where he used his influence and effort for establishing a General Conference as a means for maintaining the government and discipline of the Mennonite Church. From Pennsylvania, Bro. Burkholder journeyed on to Canada, and still later reached the congregations in eastern Ohio. While here, he made the discovery that whatever favorable sentiment he had been able to create during his journey through Pennsylvania and Canada had been counteracted and reversed by brethren who had followed his track for that purpose. Finding that his efforts were fruitless, he returned home, and near the close of the year 1860 he became seriously sick and died at the age of forty-three. His taking away in the prime of life, and in the midst of its greatest activity, was the occasion for lament and deep mourning among the congregations where he labored.
From 1870 to 1877 there was great influx of Mennonites to the United States and Canada from Russia. More than a thousand families located in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas, and Manitoba. At least five hundred families are said to have located in Kansas alone. Though the main body of Mennonites of America contributed largely to the support of the fund required for their passage to our shores, and also after their arrival in their new quarters, of the 10,000 Russians who reached America during the seventies, only a few of them affiliated with the main body while most of them allied themselves with what are now known as the General Conference Mennonites, the Holdemanites, and other bodies who had become separated from the mother Church.
One commendable characteristic of the Russian
