Page:Mennonite Handbook of Information 1925.djvu/84

 eat, he was not to be refused. At a later period this privilege became abused to the degree that Indians began to travel through the settlements of white men in bands of twenty or more and the privilege of being fed from the white man's home was claimed as usual. Whenever refusal was offered, it frequently happened that they would take possession of the premises for the time, cook their own meal, eat it and then proceed to their journey. Nonresistant people peaceably allowed this privilege to be exacted again and again without resentment, but other whites of different temperament resorted to violence and bloodshed in defending their homes from these invasions.

Conditions followed in which Mennonites indiscriminately suffered with the guilty, and numbers of instances are on record, both in Pennsylvania and Virginia, where their homes were burned, and members of the family killed or carried into captivity.

A Mennonite colony located on the headwaters of the Rappahannock in Fauquier county, Virginia, where families by the name of Barr, Baer, Groff Webber and others were attacked by Indians in 1724 and a number of the settlers killed.

Late in the night of September 19, 1757, the house of Jacob Hostetler in Berks county, Pennsylvania, was surrounded by eight or ten Indians. In the building were Jacob Hostetler, his wife, three sons, and a daughter. The father would not permit his sons to shoot at the Indians, even while they were setting fire to the house and barn. After remaining in the cellar as long as they could bear the