The Seagoing Cowboys and the Bruderhof

For some reason, the photos intended for this post were omitted this morning, so I am resending it with the images included.

At this time of Thanksgiving, I give thanks for the wonderful people my husband and I met or reconnected with this month on my 12-day speaking tour out east. I also give thanks for the work of sharing the seagoing cowboy stories that has, by providence, been placed in my hands. My tour took us to the Hagerstown, MD, and Elizabethtown, PA, Churches of the Brethren; the Living Branches Mennonite retirement community in Souderton, PA; and four Bruderhof communities in New York and Pennsylvania. I was able to tell specific stories of their own related cowboys at each place – always a joy. And particularly this time at the Bruderhofs.

The Bruderhof is a 100-year-old intentional Christian community with over 25 settlements on five continents. The members practice radical discipleship in the spirit of the first church in Jerusalem. After they came to the United States in the 1950s, a number of young Church of the Brethren families joined the movement, and today there are more than 600 descendants of the Church of the Brethren throughout the Bruderhof. Having grown up and been active in the Church of the Brethren, it was great fun for me when I first visited the Maple Ridge community in New York in 2016 to discover the many connections I had with Bruderhof members.

Heifer Project started in the Church of the Brethren in 1942; and when World War II ended in Europe in May of 1945, the Brethren Service Committee became the recruiting agency for the livestock tenders, dubbed “seagoing cowboys,” which the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration would need for their shipments of animals to Europe. I learned in 2016 that some of the Brethren families who joined the Bruderhof had been active in raising animals for the Heifer Project in those early years, that some of their relatives had served as seagoing cowboys, and that some of their young adults had recently spent a year volunteering at the Heifer Ranch in Perryville, Arkansas.

Bruderhof member Kathy Fike Mow & her sister Elsie in the right of this photo join other children in presenting money they had raised for a heifer to farmer Paul Rhodes in Astoria, IL, in 1944. Photo courtesy of Kathy Fike Mow.

So on this year’s trip, I went with stories in hand of Bruderhof relatives’ involvements in the Heifer Project and as seagoing cowboys to share with the four communities we visited. Being able to share a piece of their ancestral history at their high school and three of their elementary schools was the highlight of my trip.

Presenting the Heifer Project and seagoing cowboy story to 9th graders at Bruderhof’s The Mount Academy. The high school is located in an amazing former monastery. Photo credit: Rex Miller.

After basking for six days in the love and hospitality offered to us in the Bruderhof settlements we visited, and being inspired by their model of radical discipleship, my husband and I came away with hearts full of gratitude and refreshed for our journey home and the responsibilities that awaited us there.

With my husband Rex on the Hudson River at The Mount Academy, November 10, 2021.

May the Spirit of Thanksgiving embrace you as well.