In 1874, a group of nine hundred Mennonites migrated from Russia to the western plains of Canada and the United States, settling in and around Steinbach, Manitoba, and Jansen, Nebraska. This social hsitory shows how these conservative, German-speaking farm families adapted to an increasingly urbanized and industrialized world.
Royden Loewen examines how the men and women of this immigrant group decised strategies to maintain familiar social structures and cultural patters within a changing society. Because these Mennonites were highly literate, leaving a rich array of diaries, letters,...