Common Mennonite Surnames

Family names of Wenger Mennonites

Donald B. Kraybill and James P. Hurd cite the following surnames as the most common among Wenger Mennonites:

19% --Martin
18% -- Zimmerman
 8% --Hoover
 7% -- Nolt
 6% -- Burkholder
 5% -- Shirk
 4% -- Weaver
 3% -- Newswanger
29% -- Other names (37)
____
100%

The complete table appears on page 158 of Horse-and-buggy Mennonites: Hoofbeats of Humiility in a Postmodern World.

Every one of these family names is found within the Mennonite community in which we live. In fact, the above list of the top Wenger names reads like a list of our Mennonite neighbors.

Dr, Donald Kraybill has written dozens of excellent books about Mennonite and Amish culture. The surname Kraybill probably appears within the group of "other names". Dr. Kraybill grew up in a Mennonite family in Pennsylvania. I am familiar with the Kraybill name from the Hutchinson, Kansas area, and it is associated with Mennonite lineage there, also.

On the web:
Interview with Donald Kraybill on the always-interesting Amish America blog

Hinkletown, Pennsylvania (vicinity).

Mennonite church yard on Sunday morning

Image from Library of Congress FSA/OWI Collection

John Collier (1913-1992), photographer

Old Green River Whiskey Advertisement

A curious advertising image from 1899

I once bought a grimy box of junk at a farm sale to get an old scales I had seen in it. This picture was in the box. I think it might be a calendar illustration.  It is mounted on cardboard, and it's very brown with age.

Today, I've been looking through some closets, and there was the whiskey picture. I decided to make a digital copy of it. It's just a little too big for my scanner, so I had to merge four different scans to make this image.The image above shows the actual color of the paper, and the image below has been doctored to show more detail. (I'm an amateur, so no miracles were achieved during the doctoring.)

 I couldn't decide what I should do with this picture, so I packed it up again. I don't know whether it has any significant monetary value to a collector of whiskey memorabilia. With the two big cracks, it's not in very good condition. My indecisiveness about things like this are why I have too many boxes in my closet.

Downtown Hopkinsville

Main Street in the old part of town

After work yesterday, I zoomed to the courthouse, hoping to get in the County Clerk's office before it closed at 4:00 p.m. I arrived just as they were closing the door, so I have to go back today. As I walked out of the courthouse, I took this photo of some of Hopkinsville's old buildings just down the street from the courthouse.

This is the east side of Main Street between 6th and 7th streets. The beige, three-story building at the left of the photo (the Cooper building) needs its windows replaced. I wish some preservation-minded individual would do that.  Maybe that ugly brick facade on the first floor could be removed, also.

Since I didn't get in the County Clerk's office yesterday, that chore is still on my agenda for today. I guess I'll go now and be done with it.

Time Travelers

Into the future

I was driving on the four-lane one summer afternoon when they passed me. They were traveling in the left lane. They appeared in the rear view mirror, overtook me, and vanished from sight in a short minute. I was surprised their old truck could go so fast.

I caught a glimpse of them as they came alongside. They were watching the road ahead intently. They had the truck windows open, and their long white hair was streaming in the wind. She was driving, and he was riding in the passenger's seat with his arm in the window.

I saw them several years ago, and I've been thinking about them ever since. Now I see that they've been on the road since they and their truck were young. And somewhere, they are still traveling fast in the left lane. The wind is lifting long strands of their white hair and blowing it back from their faces, and their eyes are fixed on the future.

Ray Bradbury could tell their story, but I can only tell you that I saw them.

Related:
Indelible Image

Rainy Days

Extended equinox storm

We haven't had floods in the Hopkinsville area, but it has rained every day for the last week or more. When it isn't raining, the sky stays gray. Temperatures have been in the 80s, and the humidity has been very high.

Next Monday, according to the weather forecast, the skies will clear. Our daytime temps will drop to the 70s and night temps will drop into the 40s. It will begin to feel like fall.

I suppose this spate of rain is an equinox storm or as it was called in older times, a "line storm". According to Bulfinch's Mythology, the cooler weather that's coming after the line storm is a signal of a cool winter that will last until the next equinox.

1063. If the fall “line storm” clears off warm, it signifies that storms through that fall and winter will clear away with mild weather, i. e., the way in which the storm closes at the autumnal equinox will rule the weather following storms until the vernal equinox storm. Then the same saying applies to the “line-storm” of March, and the spring and summer after storms is foretold.

The contrary would happen if cool weather followed the line storm.

(Source: Bulfinch's Mythology)

However, an 1887 study of Weather Charts and Storm Warnings by UCLA scientists found little indication of an unusual concentration of storms at the autumnal equinox. They observed an increase of storms shortly after the equinox, followed by a period of mostly clear weather that lasted through "Martinmas summer" (the first couple weeks of November.)

Rain over "The Boulevard"

9/22/09, Hopkinsville, KY

Raisin-colored sunset, 9/22/09

East of Hopkinsville, KY

Rain approaching, 9/23/09

Murray State University, Murray KY

These sunflower-like flowers south

of Murray, KY, are 6 feet tall or more.

Ample moisture has agreed with them.

More Prairie Bluestem articles about equinox storms:
Rainy Trip to Guthrie
Equinox Storm on the Great Plains