Mennonites in Texas: The Quiet in the Land

Building a West Texas Home

IT DOESN’T LOOK much like the promised land,these desolate High Plains of West Texas, dotted with natural gas wells and inhabited by rattlesnakes and jackrabbits.Red dirt piles up against fences alongside flat blacktopped roads used only by occasional pickup trucks. But for thousands of hard-working Mennonites, the land outside Seminole, Texas, has turned out to be their long-sought haven from religious persecution. Migrating to Texas On March , , Henry Reimer, a bishop in the Old Colony Mennonite Church,purchased the Seven-O Ranch southwest of Seminole, formally opening the door for the immigration of five hundred Mennonites from Canada and Mexico. The Old Colony group purchased a block of , acres, and the General Conference Group, a less conservative assembly affiliated with the General Conference Mennonite Church, acquired , acres.1 Both groups were descended from Old Colony Mennonites who had settled Mexico in the s. The majority of Mennonites came from communities in Chihuahua, Mexico, with less than a third from Canada. While the Mennonites from Canada were seeking relief from rising taxes and school curricula that ran counter to their values, the Old Colony Mennonites of Chihuahua Building a West Texas Home Laura L. Camden All we want to do is work and be citizens of this country. If they let us stay, this will be a new land. It is nothing but dust now, but someday you will see. — , Newsweek, February ,    .  had different circumstances. They were looking for a block of land large enough for all who wanted to migrate (initial figures proposed three hundred families from Canada and Mexico) and isolated enough to encourage separation from the “world.”2 Their search for suitable parcels of land in Mexico had been made quite difficult by a record high population increase in Mexico in the late s, which approached  percent per year.3 There they ran into direct competition with the locals, who were also searching for land and believed they had native ownership rights. The tension in that situation often resulted in harassment of and theft and misdemeanors against the Mennonites. The Old Colony Mennonites were also concerned about the declining value of the peso, which affected them economically, and the threat of poverty, especially to the landless Mennonites,as the population increased.4 Not surprisingly , the fact that the per capita income in the United States was ten times greater than in Mexico made the prospect of immigrating to Texas even more appealing. Others, however, just wanted to get away from the strict rules of the Old Colony Mennonite church and create a more progressive and liberal community in Texas. The Mennonites picked West Texas primarily because large, isolated blocks of land were available there, and their private schools would not be heavily regulated by the state. Their final settlement choice straddled the boundary between Gaines and Andrews counties. The two counties have a combined total of more than three thousand square miles, with an average of only nine people per square mile. According to the  census, Andrews County had , residents, and Gaines County had ,. Today those figures remain close, as Andrews County has approximately , residents, and Gaines County has close to ,.Located eighty-five miles southwest of Lubbock, near the New Mexico border, Seminole has a population of , and is intersected by U.S. highways , , and , State Highway , and Farm Road  in central Gaines County.5 The Mennonite population in and around Seminole and within Gaines County is approximately ,. The area’s economy, like that of most of West Texas, depends largely on agriculture. The dominant crops are cotton, peanuts, and pecans. Farmers and ranchers also grow—and sometimes lease—grasses for grazing cattle. Oil production is important, but crop production has increased since the late s with the use of pivotal irrigation methods.6 In such systems, a pivot point is set at the center of a field, and a long, elevated boom sprays precious water as it creeps in a circle around the pivot to make the green circles that airline passengers often wonder about as they fly over the West Texas landscape. Since the introduction of these techniques,which are used by the Mennonites, crop production has dominated the livelihood of the area. For the Mennonites, the appeal was the relatively open country occupied by large ranches. Land prices were rea-       sonable, and there was enough land for expansion. By the mid-s Gaines County had...