40, Simons left the Roman Catholic Church. He soon became a leader within the Anabaptist movement, and was wanted by authorities for the rest of his life. His name became associated with scattered groups of nonviolent Anabaptists whom he helped to organize and consolidate. Migration to North America In the 18th century, about 100,000 Germans mainly from the Palatinate emigrated to Pennsylvania, where they became known collectively as the Pennsylvania Dutch. Of these immigrants, around 2,500 were Mennonites and 500 were Amish. These two groups settled mainly in southeast Pennsylvania, many of them in the Lancaster and adjacent counties. During the Colonial period, Mennonites were distinguished from other Pennsylvania Germans in three ways: their opposition to the American Revolutionary War, in which other German settlers participated on both sides; resistance to public education; and disapproval of religious revivalism. Contributions of Mennonites during this period include the idea of separation of church and state, and opposition to slavery. From 1812 to 1860, another wave of Mennonite immigrants from Europe settled farther west in Ohio, Indiana, Illinois and Missouri. These Mennonites, along with another wave of Amish, came from Switzerland, Southwest Germany and the Alsace-Lorraine area. Old Order Movement The Groffdale Conference has its roots in the Old Order divisions, that occurred in Indiana in 1872, and in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in 1893, over the question of English language preaching, Sunday Schools and other questions. The trigger for the split in Lancaster County was a quarrel about a pulpit that was to be installed in church instead of the traditional preacher's table. The modernizing trends that changed the form of religious practice were pushed among the Mennonites especially by two men: John F. Funk and John S. Coffman. The Groffdale Conference Mennonites still call modernized Mennonites Funkeleit, that is Funk people. The traditional minded people left the old conferences to form new ones, not the modernizers. The emergence of the Groffdale Conference The Groffdale Conference arose in 1927 at the conclusion of a seventeen-year disagreement within the Weaverland Old Order Mennonite Conference, over use of the automobile. Five hundred of the more traditional members of the Weaverland conference, about half of the congregation, formed this group in order to retain horse-drawn transportation. The name of the conference comes from the Groffdale churchhouse where Joseph O. Wenger led the first worship services. Further history The John W. Martin Mennonites, a group of Old