The Schrag Roots Part I

from The Johann and Anna Schrag Family Record, 1848-1976 / compiled by John B. Goering and Roma Schrag Stucky

The Schrag Roots / James A. Goering & Mrs. Art D. Goering

The Schrag family history should be seen in the broader context of religious developments which gave rise to their pilgrimage. They were members of the Anabaptist movement which grew out of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century in Switzerland. The Anabaptists attempted to establish a pure church based on principles set forth in the New Testament, including doctrines neglected by the Protestant reformers such as separation from the world and the state church, nonresistance, and believer’s baptism by which new members were voluntarily brought into the fellowship.

Menno Simons, a young, well educated Catholic priest, broke away from tradition and joined the Anabaptist movement in 1536 in the Netherlands. He effectively gathered groups of Anabaptists together, taught, baptized, and wrote. His followers soon were called Menists and finally Mennonites.

From 1531 to 1574 many Mennonites were severely prosecuted, tortured, and burned at the stake for their religious convictions. As a result of this persistent persecution there was much moving about among the Mennonites and many refugees moved to more tolerant areas.

In Canton Bern of Switzerland the Anabaptists were severely persecuted. They were driven to remote yet fertile mountain areas where they engaged in farming. Eventually Count Karl August who reigned in the Palatinate invited the persecuted Anabaptists to settle in his lands which had been devastated by war. He had heard of their farming skill and was eager to have his land restored to productivity. He offered limited freedom which included freedom of worship provided they did not meet in public meeting rooms.

The best sources indicate that the forebears of Johannes Schrag migrated from the Canton Bern in Switzerland to the Palatinate in Germany, possibly in 1671 when some 700 Mennonite refugees arrived there because of persecution.

In 1784 Johannes Schrag with his wife, Elizabeth (maiden name Albrecht) and five children left from Albisheim on the Eis River (in the Palatinate) for Galicia, a Polish province which was annexed to Austria in 1772. They, along with five other Swiss-Amish families, traveled via Regensburg, Linz, Vienna, Biala, and Lember and were settled in the village of Falknstein, Austria, a few miles south of Lemberg.

In 1796 Johannes Schrag, along with several others of the Amish group in the Galician Mennonite settlement, left Falkenstein to live with the Hutterian Brethren in the Reditschoff Bruderhof at Wischanka on the River Desna in the Northern Ukraine. They stayed in the Bruderhof one year, moving next to Michalin near Machnovka sourth of Zhitomir in 1797. Sometime in the years 1801 and 1802 they moved to the province of Volhynia locating in Edwardsdorf near Dubno.

Johannes Schrag’s son, Andreas, who also left the Hutterian Bruderhof in 1797, was living in the Urszulin-Michelsdorf settlement in 1802. It is not definite whether he moved here in 1797 or later. Through this move, the Schrags who were of the Palatinate, Swiss-Amish (family names: Bachman, Ewy, Krehbiel, Mundlein, Schrag, Algrecht, Mauer, Schmidt, Sutter, Zercher) joined with the Montbeliard, France Swiss-Amish ( family names:Gerig, Kaufmann, Graber, Lichti, Rothe, Stucky, Flichinger) who comprised the major portion of the Urszulin-Michelsdorf settlement. It was through the merging of the Palatinate and Montbeliard Swiss-Amish both before and during their stay in Volhynia that the Swiss Volhynia Mennonites came into being.

up next: more moves within Europe and then to Kansas