The Brethren in Christ have no Schleitheim and no Schwarzenau — no founding confession, no dated founding event, no signed record. What survives is a tradition that a group of German-speaking farmers near the Susquehanna, most of them of Mennonite background and stirred by the Pietist preaching moving through the Pennsylvania German settlements, baptised one another by trine forward immersion in the river some time in the 1770s, and that Jacob Engle was among the leaders. The nickname River Brethren attached to them and to two related groups, the Old Order River Brethren and the United Zion Church, who separated later and remain distinct. The formal name Brethren in Christ was adopted during the American Civil War because a body applying for conscientious objector exemption needed a legal name on paper.