40 / European Background of the Ohio Mennonites and Amish

to Lutheran, Reformed, Moravian, Schwenkfelder, Dunker, SeventhDay Baptist, and other German-speaking neighbors. They tilled the fertile soil of Bucks, Montgomery, Berks, Chester, and Lancaster counties. To be sure there were also English and Scotch-Irish inhabitants in the eighteenth century in Penn's colony but in many important respects the Mennonites and Amish, like their German neighbors, were able to carve out a way of life that preserved Old World customs, crafts, language, and husbandry."

The separatism of the Mennonites and Amish was not as conspicuous in Pennsylvania as would have been the case had they had all English-speaking neighbors and had it not been that about one third of Penn's colony were of German extraction. Observers of the Pennsylvania German communities such as Benjamin Rush usually tended to describe the Palatines without distinguishing between church or sectarian as can be seen in the following quotation:

A German farm may be distinguished from the farms of the other citizens of the state, by the superior size of their barns, the plain but compact form of their houses, the height of their inclosures, the extent of their orchards, the fertility of their fields, the luxuriance of their meadows, and a general appearance of plenty and neatness in everything that belonged to them.'"

Near the same time that the above comparison was made by the observant' Rush he took a trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, to participate in the founding of Franklin College (later to become Franklin and Marshall College). In a letter dated June 19, 1787, Rush comments on this joyous occasion which marked the founding of an institution of higher learning among the Germans-a people for whom he had high hopes in fields of law, religion, government, and science. He noted especially that the German farmers were in great need of the enlightenment that liberal education would bring and that the "Mennonists" in particular were deficient in knowledge about legal and medical affairs. He also made the astute observation that the Mennonite separatistic attitude was related to a past of sufferings and persecution-" they suffered so much from the Bishop of Munster who was both a priest and a man of learning.""

Throughout the eighteenth century the Mennonites and Amish of Pennsylvania stayed close to their communities, building their way of life around farm, family, and faith. What has since become known as the Franconia and Lancaster conferences grew out of their settlements. In the eighteenth century there were migrations from