I've been doing some research on my family history and have come across bits and pieces of stuff that I have questions about. My grandfathers grandfathers family were mennonites. I have found that they left Germany when they were persecuted and then settled in Southern Ukraine (at the time the Russian Empire). In the late 19th Century they left for North America. That is where things fall apart for me.
I would have figured they would have traveled west and gotten on a ship from a port town in Western Europe. My grandfather said that they actually traveled south and went through the Persian Gulf and around Africa. Where would I be able to find maps or other information on this? Thanks in advance
The Mennonites have a cool history. I figured I'd write some background in case you were interested, but you might know a lot of this stuff already.
They were persecuted because they were anabaptists, against baptism, the accepted practice at the time, and absolute pacifists. The bulk of them moved to the relatively tolerant Prussia (Germany) in the 1500s to find religious freedom and economic opportunity, and were welcomed due to their knowledge of how to use swampland effectively. About two centuries later Frederick the Great unified Prussia which solidified the power of the state church. Though Frederick was tolerant of religious minorities, his successor Wilhelm II was more aligned with the church and removed the military exemption privileges previously granted to the Mennonites.
As they were pacifists, they couldn't serve in the military and were forced to move to Russia where Catherine the Great offered unprecedented religious, political, and economic freedom for those willing to populate all the newly conquered land she was adding to the Russian empire. The Prussian Mennonites received a personal invitation as they were famous for their agricultural expertise. They eventually became arguably the most prosperous group in the region. This prosperity continued under Catherine's son Paul I up to the mid 1800s.
This all came to an end under Alexander II who in 1874 passed the Military Reform Law which among other things removed all military service exemptions from religious groups. This was in addition to the rising feeling of nationalism and intolerance Russia saw in this time period. The prosperity of the Mennonites compared to the poverty of the ethnic Russian population encouraged jealousy-fueled hatred. The Mennonites were given a 10 year grace period to leave.
So they came to North America where they were offered the same kind of stuff as in Russia 100 years earlier. Most of them settled in Kansas, Nebraska, Minnesota, and Manitoba.
As far as your question about sailing routes, I'm not as familiar. I know that Mennonites usually did go through Austria-Hungary to the Mediterranean. I found this webpage (http://www.mrcsf.org/home/68/) which shows a route out of Persia and under Africa but then to South America. Also it's the wrong time period. I find it surprising that they would have taken this route to North America, but I believe your grandfather.
Anyway I mostly just wanted to guide you to C. Henry Smith who is one of the most preeminent Mennonite historians and who wrote a huge amount about their emigration which is where I got this information. A lot of his works are accessible online, and they're rather extensive. Here's "The Mennonites of America" on Google Books and here's "A Brief History".