Mennonite Handbook of Information/Chapter 6
CHAPTER VI
A SKETCH OF VERY EARLY MENNONITE HISTORY
From beyond the cognizance of human history North America has been occupied by the copper-colored race, who, as a people, have been recognized by the earliest discoverers and explorers as Indians, supposing that the new found lands they occupied, was India, a portion of the eastern extremity of Asia.
It was not until Balboa had discovered the Pacific Ocean in 1613 or until Magellan had circumnavigated the globe in 1621 that the truth dawned upon the inhabitants of Europe that the aborigines found here by white men, occupied an entirely new continent that became known to them as The New World, and later took the name of one of the explorers of its shores—America.
The new country, in time received settlements along its eastern borders by at least three distinct classes of people; adventurers, treasure hunters, and religious outcasts from Europe. Of these, four distinct nationalities, with their marked differences in language, customs and general habits in life, were represented Spanish, English, French, and German or Dutch. With the latter class, with which some Swiss colonists were included, were the Mennonites, who located principally in Pennsylvania, but in smaller numbers in the adjoining states of New York, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
It is not definitely known when and where the first Mennonites set foot on the shores of America, but it appears that with the invasion of the Dutch settlements at New Amsterdam, now New York, in 1664, there had for some years previous been located with them a community of Mennonites. After the occupation of New Amsterdam by the English, these people crossed over to the Long Island side in search of homes where they would not come in direct contact with their new English neighbors.
The place they selected for their home was at Gravesend, several miles out from the Brooklyn shore, by the forks of a stream flowing southward into the lower portion of New York Bay. As at Germantown, Pa., some twenty years later, the colony at Gravesend consisted of both Quakers and Mennonites who conducted public worship together by the men taking turns to read from the Scriptures on Sabbath days. This became necessary because it appears that at no time a minister had been provided for the colony.
The place, like Germantown, has the historical distinction of having been the scene of a battle ground during the period of the Revolutionary War. Both the name of the place as well as the settlement itself, is now included within the Borough of Brooklyn and hence there is little if anything left to show where possibly was located the earliest Mennonite community in America.