Mennonite Heritage Museum
Cheryl Unruh
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
ONE REASON that I aimed toward Newton on a recent daytrip was so I could hang a right on K-15 and drive north to Goessel.
Goessel is home to the Mennonite Heritage and Agricultural Museum.
As a result of the Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, Kansas became a magnet for immigrants. Swedes created Lindsborg; Volga Germans went to the Hays area, Italians to Southeast Kansas and German-Russian Mennonites to Central Kansas. The Czechs came, the Danish, the Irish.
The Mennonites were courted by the Santa Fe Railroad which was eager to populate the land surrounding its tracks. The Railroad provided immigrant houses where the Mennonites could stay until they built homes of their own.
Since the 16th century, Mennonites had been somewhat nomadic; they moved about in pursuit of religious freedom.
First they left the Netherlands for West Prussia. Then they moved on to Russia in 1788 where Catherine the Great welcomed them with open arms. In the 1870s, however, Russia’s policy changes threatened the Mennonites’ religious lifestyle.
About 5,000 Mennonites packed their trunks and came to the Kansas prairies between 1873 and 1883.
They brought their faith, their families, and… their gold.
That gold is still harvested every June. The Mennonites brought Turkey Red, a variety of hardy winter wheat that they had grown successfully in Russia.
With rich Kansas farmland similar to those Russian steppes, Mennonites had found a good place to live (except for the pesky grasshoppers, tornadoes and such); the railroad got their land populated, and Kansas became the breadbasket of the world. Win-win-win.
The Mennonite Heritage Museum has artifacts which show what life was like for those immigrants.
A simple white garment, a death shroud, hangs on display in the museum. The Russian government required each person boarding a ship to have one — just in case.
If you can read Low-German, you might be able to understand the sermons given by a Mennonite minister. He left behind a hand-written book of his talks.
The main building at the museum was designed to replicate the immigrant houses that settlers lived in while they built their own homes.
“The immigrant houses had one long room, 200 feet long and 18 feet wide,” museum director Marjorie Shoemaker told me. “Each family had about 10 feet of space.”
While the 8-building museum offers Mennonite history, this is also where you’ll find a windmill, ditching plow, groundhog thresher, a two-row wooden planter, a mail buggy — and countless other items that reflect rural Kansas life in the 19th and 20th centuries.
You can see a replica of the Liberty Bell, made from wheat stalks. It was created by area Mennonites who wove the six-foot-high bell for a Smithsonian Institution display during the U.S. Bicentennial.
Two of the museum’s structures are family farmhouses. One was built in 1875; the other is a two-story Victorian farmhouse built in 1911.
A one-room schoolhouse comes with books, desks and a 48-star flag. Hanging on the wall is a 1906 map of Asia. German cursive letters are chalked on the blackboard.
But my favorite building in the complex was the 1902 barn. It was a wedding gift to Jacob and Susie Schroeder, built by his father. The Schroeders lived in two rooms of the barn until after their fourth child was born.
While part of the barn was living quarters, the remainder of the structure was barn-like, with the stalls along one wall, horse tack hanging on another, a ladder leading up to the loft.
Nothing says 20th century Kansas to me like a wooden barn — light shining through the windows, wind blowing through the cracks, and the faint smell of horses and hay and time.
Like other immigrant groups, the Mennonites have played an important role in Kansas history. Their story is told well at the Mennonite Heritage and Agricultural Museum in Goessel. For information and hours, call 620-367-8200.
Cheryl Unruh can be reached at cheryl@flyoverpeople.net.
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