The Onecho Swiss Mennonite Community

Taken from “The Palouse Country” by Richard Scheuerman

As the Palouse Country provided many European immigrants with the economic prosperity for which they had emigrated, it also became a haven for those who fled for religious reasons. To the German-speaking Swiss Mennonites who began arriving in the Almota and Onecho areas of the Palouse in the 1880’s, settlement here marked the end of a long and often troubled history that their people had endured for centuries in central Europe. The Anabaptist movement was born during the Reformation in Zurich, Switzerland in 1525 when several theologians met to discuss a variety of issues that were already considered heretical by both the state Reformed Church and the Roman Catholic Church. Such doctrines included separation of church and state, freedom of religion, adult baptism and pacifism. The Zurich meeting gave new direction to the movement. Adherents came to be called Mennonites, named after Menno Simons who led the parallel Dutch movement. Persecution by state officials followed them but the majority tenaciously clung to their faith. In the 1600’s some Swiss Anabaptists migrated to Moravia where they became known as Hutterites while others fled in the following century to the German Palatinate and eventually to Pennsylvania where they were called Amish. Those remaining in Canton Bern, Switzerland became known as Bernese Mennonites, but most of them moved in the 1700’s to the rugged Jura Mountains along the French border. Here they settled in northeast Canton Bern in the vicinity of such villages as LeLocle, La Chaux-de-Fonds, and Sonnenberg. Although French was the language of the native inhabitants, many of the Mennonites relocating there continued to speak Swiss German.

Although the more violent forms of persecution were no longer used against them by the late eighteenth century, severe social restrictions remained in force. A Mennonite’s children were not considered legal heirs of what little property he might possess since their baptisms were not conducted by the state church clergymen and therefore invalid. Furthermore, Mennonites could not own land so they were compelled to pay rents and till only the high plateaus of slopes away from the village markets. The mountainous terrain was stony and dry but suitable in some areas for raising such subsistence crops as spelt (a variety of wheat), oats, barley, peas, potatoes and flax. Their talent in cheese-making later gave the Swiss an international reputation. Each family had a few goats and a cow that was often hitched to a horse for the arduous task of plowing the steep slopes. The eminent nineteenth century Swiss author, Henrich Zschokke, once traveled through the Jura Mountains and was deeply impressed by the life of these Anabaptists whom he found very hospitable and “so content, so pious and without hypocrisy.” He also noted their plain dress and that the married men always wore beards.

The problem of high rents in the area was complicated in the early 1800’s by overcrowding resulting from the high Mennonite birth rate. At the same time, the Napoleonic Wars raged in Europe adding to the unsettled conditions among the pacifistic Mennonites. The worst disaster to strike the region, however, was the famine that gripped the entire country in 1816, caused when inclement weather ruined the harvest. Food supplies remained limited for several years, and resulting death and disease reached every district of Switzerland. The combined effect of all these events led to the first group of Bernese Mennonites to migrate to America. The first was Jacob Schrag of Wyningen who immigrated to Pennsylvania in 1816. In the next year his father, Benedict Schrag, and several Bernese families followed but later relocated with others to establish Sonnenberg, the first Swiss Mennonite colony in the Midwest, located in Wayne County Ohio. Letters streamed back to the Jura about the fertile soil and abundance of land available for homesteading. Furthermore, it was reported that the Mennonites could freely practice their religion and procure exemptions from military service. In 1830 Bernese Mennonite emigration reached its highest point and the members began to disperse throughout Ohio and into such places as Putman County with the arrival there of Michael Neuenschwander in 1833, and into Pandora, Bluffton and Findlay districts. Neuenschwander’s son, John, moved to Polk County Iowa in 1849 to begin a Bernese Mennonite settlement in that state. Periods of particularly heavy Mennonite migration to the United States were in the 1850’s and 1870’s when efforts were made to implement compulsory military service in Switzerland.

The Swiss colony that was transplanted to the Palouse Country was also Bernese Mennonite, and the man directly responsible for its location here was an ordained minister from Switzerland, Rev. Phillip Roulet. He led a group of fourteen families to Butler county Ohio in 1867 which then relocated to Iowa two years later. In 1873 they settled near Pulaski in Davis County where there was an Amish settlement. Like most Bernese Mennonite families, Rev Roulet had many relatives still living in Switzerland who read his letters about life in America. His sister, Julia, remained in the Jura and married a widower with two sons, Christian Aeschlimann who lived near LeLocle. (They were grandpa Aeschliman’s parents). To this union was born ten more children, six of whom would pioneer Swiss Mennonite settlement in the Palouse Country: Fred, Sam, Paul, Rosina (Rubin), Sophia (Schlunegar), and Earnest.

In 1880 Reverend Roulet’s nephew, nineteen year old Sam Aeschliman, decided to join his uncle in Iowa and was followed within the year by his brother and sister, Paul and Rosina. Other members of their family, Fred and his wife Rosina (Rubin) and his sister Sophia, followed in 1885, but found that virtually all the homestead land had already been claimed. An adventurous friend of the Aeschlimans, fellow Mennonite Joe Stevick, decided after a cyclone demolished his farm buildings in the spring of 1885 that he would travel to Washington Territory to investigate settlement opportunities. This was often the kind of motivating factor that led many to move west and many to settle in the Palouse Country.

In the fall of 1885 the Stevick family reached Almota, which was then a bustling young community on the Snake River. Stevick selected a homestead in a sheltered canyon about one mile west of the town and chose a home site in an area protected from strong winds by ridges on three sides. Several years later Stevick acquired additional land near the home of J.C. Wicks, whose back porch served as the Onecho post office, and moved his family there.

Sam and Paul Aeschliman and their sister Rosina emigrated to Almota late in the fall of 1886 and rented farmland near the town. One year later in 1887 their oldest brother, Fred with his wife Rosina and three young sons, arrived from Iowa. With them was his sister Sophia who a year earlier had married Chris Schlunegar, an immigrant from La Chaux-de-Fonds. This group had traveled over the Union Pacific Railroad to San Francisco and then by steam ship up the coast and Columbia and Snake Rivers to Almota. The next year Rosina’s brother, William Rubin, and Paul Mauer arrived from Ohio. William married Fred Aeschliman’s sister Rosina later that year. In 1889 Lewis J. Allenbach arrived who had spent two disappointing years in Kansas after he emigrated from Switzerland.

One of Almota’s founding fathers, the venerable Henry Hart Spaulding, befriended the Swiss immigrants and provided housing for them and advised them on how to obtain farmland. He encouraged them to settle around Almota that at that time was the principle Snake River shipping point for Palouse grain. Sheltered beneath the bluffs on the river’s northernmost bend, Almota became a crossroads for pioneer stage traffic, a junction of Snake River navigation and Palouse Country freighting. By 1882 the town boasted a store, Spaulding’s hotel, saloon, express office, flourmill, other businesses, and numerous residences. With the arrival of the railroads Almota gradually lost its importance as a trade center but was still in its prime when the first Swiss immigrants arrived. Fred Aeschliman, trained as a cooper in his native Switzerland, soon found work as a wheelwright and blacksmith in Almota. The town echoed daily with steamboat whistles, rolling grain wagons, clanging hammers at the blacksmith’s forge, and the myriad sounds associated with a frontier river town.

The custom in Mennonite villages in the Jura Mountains dictated that men were taught a trade in order to provide a source of income during the long winter months. The chief desire of these colonists in the Palouse was not to continue the old part-time trades, but to obtain their own farms. By 1890 most of them had purchased or were renting farmland in the Onecho area. They continued to exhibit a great deal of cooperation among themselves during harvest, however, and also maintained cordial relations with the earlier homesteaders in whose midst they settled. This cooperation is best illustrated through the history of their church. The first church services conducted in the Onecho area were begun in 1876 by a Methodist circuit rider, Reverend M.S. Anderson. Although a congregation was never formally organized, a number of families continued gathering regularly for worship for years in a country school. Without a church of their own, the Swiss in the area were welcomed to these services when they moved into the area. In 1891, Paul Aeschliman went to Kansas to study for the ministry and at the completion of his program in 1893, the Onecho community asked him to be their regular pastor.

On July 1, 1893 the first Mennonite church in the state was organized and named “The First Mennonite Church of Colfax, Washington.” Reverend Aeschliman was elected pastor and an arrangement was made with the Methodists to continue cooperative services; Rev. Aeschliman would preach three Sundays each month while a Methodist pastor would conduct services at least once each month. Though Rev. Aeschliman preached in German his sermons were translated into English. The fellowship decided in 1895 to construct a church building and when questions arose regarding its ownership, both memberships again cordially resolved the problem. The land was donated by a Methodist, the Mennonites supervised the construction and everyone joined together to raise the money and to build it. Both pastors participated in its dedication and it was simply called the “Onecho Church.”

The Fred Rohrbach family came directly to Colfax from Bern at the urging of Godfrey Horn who was the owner of a meat market in Colfax. Horn was able to persuade more of his Bernese relatives to travel over with Rohrbach in 1874. A few years after he came, in 1877, land sold for $1.25 an acre for homestead or the railroad land could be purchased for $2.60. Farmers like Rohrbach could sell their wheat at Sprague or Cheney, Washington, and sometimes as far away as Spokane. The Rohrbachs raised a large family on the farm outside of Colfax where Mr. Rohrbach was known for his milk cows and cattle. His son Fred later raised and bred Brown Swiss cattle. Other Mennonite families continued to come to the Onecho community from the Midwest and by 1890 there were 119 Swiss-born residents of Whitman County (4.8% of the total foreign-born population). This movement continued after the turn of the century and in 1901 another group arrived from the Pandora settlement in Ohio. In this group were Adam Hilty and A.A. Gerber.

Though never a populous group in the Palouse, the Swiss Mennonites exemplified an important aspect of the immigrant experience in the region. They were welcomed and even assisted by Henry Spaulding and other Americans who preceded their settlement and were allowed to worship with those in whose midst they settled. It was a welcome contrast to the rugged life and discrimination they had faced among the native populace in the mountains of northwest Switzerland. They had come to America seeking freedom of religion and land to farm. In the Midwest they could practice their faith but many later arrivals were unable to find available farmland. In the Palouse, however, they had opportunity for both religious freedom and prosperity.