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Millers of Washington County Indiana Website

White County Illinois Historical Society “The Carmi Times”: 

 Dunkards were a Swiss/German pietistic sect much like the Mennonites,  Moravians, etc. They were called Dunkards, or Dunkers, or  Tunkers--because they believed in baptism by dunking (immersion).   They wore plain clothing, coats with standing collars for the men, plain bonnets and hoods for the women. Men were urged, but not required, to wear beards; they should not wear mustaches alone. Women should not wear jewelry.

They were to avoid narcotics, including tobacco. They did not use instruments of music in the house of God. They observed the Lord's Supper (full meal, with the soup eaten from a common dish), and communion of the bread and cup after the meal. This was usually held once in the spring and once in the fall. They did not pay their ministers a salary. They did not celebrate holidays such as Thanksgiving or Christmas.

They were to obey civil government as far as its laws did not conflict with their religion. No Dunkard was to participate in politics. They were not allowed to affiliate with secret societies or lodges. They would not take nor subscribe to an oath. They considered slavery abhorrent.

They believed in nonresistance, so they were much maligned in the New World. Their neighbors were often at odds with the Dunkards because they would not participate in the Revolutionary War. Indians soon learned the Dunkards would not resist, so they raided their homes.   There was one Dunkard who had a store which was raided three times.  After the third time, he armed himself with a gun. He was  excommunicated from his church for this act.

They stayed to themselves, spoke only German and stayed out of trouble.   Mainly they were farmers and weavers. Because they did not speak English, other residents thought them illiterate, although the printing presses of Germantown, Pa. were a product of the Dunkards.

Tracing genealogy in this group is a daunting process. Since they were pacifists, there are no war records to pursue. There are few marriage bonds prior to 1820, as both the Dunkards and Mennonites took a dim view of paying the state a fee for the performance of a Christian ordinance.   Prior to 1800, Dunkards could be excommunicated for obtaining a marriage license or bond. *

Basically, they began life in the New World in Pennsylvania. Their pacifism caused persecution and sometimes imprisonment. So they started fleeing local pressure, generally going first to Virginia and then the Carolinas. Then they moved to the remote West, being among the first to enter the Ohio and Mississippi valleys.

Pennsylvania German Church Records; page v:

The Pennsylvania Germans are descendants of emigrants from Europe 

in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and early nineteenth centuries.  

From 1683, when the first German settlement in the New World was planted 

at Germantown, through the late 1700s a varied procession of emigrants arrived

 from what is Germany, Switzerland, and Alsace-Lorraine, France, with 

contingents of emigrants from Silesia (now in Poland) and Moravia (now in the 

Czech Republic) and directly from Austria and other areas of Central Europe.

The Pennsylvania Germans were divided in religious adherence between the so-called 

“church people: (Kirchenleute) and the “sectarians” (Sektenleute).  The former were 

comprised of the two major Protestant denominations from the continent of Europe,

 the Lutherans and the Reformed.  The latter consisted of the Mennonites, the Amish, 

and the Brethren.  A third category of religious adherence was the communitarian groups, 

represented by the Ephrata Society, the Moravian Brethren, and the Harmonites.