1918 · event
Hutterite communities move north
Wartime hostility and the costs of refusing military participation helped drive Hutterite colonies toward new homes in Canada.
Also searchable as: Hutterites Enroute North · Jamesville Colony
The Hutterite move north during the First World War was a migration of communities seeking room to continue their life of faith. German speech, refusal to participate in war, and resistance to financing it made colonies targets of hostility. The photographed timeline describes open harassment of settlements in the United States during this period.
At Jamesville Colony in South Dakota, refusal to sell war bonds was followed by a raid that cost the community livestock valued in the panel at about $40,000. The imprisonment of the Hofer brothers and Jacob Wipf placed the consequences of nonresistance before other families as well. A colony’s ability to live by its convictions could no longer be taken for granted.
Many colonies prepared to leave the United States, and a substantial movement into Canada followed in 1918. Hutterite community history records settlements in Manitoba and Alberta among the different Leut. The move extended the long history of Hutterite migration in search of religious freedom, carrying communal worship, shared work, and common life into new prairie homes.
Sources for this history: [1] [2]
