Mennonite immigration

At the beginning of the 19th century a minority of Mennonites in Pennsylvania, who were unhappy at the prospect of remaining under American rule in the aftermath of the revolutionary war, relocated to Upper Canada. There the Mennonites, a community that had its roots in the Anabaptist wing of the Reformation, could practise their religion and speak their language freely. As a result of the significant political and social changes in Russia during the 1860s, Mennonites had lost many of their special privileges. Nearly 7,000 of them immigrated to Canada and settled, for the most part, east of the Red River in southern Manitoba.