren & Mennonite Heritage Center, Harrisonburg, Va.