 Most these settlers were Mennonites.The village of Bergtal, one of several originally German settlements in Kyrgyzstan, was established on the very rich black soil of the Chuy Valley, at the foot of the Tian Shan mountains, by Baptist and Mennonite families who had emigrated from East Frisia some three hundred years earlier to escape forced military service.At the end of the 19th century many moved to central Asia from the Volga and Crimea.