The Mennonites in Kansas

Alexanderwohl was the only large Mennonite group to come from Russia to North America as a complete congregation. About 800 people sailed from Hamburg in August 1874, minister Jacob Buller's party on the Cimbria on the 12th and Dietrich Gaeddert's 130 families on the Teutonia four days later. Gaeddert's group reached Topeka on September 10 and Buller's soon after, and the Santa Fe housed them for a month while they bought horses, cattle and farm implements. By then they had parted: Buller's people settled near present Goessel and Gaeddert's east of Buhler, as Hoffnungsau.

What the plaque says

The Mennonites in Kansas Beginning in 1874, hundreds of peace-loving Mennonite immigrants settled in central Kansas. They had left their former homes in Russia because a hundred-year-old immunity from established religious orthodoxy and military service was being threatened. The Alexanderwohl community, so named because of a solicitous visit by Czar Alexander I with Prussian Mennonites in 1821, had lived happily in southern Russia for more than 50 years before coming to America. Originating in the Netherlands in the 16th century, the community moved to Prussia in the 17th century and later to Russia, always seeking freedom from intolerance and persecution. Their decision to come to America and Kansas, where they chose lands in Marion, Harvey, McPherson and other nearby counties, was due largely to the efforts of the Santa Fe railroad's foreign immigration department. With them they brought the hard winter wheat which has since helped make Kansas the breadbasket of the world The Alexanderwohl church is typical of many Mennonite congregations in this part of Kansas. Today these religious folk prosper in a modern world while retaining their original philosophy of freedom and manner of worship. Erected by Kansas Historical Society & State Highway Commission

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Kauffman Museum — 13 mi
  Bethel College's museum in North Newton of the Mennonites who settled the central plains in the 1870s, home to the copper plates of the 1685 Martyrs Mirror.
• Chaplain Kapaun Museum and St. John Nepomucene Church — 22 mi
  The old rectory beside the Czech brick church in Pilsen, where Emil Kapaun said his first Mass and served as a young priest before he died a prisoner of war in North Korea in 1951.
• Lindsborg Old Mill & Swedish Heritage Museum — 28 mi
  A roller mill of 1898 on the Smoky Hill that still turns over once a year, and a Swedish manor house shipped to the 1904 World's Fair and given to Lindsborg's college afterward.
• Coronado Heights — 31 mi
  A Dakota sandstone bluff 300 feet above the Smoky Valley north of Lindsborg, named by boosters for a Spanish visit that never happened here, with a WPA stone castle on top.

More markers nearby

• Turkey Red Wheat — 11 mi
• Kansas Indian Treaty — 16 mi