The Anabaptists
Hutterites
The Hutterites organized themselves in village associations, called Brüruderhofen, a word that essentially means a village of brothers. Each Brüderhof practiced community of goods; that is, there was no private property; the land was worked in common, and food was shared in common. Their sermons were open to all, but they were not strongly evangelical in the way the Calvinists were. They had to keep a low profile, for they were still officially outlawed and their leaders were still being hunted.
Hans Amon was elected leader after Jakob Hutter was executed, but the dispersed nature of the Brüderofs meant that a variety of leaders emerged. A number of these were, like Hutter, hunted down and killed by either Austrian or Imperial troops. The worst year was 1546, when the Hutterites had to abandon their communities and hid in caves and forests.
After the death of Emperor Frederick, pressure on the Hutterites was relaxed. This continued as Calvinism began making major inroads in Germany, distracting imperial and local authority alike. The so-called "Golden Period" for the Hutterites was the last half of the sixteenth century. Brüderhofs flourished and by 1621 there were over a hundred of them, with a combined population of 20,000 or so. They were located mainly in Moravia and Slovakia. The Brethren also engaged in missionary activities in these years.
The wars with the Turks in the early 1600s were hard on the Hutterite communities, but worse times came during the Thirty Years War. A number of Brüderhofs were completely destroyed and the Hutterites again had to take to flight. At the end of the Thirty Years War, the Catholic Church was firmly in control of Moravia and Slovakia, and much pressure was put on the Hutterites. They were forced to baptize their babies as Catholic, though they were rebaptized as adults. They also, by the 1680s, had been forced to give up the community of goods.
In the following centuries, the Hutterites followed a pattern: they would move into a new land, get established, suffer persecution eventually, and again be forced to move. Thus, at various times, the Hutterites could be found in Transylvania, Wallachia, and Russia. In the 1870s they left Russia to avoid being forced to serve in the military. This time, they went to America. You might think that the Hutterites now enjoyed freedom, but not so. They were so severely persecuted in the United States during World War I (because they spoke German and refused to serve in the military) that many moved to Canada. Even there they were received hostilely, and as late as 1973 there were still laws on the books aimed against the Hutterites.