THE MENNONITES
During the first half of the sixteenth century, Menno Simons founded a
denomination of Christians in Friesland, a province of the Netherlands.
Many of these Mennonites settled in Northern Germany. This religious
belief was opposed to military service and about the close of the
American Revolution the Mennonites began emigrating, until more than
fifty thousand of their number had found homes west of the Dneiper, near
the Black Sea, in Southern Russia, around Odessa. These people were
fanatical in their belief, rejected infant baptism and original sin,
believing in baptism only on profession of faith, and were opposed to
theological training.
In Russia, as in Germany, they led lives of great simplicity, both
secularly and religiously and lived in separate communities.
The gently rolling lands, with a rich soil, responded readily to
cultivation, and history proves the Germans always to have been good
farmers. The Mennonites found peace and prosperity in southern Russia,
until the Crimean war. Being opposed to military service, when Russia
began levying heavy taxes on their lands and heavier toll from their
families, by taking the strong young men to carry on the war, the
Mennonites became dissatisfied under the Russian government, and left
the country in great numbers, removing to America, and settling along
the Jim river in South Dakota.
Among these settlers was a family by the name of Wesinberger, who had
grown prosperous, their forefathers having gone to Russia among the
first, although they were not Mennonites. Christopher the youngest son,
was among those drawn to go to the war, but the Wesinbergers were
prosperous, and paid the examining physician twelve hundred and fifty
rubles (about one thousand dollars) to have Christopher "made sick" and
pronounced unfit for service. With the approach of the Russian-Japanese
War, when it was seen that Russia would be forced into war with Japan,
the boys having married, and with sons of their own, who would have to
"draw," the Wesinberger brothers sold their land and set sail for
America. At the time the war broke out, John and Jacob were living on
homesteads, in the county adjoining Tipp county on the north,
Christopher having settled in western Canada.
It was while they were breaking prairie near my sister's homestead, that
I became acquainted with the former, who, at that time owned a hundred
and fifty head of cattle, seventy-five head of horses, hogs, and all
kinds of farm machinery, besides a steam prairie breaking outfit and
fifteen hundred acres of land between them.
During rainy days along in April, to pass the time away, I would visit
them, and while sitting by the camp fire was told of what I have written
above, but where they interested me most was when they discussed
astronomy and meteorology. They could give the most complete description
of the zodiacal heavens and the different constellations. It seems that
astronomy had interested their ancestors before leaving Germany nearly
one hundred and thirty years before, and it had been taught to each
succeeding generation. They seemed to know the position of each planet,
and on several occasions when the nights were clear, with a powerful
telescope, they would try to show them to me, but as I knew little or
nothing of astronomy, I understood but little of their discussions
concerning the heliocentric longitude of all the planets, or the points
at which they would appear if seen from the sun.
Before many months rolled around I had good reason to believe at least a
part of what they tried to explain to me, and that was, that according
to the planets we were nearing a certain Jupiter disturbance.
"And what does that mean?" I asked.
"That means," they explained, "It will be dry."
"Jupiter" said John, as he leisurely rolled a cigarette,
"circumnavigates the sun once while the earth goes around it twelve
times. In Russia Jupiter's position got between the sun and the
constellation Pisces, Aries, Taurus and Gemini, it was invariably wet
and cool and small grain crops were good, but as it passed on and got
between the sun and the constellations Libra and Scorpio it was always
followed by a minimum of rainfall and a maximum heat, which caused a
severe drouth."
They had hoped it would be different in America, but explained further
that when they had lived in Russia it commenced to get dry around St.
Petersburg, Warsaw and all northern Russia a year or so before it did in
southern Russia.
They had relatives living around Menno, in Hutchinson County, South
Dakota, who had witnessed the disastrous drouth during Cleveland's
administration. Jupiter was nearing the position it had then occupied
and would, in sixty days, be at the same position it had been at that
time.
While few people pay any attention to weather "dopsters," I did a little
thinking and remembered it had been dry in southern Illinois at that
time, and I began to feel somewhat uneasy. According to their knowledge,
if the same in southern America as it had been in southern Russia, it
would begin to get dry about a year before the worst drouth, then a very
dry year, the third year would begin to improve, and after the fourth
year conditions would again become normal, but the concensus of their
opinion was there would be a drouth.