Center for Mennonite Brethren Studies

Resources (1)

• The library has a goal of acquiring materials (published and unpublished) that pertain to the history of the Mennonite Brethren Church. This branch of the Mennonites originated in the German colonies of southern Russia (Chortiza and Molotschna). A "Document of Secession," establishing the Mennonite Brethren, was written and signed in 1860 in the village of Elizabethtal.

  The unpublished materials at the library are mainly records of the Mennonite Brethren Church in North America and the people from that church who came to North America in the first great wave of Mennonite emigration from Russia, 1874–75. Besides official church records, the library also has immigrants' diaries and correspondence, some of the latter to those who stayed in the Russian Empire.