Democratic Sentinel, Volume 20, Number 13, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 3 April 1896 — DUNKARDS IN EXODUS [ARTICLE]

DUNKARDS IN EXODUS

TWENTY COLONtES GO FROM THE EAST TO THE WEST. Members Are from Six Different States and They Pim Through Chicago on Their Way to Dakota—Britain to KscOgnize Cuban*. Seek New Homes. Twenty colonies of Dunkards from six different States passed through Chicago on their way to new homes in North Dakota. The colonists, numbered 1,500, and they expect to settle along the line of the Great Northern Railroad in North Dakota. The Dunkards arrived over the Baltimore and Ohio, Wabash, Nickel Plate, Pan-Handle and Monon roads. They are from colonies in half a hundred towns in Virginia, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana and Illinois. The special trains were slow in arriving. As fast as sufficient cars were on hand a new train was made up in the Wisconsin Central yards and started for the Northwest. In order to carry all the emigrants four trains were necessary. The composition of these trains was twenty passenger coaches and 102 freight cars. In the freight cars w T ere families moving their household goods, farm implements and live stock. In the coaches were families having sold out most of their goods, thinking it cheaper to pay cash for what will be needed in their new homes than to pay freight rates on the old. A number of women used the coaches while their husbands and elder sons looked after the goods in the freight cars. Their Second Exodus. The present is the second exodus of Dunkards from the East to North Dakota in the last three years. They come from old-established colonies which have been sending out members to the West for half a century. Often children grow np, have families of their own, and leave the parent colony much after the nature of bees, which swarm when their quarters become too crowded. Such is the' case in this instance. The fathers of large families have left their Eastern homes, where land is high, with a view to establishing large family estates in the West. These emigrants are not of the poorer class. Many are well-to-do and all are industrious, desirable citizens. For some time the elders of the church have been investigating the desirability for settlement on North Dakota lands. The reports have been favorable and the present emigration is the result. The fate of the present colonists will decide the future action of several times as many who have staid at home and are watching the venture with a view to following should it prove successful. The one great object of the movement is the desire to possess more land. In the country where they are going there remains a large tract of Government land open to settlement. This ready for such purposes until recent, when the Great Northern flushed \s road through what is known as the Devil’s Lake country. Within a few years many small towns have sprung up along the line and the country is rapidly being broken up into farms. Each head of a Dunkard family will homestead on 160 acres of land. His sons and sons-in-law over 21 years old will take a like amount. In this way families will absorb entire sections of land. Each family will also be a nucleus around which other Dunkards will settle. In a few generations the big farms wilt be divided and subdivided among the children, until finally no more land will remain and another exodus will be necessary.