Page:Mennonite Handbook of Information 1925.djvu/64



The inclination on the part of many Mennonites to keep well to the fore in finding homes along the wilderness border has as a rule been westward, with however some arms from the main body in Pennsylvania extending northwestward to New York and Canada.

Another strong arm reached southward into Maryland, Virginia, West Virginia, and Tennessee. However, the main trunk of the imigration movement has sent its strongest growths into Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska; while the main stem continued its growth still westward into Colorado and finally extended its topmost branches across the mighty Rocky mountains to states of the Pacific slope. In the meantime, other branches have gone far southward into Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and Texas.

Other branches also now reach forth into the Dakotas, Montana, Minnesota and the provinces of northwest Canada, until our people have become permanently located in twenty-six of the states and four of the Canadian provinces.

A glance at the great tree accompanying this chapter readily shows how it established its main stock with the year 1632 in Europe, and how this, for several generations grew in two separate trunks