The Motherlode of Erismans

I have an unusual last name. For much of my life, I never met anyone named Erisman to whom I wasn’t closely related, close enough that we could easily calculate what flavor of cousin we were. Some years back, however, while visiting Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, on a business trip, I was suddenly inundated by Erismans—a colleague’s child’s kindergarten teacher, a local car dealership, the high school’s star quarterback smiling from a billboard. There were Erismans everywhere, even on a road sign. I had, I concluded, found the motherlode of Erismans.

Erisman Road, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Photo by author.

Of course, there is a reason why there are so many Erismans in Lancaster. His name was Melchior Erisman, my seven times great-grandfather and the ancestor of nearly all of the Lancaster Erismans. Melchior arrived in Pennsylvania in September 1717. He was a relatively young man at the time, not yet 25 years old, and brought with him a wife but no children. He settled in the area that became the city of Lancaster, acquiring land on Little Conestoga Creek and settling down to farm and raise children. His story seems pretty straightforward on the surface but actually illustrates a remarkable chapter in the history of early American immigration.

Melchior was born in 1692 in Aargau, Switzerland, a northern Swiss province near Zurich. He was baptized in the Reformed Church but became a Mennonite as a young man. The Mennonite religion is one of a number of sects of Anabaptists that broke with the newly established Protestant churches in the 16th century over the timing of baptism, with the Anabaptists arguing that it was more appropriate to baptize informed and willing adults rather than infants. Menno Simons was the leader of and lent his name to the Mennonite denomination, which embraced pacifism as well as adult baptism. Mennonites were particularly numerous in northern Europe and were persecuted in many countries (Beiler 1997; Eschleman 1917; Scheffer & Pennypacker 1878; Smith 1909)

Switzerland, while a Protestant country, had a state church with little tolerance for any sort of Anabaptist. As letter by an exiled Swiss Mennonite, written in April 1672, explains:

They say, that they are daily hunted by constables, and, as many as they can get, taken prisoners to the city of Berne, so that about four weeks ago about forty, men and women, were in confinement there. They have also scourged some and banished them from the country (quoted in Eschleman 1917, p 113).

Understandably, some Mennonites chose to leave Switzerland, and large numbers were also exiled by the Swiss government. Many of these expatriate Mennonites settled in the Palatinate, a region in southwest Germany along the Rhine River. This area had been decimated during the Thirty Years War, which ended in 1635, and its leaders welcomed new settlers who could farm their lands (Eschleman 1917; Smith 1909).

Seutter, Matthäus. c1750. The tormented geography of the Rheinish Palatinate. Image from Wikimedia Commons.

It’s not clear exactly when or how Melchior left Switzerland, although the cause was likely the persecution experienced by Swiss Mennonites. He may have belonged to one of several groups of Mennonite prisoners who were exiled from Switzerland in 1710-11, many of whom ended up in the Palatinate (Beiler 1997; Eschleman 1917; Scheffer & Pennypacker 1878). In any case, it’s unlikely he found the Palatinate to be a particularly hospitable place once he got there. While the Mennonite exiles had initially been welcomed by the Palatine Elector, this relationship soured over time, particularly after 1685 when a Catholic Elector came into power and began to take action against Protestants in general and nonconformists such as Quakers and Mennonites in particular (Smith 1909).

By the early 1700s, the situation in the Palatinate was bad enough for some Mennonites to consider moving yet again. In 1710, a group of Mennonite families arrived in London and sought assistance in immigrating to the American colonies. While in London, they seem to have met with an agent of William Penn, who was seeking settlers for the enormous grant of land he had received in 1681 and who promised new settlers religious freedom and the prospect of actually owning their own land (Dunn 1983).

The broadside used to advertise Pennsylvania to potential colonists. Penn, William. 1682. A brief account of the Province of Pennsilvania in America, lately granted under the great seal of England to William Penn. Image from the Library of Congress.

With financial assistance from the Commission for Foreign Need, an organization established by Dutch Mennonite churches to assist persecuted brethren, the group sailed for America (Beiler 1997; Scheffer & Pennypacker 1878). Once there, they obtained 10,000 acres of land in what is now Lancaster County for the price of 500 pounds sterling to be paid over six years, a substantial sum but much less than what that much land would have cost in Europe (Eschleman 1917; Mombert 1869; Smith 1909). As the Mennonites settled into their new home, they built homes, farmed the land, worshiped as they wished, and prospered.

1719 Herr House, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Home of one of the original group of Mennonite settlers. Photo by author.

With the success of the Lancaster County Mennonite settlement, its leaders sought to encourage others to join them, sending one of their number, Martin Kendig, back to Germany to report on their situation. In 1717, more than 350 of the remaining Palatine Mennonites packed up their families and set sail for Philadelphia in three ships, again relying on financial assistance from the Dutch Mennonites to help poorer families pay for their passage (Beiler 1997; Scheffer & Pennypacker 1878; Smith 1909). Melchior Erisman and his wife Edith were among these immigrants.

Erisman Mennonite Church, Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Photo by author.

For all that Melchior’s journey to American was rooted in his Mennonite faith, my branch of the family didn’t stick with those ideals for very long. Melchior’s grandson Johannes, my five times great-grandfather, left Lancaster County in 1805 after getting married in the Reformed Church. Many of Melchior’s descendants did remain in Lancaster, of course, producing the motherlode of Erismans that I found there. Johannes’s brother Abraham, in fact, became the founder of the Erisman Mennonite Church in 1799, a church that still exists in Lancaster County and is a clear reminder of my family’s nonconformist roots (Eby 1991).

Works Cited

Beiler, Rosalind J. 1997. “Distributing Aid to Believers in Need: The Religious Foundations of Transatlantic Migration.” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies 64: 73-87.

Dunn, Richard S. 1983. “William Penn and the Selling of Pennsylvania, 1681-1685.” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 127(5): 322-9.

Eby, J. Melvin. 1991. A History of the Erisman Mennonite Church. Lancaster, PA.

Eschleman, H. Frank. 1917. Historic Background and Annals of the Swiss and German Pioneer Settlers of Southeastern Pennsylvania. Lancaster, PA: Masthoff Press.

Mombert, J. I. 1869. An Authentic History of Lancaster County: in the State of Pennsylvania. Lancaster, PA: J.E. Barr & Co.

Scheffer, J. G. De Hoop, and Samuel W. Pennypacker. 1878. “Mennonite Emigration to Pennsylvania.” The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography 2(2): 117-38.

Smith, C. Henry. 1909. The Mennonites of America. Scottdale, PA: Mennonite Publishing House.