Twas seeding time

In 'Twas Seeding Time, author John L. Ruth gives readers some little-known insights concerning Mennonite community life in America 200 years ago. On the eve of the Revolution, nearly a century after the first Mennonite settlers arrived in Pennsylvania, these formerly oppressed Swiss-Germans were enjoying the liberties of the Quaker Commonwealth. Their small farms, laboriously carved out of "Penn's Woods," provided an adequate livelihood, and their simple meetinghouses showed the reality of the religious freedom so often denied them in Europe. While their belief in love and nonresistance was…