Mennonite Weekly Review

COLFAX COUNTY, N.M. — Jacob T. Bontrager thought northeastern New Mexico was going to be the land of Canaan.

The Enos Mullet house is the only remaining dwelling of a failed Amish settlement in northeastern New Mexico in the 1920s. — Photo by Steven Mullet

That was how a land agent had described it, and “my great-grandfather took him at his word,” said Larry Miller, a retired schoolteacher from Macon, Miss., to a local newspaper.

The Amish settlement that Bontrager and others set up on the dry land in 1921 lasted only a few years.

Eighty years later, 65 descendants of that group returned in a Sept. 21-26 trip organized by Liz Lehman, director of CowBell Tours, and Miller.

Most members of the group —45 Amish and 20 Mennonite — were Bontrager’s progeny, including his youngest and only living child, Ira Bontrager, 96.

Ira Bontrager was 7 when the family moved from Kansas to New Mexico, and 11 when they returned to Kansas, having “lost their shirt,” he said.

The expedition began Sept. 21 in northern Indiana, where 35 assorted cousins from Indiana, Minnesota and Mississippi boarded a Cardinal bus and headed for Chouteau, Okla. There they met Oklahoma cousins, along with a smattering of cousins from Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Texas and Wisconsin.

In New Mexico, the group visited the sites where their ancestors’ farms had been located, near Point of Rocks. Most of the original buildings were gone, but an old adobe structure, recognized by the group as a site of worship for their ancestors, was intact.

The only farmstead still standing was the former homestead of Enos and Polly (Jacob T. Bontrager’s eldest daughter) Mullet. For Sarah (Mullet) Yoder, daughter of Enos and Polly, this site was particularly meaningful. She was born there.

A picnic that day at the foot of Hogback Mountain gave the group time to enjoy one of the most prominent sites from the family lore of New Mexico. The more hardy of the group climbed the mountain, recalling the stories they had been told about it.