# Mennonites, Misunderstandings, and Herbal Medicines MENNONITE LIFE IN THE CONESTOGA VALLEY OF COLONIAL PENNSYLVANIA Victorious Christian Living Language: en Author: by Rick Hess Dornsife, PA Original issue: The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Summer 2023, Number 2 Source pages: 34–35 Read article: Original PDF: Summer\-2023\-Remnant\-web\.pdf [The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Summer 2023]() This story starts in Switzerland, in the 1500s\. A group of Christian believers, desiring to obey Jesus and return to the teachings of the Apostles and the early Church, separated from both the Catholic and Protestant state\-run Churches in several Cantons of Switzerland\. They were referred to as the Swiss Brethren and were deemed as enemies of the state, by the Catholics and Protestants alike\. Their enemies called them “Anabaptists” because they rejected infant baptism\. They also refused military service, obeying Christ’s commands to “bless them that persecute you” and “love your enemies”\. Many were arrested, imprisoned, tortured mercilessly and finally, many were martyred for not recanting their faith\. In the early 1600s, when the authorities could not stop the movement in this manner, they began confiscating the believer’s homes, farms, and belongings, then exiled them from Switzerland\. Europe had just gone through the devastations of the Thirty Years’ War \(1618\-1648\)\. In some places, like the Palatinate \(Pfaltzland\) in Germany, as many as 70% of the inhabitants had died of either war or disease\. Many of the Hoffs \(house/barn fort enclosures\) were burned out and the fields were left uncultivated for years\. In the mid\-1600s, the local Prince, Elector Ludwig, invited the exiled Swiss Brethren into the Palatinate to help rebuild the farms because of their reputation as excellent husbandmen and tillers of the soil\. There were three official Churches recognized by the Germans: Catholic, Lutheran, and Reformed\. Although the Swiss Brethren were needed economically, and their faith was tolerated, their churches were not recognized\. There were limits on how many of them could meet together at one time, and many times they were not allowed to purchase the farms that they were improving because they were considered foreigners\. The Swiss\-operated farms did indeed prosper in time, partly due to their use of a superior crop rotation system, which helped them feed more dairy cattle, and, in turn, allowed them to produce milk through the winters\. Another major improvement was the introduction of the legume, clover\. This came from seed which the Dutch Mennonites gifted to them\. After about 50 years, the difference the Swiss had made in agriculture was noticeable enough that some frustrated German neighbors accused them of “Ferhexing” \(the Pennsylvania Dutch term for witchcraft\) the ground \(which of course was not true\)\. So, life in the Pfaltzland wasn’t getting better for the Swiss Brethren\. In the year 1708, they experienced a bitterly cold, long winter\. So cold that some of their stored root crops froze in the cold cellars\. Sometime after this, William Penn and the Quakers heard of the plight of these Swiss Anabaptists\. In 1682, William Penn had been granted the colony of Pennsylvania and wanted to conduct what he called the “Holy Experiment”\. He envisioned a land where all races and religions could dwell together in peace\. He had special interest in those groups persecuted by the European State Churches\. As a Quaker, he too had suffered persecution by the state church of England\. He welcomed Quakers from England, Huguenots from France, Mennonites from Holland, German Baptist, Schwenkfelders and Pietists from Germany, as well as Swiss Brethren and Jews from wherever they were sojourning and/or suffering\. That is the background for our account of Hans Graeff \(Groff\) who lived from c\.1661\-1746\. Hans had been converted to the faith of the Swiss Brethren, but his wife, Anna \(Bare\) Graeff had stayed with the Protestant State Church\. When the door opened to pioneer in Pennsylvania, Hans was interested in going, but Anna was not\. Possibly they planned to have him get settled in over there and then come back for her\. Hans first came to Pennsylvania in 1696\. Later, Hans ended up leading a small group of the Swiss Brethren \(Hans & Christian Herr, Martin Meylin, Jacob Muller, Martin Kendig, Martin Oberholtzer, Wendell Bowman & the Funks to name a few\) to Germantown, about seven miles north of Philadelphia in that day, which was the first permanent settlement of the Anabaptists in the New World\. Many of those first settlers were from Holland and Sweden and were part of the Mennonite Church of the Netherlands\. The Swiss immigrants spent the winter of 1709 in Germantown—the women doing spinning for the many weavers of Germantown and the men traveling to a new Anabaptist settlement at Skippack, where they were learning many of the skills needed to go to the frontier\. It seems that here is where the Swiss Brethren first became known as Mennists or Mennonites\. In 1710, the group moved up to the Conestoga Valley where Hans Groff had previously identified some very rich and well\-watered lands, 60 miles west of Germantown and civilization\. Life would indeed be difficult\. Wolves, bears, panthers, bobcats and other predators abounded\. There were also elk, timber bison, and whitetail deer in abundance \(which were glad to eat whatever the settlers planted\)\. Huge walnut, hickory, chestnuts, maples, white pines, and oaks, some six feet in diameter and over 100 feet tall, covered much of their new lands \(except for some open meadows, left by the native Americans and wetlands\)\. These huge trees would need to be cut down by hand with axes and two\-man saws\. The closest doctor, apothecary, hardware, or general store was 60 miles away\. It would be challenging and dangerous work, but they were free\! Free to obey their conscience\. Free to practice their religion\. Free to own land in this beautiful wilderness\. Free to love and witness to their neighbors—the Conestoga tribe and French traders\. They received a land patent for 10,000 acres for their families and others that might come later\. Partly due to severe persecution, in 1710, a group of Swiss Brethren moved to the Mannheim area of Germany\. Seven years later, in 1717, they made the trip across the Atlantic\. There were more than 60 families that came to the Conestoga Valley in the fall of that year, including my ancestors, Hans and Magdalena Hess and their three children \(they were eventually blessed with a total of 11\)\. You could say that from then on, the floodgates opened, and masses of Anabaptists fled Europe to “Penn’s Promised Land”\. From 1730 and later, as this wilderness became tamed, there were also many Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic people who came over from Germany to find better financial opportunities, filling this part of Pennsylvania with many German\-dialect speakers\. I greatly enjoyed speaking with the noted Lancaster County Anabaptist historian, Amos Hoover, while writing this article\. He gave many insights and details, but we both agreed, it is challenging to put together all the facts and details from so long ago\. Gleaning from a couple authors’ accounts, the story goes something like this: ## Misunderstanding Sometime, after being in Penn’s woods for a number of years, Hans Groff received word that his wife, Anna \(Bare\) Groff, back in Europe, had passed away\. He was very grieved and mourned, as he didn’t know it and wasn’t there to bury her\. In a few years, he married Susanna Kendig\. They lived first in the Strasburg area, then built a substantial homestead in the area now called Groffdale\. This union was blessed with nine children\. Years later, a woman showed up in the community and introduced herself as Mrs\. Hans Groff\. She had become an Anabaptist in Europe and had made the perilous trip across the Atlantic to find her husband\. According to her, a person with the same name as herself had died, and the word given to Hans was not true about his first wife’s death\. Hans was mortified, although he was innocent regarding his second marriage\. He had no desire to be a polygamist or to commit adultery\. The frontier church leaders held counsel and gave a recommendation—that the younger, pioneer wife with so many young children needed the husband to provide for them\. It is said that Hans didn’t feel clear to stay with either of them but did support both of his wives and their children financially\. He was noted as a tireless traveler, riding to Philadelphia with furs then back out into the vast frontier with blankets, brass kettles and other trade good for the Native Americans\. If you have heard or read this account with different details, so have I\. Only eternity will reveal all these details exactly\. ## Medicine Hans’s first wife chose to live as a single sister in that church community\. Instead of becoming bitter with her husband, her God, and her circumstances, she chose a life of service to her neighbors\. She lived in a little house, with a small barn \(possibly built by Hans for her\) on top of a steep hill overlooking Farmersville, called “Cat’s Back Hill”\. The ruins of this early 1700s house and barn were still evident less than 50 years ago\. Apparently, she was a midwife, before coming to this country and continued in this profession once she was here\. She had a lot of experience with growing herbs and making herbal remedies\. She was possibly the closest one to being a doctor for many miles around\. From what I can find out, she spent her time being a blessing to the local community with her medical knowledge and wisdom, her homemade herbal medicines, and her midwifery\. Many of our Lancaster County forefathers may not have survived the rigorous pioneer life if it had not been for this dear Sister’s servanthood and medical knowledge\. Interestingly, years later, one of Hans’s sons from the second wife, David Groff, went away to study medicine\. Once his studies were completed, he came back as a doctor and helped his father’s first wife minister to the many settlers in fast growing Lancaster County\. This story provides a glimpse into some of the interesting details surrounding the life of conservative Anabaptists just before and during the establishing of Colonial America\. There were difficulties involving freedom of religion and worship in their homelands of Europe, but their travels to, and eventual day\-to\-day living in, a new, free country was acquainted with challenges as well\. One encouragement that we can see in this story was the willingness of these individuals to allow God’s principles to guide them each step of the way\.