1953 Strangers and Pilgrims. Grade
4, Nellie Siegenthaler, Spell downs, Flag salute, Melvin Schlabach, William F.
(Bill) Miller, Emmanuel Schrock, Joseph John Clauss, Witnessing and Amish
Christian Fellowship Bulletin, David A. Miller meeting; Fourth Amish
Mission Conference in Hutchinson, Kansas, September 3 birth of Rhoda, Signs of
Andrew’s separation from the Amish.
I entered
the fourth grade at Holmesville School with Nellie Siegenthaler as our no-nonsense,
sharp-eyed teacher. Ms. Siegenthaler was with the outstanding 1926 Holmesville
High School class of Roy Stallman and Eva Sterling Humrichouser, and though
short of stature, she was considered one of the strictest teachers in the
Holmesville School. Ms. Siegenthaler or Nellie, as we students called her among
ourselves, liked to do spell downs as a featured activity every Friday. Fourth
grade spell downs were a learning game in which the class formed two sides,
lined up on the two sides of the room in a random way, and if you miss-spelled
a word or got the wrong answer in mathematics, you had to sit down. The turn
would go from one side to the other to see which side was left standing.
Other
times we would all line up, and if you got the wrong answer you simply went to
the end of the line; thus whoever was left at the front of the line (think
Benny Miller, Joyce Paulocsak or Sarah Miller) at the end of the period, was
the winner. She also had flash cards for addition, subtraction, simple division
and multiplication, and again they were in the form of answering correctly, and
you would stay; if not you were down, or heading to the back of the line.
Though sharp-
eyed and rigorous, Ms. Siegenthaler also had a soft and funny heart on an
individual basis. For spelling words, she would say the word, use it in a
sentence, and then say the word again. Here we might get some of her humor,
such as when the word “mischievous” fell to Jacob Mast who was in fact quite
ornery and got into trouble with Ms. Siegenthaler. She said the word “mischievous,”
“Jake is sometimes mischievous in our class,” “mischievous.” Jake often missed
school and failed to bring written excuses from his parents, but we knew that she liked him. Jake wrote his absentee excuses himself on behalf of his father Andy Mast.
During the
year I also remember taking my younger brother David along one day; it was not
unusual to bring a younger family member along if there was a special day.
Anyway, one day we dressed up as circus and zoo animals, and had a parade, and
I took David along. I was a lion and David walked along as a cub and a big hit;
the girls all said that David was cute and Ms. Siegenthaler liked him too.
About once a
month, we had an all-school assembly and one of the classes would take turns in
leading an assembly. In November it might have been on the origins of
Thanksgiving in the United States, and in February it may have been on the
presidents such as Washington and Lincoln. Every morning we would do the
American flag pledge of allegiance or the salute. This was an ambiguous issue for
Amish and Mennonites; we carried national symbols and patriotism lightly,
growing up in homes and a church of conscientious objectors to war. Everyone stood, most of the Amish did not put
up their hands in a salute, some recited the pledge and others did not. No one
meant any disrespect to our nation, and I think there was a great deal of
gratitude to be able to live in a country which had religious freedom. It was never a public issue, and Ms. Siegenthaler
and the other teachers would respect the children’s non-resistant responses.
But one flag
salute became memorable for me. Ms. Siegenthaler was looking for people to lead
parts of an all-school assembly and I--eager to please-- immediately raised my
hand for the flag salute, along with Roy Snyder. But after I volunteered, I realized
that this was not the proper role for an Amish Mennonite child to do, much as it was quite
appropriate for a Boy Scout such as my friend Roy Snyder. I did not feel well
the rest of the day, and that evening I asked Mattie what to do, not wanting to
back out of my assignment nor wanting to make a scene with Roy or the other students.
But my Mother was sympathetic and said, yes, go ahead with it this time, but you’ll
know better the next time. I suppose that early incident became my default
stance as a Christian pacifist, trying to follow my conscience as a Christian
pacifist, but also trying to be respectful to others and grateful for the freedom
of living in United States of America.
Our
relationship to the government was in Christian terms to be strangers and pilgrims
on this earth, and that our citizenship was in heaven. So you can imagine our
parents and grandparents dismay when my mother’s brother and our Uncle Melvin registered
to enter the U.S. Marine Corps upon his eighteenth birthday. My parents took it
especially hard and sent out letters asking for prayer that he would change his
mind, and often at family prayers Melvin would be noted as a special petition
to God, in hope that he would repent and turn to God. But none of this seemed
to deter Melvin.
Today, I can appreciate that this was a big step for Melvin to
take to go from an Amish farm boy to entering the United States Marine Corps.
This was during beginnings of the Cold War, the Korean War, and perhaps Melvin
felt defending his country was his duty. Melvin would later in life point out
that the Marines were also his opportunity to get more schooling education, that his
parents would only allow him to go the eighth grade. The rest of
the family’s interpretation, however, was that Melvin was in rebellion against
his father Levi, the church, and God and needed to repent.
If Uncle
Melvin’s decision jolted our world, I also had my first encounter with the
sadness and terror of severe mental illness during this year, and my father
often prayed for Emmanuel Schrock at family devotions. Andrew and Mattie visited
their friend Emmanuel quite regularly at the Massillon State Hospital during
this year, and sometimes we children went along. Emmanuel and Andrew ran around
together as youths and used to play musical instruments together, and I think my
father sympathized especially for his friend who had been engaged to be married
to his sister, our Aunt Esther Miller. The wedding had been called off as the
family had become increasingly aware of Emmanuel’s emotional illness.
But the Massillon
visits were scary to me with a big brick building which had bars at the
windows, even though the building and doors were quite open when we would visit.
I was seeing people who looked straight at you and said random things; one
woman came up to me and tried to pet my hair in a strange way. My mother and
father would visit with Emmanuel, and give him reading material, and he seemed
quite normal to me. Still to see someone I considered a relative and dressed in
Amish clothes seemed incongruous and fearful, and I knew he could not go home.
We used simply to say that Emmanuel had gone insane, and I would at night
wonder if I might also go insane and need to live in a terrible building separated
from my family. Years later as an elderly man, Andrew would again visit Emmanuel regularly at a day
care home and sing for him, and give him tapes of his music.
At that
point our religious economy of the Amish and the world and Christians was
pretty clear to my parents and to us. You might be a good heathen or a moral
person but you may still not make the grade if you were not among the Christian
faithful, as our family and church understood it. In real life it was of course not always that clear, especially with our neighbors. Our nearest
neighbors across the road at Holmesville were Eli and Alma Weaver; we called
him Peter Sam’s Eli, and they were Amish. They did not live there for very long,
and I remember the Weavers mainly for their animals. Eli had big Belgium
horses, and occasionally his stallion would mount a mare in the barn yard, or
someone would bring a mare on the truck for breeding. It was quite a show, and
then there was his dog which fought with our Buster.
But the
Weavers soon moved, and were replaced by William (Bill) and Maxine Miller,
whose religious affiliation I never knew. Maxine’s parents Arthur (A.E.) and
Mellanie Parrot lived up the road on another farm, and her brother Rollin
Parrot and his wife Jill Menuez lived in a stone house also near the home place
of the Parrots. Maxine was quite vocal
while Bill was a man of few words. Religiously, I did not know exactly what to make
of the Millers because they were thrifty moral neighbors, but they were not
very religious at least not in the sense that they worked in the fields on
Sundays, drank some beer, and did not attend church worship often, at least the
way we did.
Most of Bill
and Maxine’s farm land was on the south side of the Fredricksburg road and ours
on the north, but they farmed the land along side ours behind the railroad
tracks and along Salt Creek. Quite often Bill would drive his big Farmall M
tractor on the little driveway in back of our lawn to get to his fields. Anyway, one spring Paul, Roy and I were back
cultivating our corn field with the horses, and then we went across Bill’s
field and put the cultivator down and plowed out some of his corn. It was sheer
boy vandalism, and why we did it, I do not know.
Several evenings later we were
playing ball in our front lawn, and we heard Bill back in his field cultivating
corn. It was almost dark when we heard Bill approach on the big Farmall M from
back of the railroad tracks. The big diesel roared louder and louder as Bill approached
closer, and when he came even with our lawn and playing field, he stopped the
tractor. The engine idled a little; he let the cultivator down, and then he
shut off the engine. Paul, Roy and I immediately stopped playing and stood in
attention, down cast faces and all ears.
All was
quiet, and then Bill spoke slowly: “Okay, boys, I saw what you did.” He sounded
angry, and perhaps even sad. All was quiet, but then he added. “I’m not going
to say anything to your parents this time. “ He seemed to be piecing this together,
and there was a pause. And then he finished, “But don’t you ever do it again.” Immediately,
the big Farmall M started up; he pulled up the cultivator on the hydraulic
lift, went past us on the Fredricksburg road and drove home.
We just
stood there; we did not have time to apologize, and he did not even give us a
chance to thank him for saving us from the spanking which Andrew would have given
us. But that was the end of it; Bill never brought it up again, ever, and we
had been taught and important lesson on grace. For the next several decades,
our families lived side by side in different cultural and religious worlds, and
we never socialized together. Perhaps Bill’s personality of being a hard-working
man of few words made him seem impersonal. But to us boys, we knew Bill had
another side, a soft side of grace.
Andrew had
another time of inter-religious exchange when he and Yost H. Miller of Berlin
took the bus to Goshen, Indiana and visited extensively with Joseph John Clauss,
a Catholic professor at the Mount Saint Mary of the West Seminary in Cincinnati.
Clauss’ family was in Mishawaka, Indiana, hence the travel with Andrew and Yost.
After the meeting, Andrew sent Clauss a letter noting that he and Yost felt a
certain “oneness and fellowship” with Clauss, and “my wife and I and brother Yost had been
led” to send him some Bibles and books. Andrew encouraged Clauss to read them
with an open mind and seemed to identify Clauss’ Catholic tradition with his
own Amish background, noting that “the Lord of mercy and compassion opened my
heart and mind to His blessed gospel of salvation,” otherwise “I would have had
to reap the harvest of the deluded, the superstitious, and misinformed who know
not God, nor obey His Gospel.”
After
telling the priest the story of his own Christian conversion experience at age
seventeen. Andrew concludes the letter: “I hope and pray that your superior
learning and status will not make a barrier between us. We send our love.
Andrew A. Miller and wife.” A year later the two were still writing to each other, and
exchanging periodicals as Andrew now sent him his new publication Christian Fellowship Review, and Clauss
returned the favor sending Andrew the
Catholic weekly called, Our Sunday
Visitor. Clauss thanked Andrew for his letters and literature but noted:
“As you no doubt realize, I am in complete disagreement with many of the
ideas.” Other magazines which Andrew received that year were: Healing Waters, “America’s healing
magazine” with the editor and founder Oral Roberts listed; and the Mennonite
magazines: Youth Christian Companion
and Gospel Herald.
This was
another busy year for Andrew as chair of the Mission Interests Committee. One
of the first projects of the committee was to begin its own periodical separate
from the earlier Russell Manaiaci newsletter called Amish Mission Endeavor Bulletin. The Amish committee now saw Manaiaci
as a liability and moved decisively (at Andrew’s urging) to separate from
Manaiaci. In retaliation for the unhappy parting, Manaiaci withheld his
extensive mailing list from the Amish committee. According to the Amish Mission
Interest’s Committee, however, Manaiaci’s leadership was causing opposition
because (1) he was not Amish himself, (2) he did not know the German or
Pennsylvania German dialect, and (3) he was too inter-denominational.
Andrew led
the committee in a separation action, calling Manaiaci’s proposals “unthinkable.” The committee named Harvey Graber of Indiana
as editor of the new paper called Witnessing.
Andrew volunteered to get the publication going by printing the first issue on
his own mimeograph machine at Holmesville.
The publication began to about 300 addresses with an April- May issue,
but by the third issue, the printing had moved to The Mennonite Press in North Newton,
Kansas.
In the
meantime, Andrew was doing some publication and writing of his own. In the
December of 1952, Andrew released a mimeographed newsy paper called Amish Christian Fellowship Bulletin
which told of the various Amish Christian fellowship meetings held that year in
Holmes County, the first one being on August 31 at the Andrew and Mattie Miller
home and others on alternate weeks at homes of interested families such as
Homer (Dien Eile’s Homer) and Fannie Miller of Fredricksburg, David (Heine
David’s Davey) Yoder, Jacob S. (Steffy’s Jake) and Elizabeth Miller of Mt. Hope.
Andrew said “what the future holds for the Amish Christian Fellowship we do not
know. We want to be fully resigned to the word and will of God.”
These
bi-weekly Sunday afternoon meetings began in the summer of 1951 at Beechville School
and were held in homes until the summer of 1954. Of his bulletin, he said,
“Christian Fellowship Bulletin is published occasionally in the interest of
Bible study, unity, missionary endeavor and fellowship of nonresistant
Christian believers and followers of Christ.” But after one issue, Andrew
discontinued it “for the time being,” as he later told Gertrude Enders
Huntington: “Perhaps when I retire from farming I’ll start it up again.”
Andrew’s
biggest writing project that winter was the front-page article of the Mennonite
Gospel Herald on March 17, 1953.
Entitled “Illicit Fellowship,” the article called for the traditional
Anabaptist separation from the world, although Andrew allowed some exception:
“Differences of opinion concerning certain outward observances, cultural and
personality clashes, denominational bickering and prejudice, and the like, are not
biblical grounds for ‘putting away’ and withdrawal of fellowship.” As examples
of being unequally yoked with those outside the true saving faith, he included:
“business enterprises, community social and civic associations, sitting on
juries, and holding public office, however innocent it may appear.” During the
next months and year, Andrew got numerous complements from his Amish Mission
friends on the article.
The big
event for the whole Miller family that summer however was hosting a meeting of
the Thomas, Oklahoma traveling minister and evangelist David A. Miller. On the
evening of August 7th Miller preached before a crowd of “approximately
800 people under the open heavens in Holmesville” as Amish historians would
report a quarter century later. I well remember the lanterns spread across the
front lawn as the evangelist spoke to the large crowd. Miller stood on the
large stone slab by the house in the front lawn, and I remember
going to the stone afterwards to see if it was okay after everyone left, and
then going out to the chicken house where our Rhode Island Red hens were
roosting, as if to see the animals had some form of normalcy. David A. Miller,
often called Oklahoma Dave, was an engaging and passionate speaker who the
Amish mission people saw as their own answer to the Mennonites’ evangelists
such as George R. Brunk II and Andrew Jantzi.
A week later
Andrew attended the Fourth Amish Mission Conference held August 12-14, 1953, at
Harmon Yoder farm near Hutchinson, Kansas. Again, this same Oklahoma David A. Miller was
the featured speaker, giving three sermons during the three days. Andrew also
gave a talk at the meetings on “Witnessing by the Printed Page—Bibles, books,
Periodicals, and Gospel Literature.” The committee secretary David L. Miller’s report
in Witnessing, noted: “[Andrew A.
Miller] gave an intensely interesting historical survey of how we got our Bible.
He mentioned the various translations and remarked that he did not see a reason
for becoming unduly alarmed at the RSV [Revised Standard Version].” The report
concludes with Andrew’s personal testimony of conversion and reading only the
Bible for six months.
As chair of
the organizing committee Andrew Miller also closed the last session “with an
expression of gratitude to the local group.” Andrew “told all of us that the
mountain-top experience upon which we had been dwelling the past few days could
be ours at home with the same means that we had experienced [it here], that of
intensive Bible study and prayer.” In the business meeting, Andrew was again elected
to the continuing committee, this time as assistant chairman. When Andrew returned home, Mattie soon
delivered the family’s sixth child and first daughter on September 3:
Rhoda. Mattie and Andrew liked to give
their children biblical names.
Throughout
the year Andrew wrote widely and received letters from all over North America,
especially where there were Amish dissenters or religious seekers such as a
Homer Dotson of North Lima, Ohio, and he wrote to his confidante the young Witneslsing editor Harvey Graber on how
criticism can help us. But Andrew and
Mattie also were increasingly aware of the precarious nature of their
relationship with the Holmesville local district where norms were largely
maintained by extending or withholding fellowship. Andrew wrote to the minister
Noah Keim, father of the Eastern Mennonite University history professor Al
Keim, inviting him to come and speak at a Sunday afternoon Amish fellowship
meeting. But Keim declined, saying that much as he would like to come, if he
fellowships with Andrew’s group, Keim would no longer be invited to preach
among the other Amish districts in Holmes County.
By December 30,
Andrew writes a deeply personal letter to his friends Harvey Graber and Daniel
Beachy of Goshen, Indiana, noting that “a good brother” had been unfairly disciplined
by those Andrew called “the Judiazers” in his own church. Clearly, Andrew’s
days in the Amish church were coming to an end. He concludes the letter on a
domestic note, that he said he is at home baby sitting with Rhoda, and that Mattie
and the boys went to Wooster on the bus. His busy correspondence, committee
work and farming also did not keep him from organizing a Christmas package
project to local needy families with boxes of food, comforts, coats, mattress,
and quilts with contributors individuals such as the “June Weavers, Ammon
Wengerds, John Hochstetlers, Ivan Hochstetlers, Neal Wengerds” as well as
groups such as various Mennonite sewing circles and Bible classes. These kinds
of personal charity drives would characterize much of the rest of Andrew’s
life.
The Andrew
Miller and Catholic priest John Joseph Clauss correspondence is found in the
files of Andrew A. Miller personal collection in the Archives of the Mennonite
Church (AMC). All the other correspondence quoted is also found in these same
files. Information of the Amish Christian Fellowship meetings comes from Amish Christian Fellowship Bulletin
(Volume 1, December 1, 1952, Number 1), published once from Holmesville, Ohio,
in the files of Andrew A. Miller (AMC). Andrew’s comment on only publishing one
issue appears in Gertrude Enders Huntington, Dove at the Window, unpublished dissertation at Mennonite
Historical Library at Goshen College. The David A. Miller evening meeting is
noted in Edward Kline and Monroe L. Beachy, “History and Dynamics of the New
Order Amish of Holmes County, Ohio," Old
Order Notes (Fall Winter, 1998, pages 7-19). Andrew’s talk at the August Hutchinson,
Kansas, conference was reported in Witnessing
(September October, 1953, Number 4, page 4), in the Andrew A. Miller collection
of AMC.
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