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  Historical Committee
Scrapbook page, Goshen
by Dennis Stoesz, Archivist
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Lawrence Hart speaking at a
symposium, “Cristobal Colon and the Mennonites,” sponsored by the
Historical Committee and held at the Prince of Peace Iglesia Menonita
in Corpus Christi, Texas, October 19-20, 1991. Hart is a Cheyenne peace
chief and evangelist, and served as pastor of the Indian Mennonite
church from the 1960s until 1974. The church changed its name to
Koinonia Mennonite in 1966. The congregation was founded in 1899 and
joined Western District Conference in 1964 and the General Conference
Mennonite Church in 1971. Hart is the director of the Cheyenne Cultural
Center in Clinton, Oklahoma. On the left side of the photograph is Al
Keim, chair of the Historical Committee, and on the right is Jose
Matamoros, pastor of the local church. Source:
Mennonite Historical
Bulletin Photograph Collection. |
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Joseph
Stuckey, 1826-1902, was ordained as a minister in the Amish Mennonite
Rock Run church in 1860. He had been born in Alsace, France, and had
emigrated with his parents to Ohio in 1830, before moving to Illinois
in 1858. He left the Amish Mennonite conferences in 1872 and became an
independent leader who organized the Central Illinois Conference of
Mennonites in 1899. In 1946 this group of twenty congregations joined
the General Conference Mennonite Church. Source: Mennonite Historical
Library Photograph Collection.
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eight page 1849 letter written and signed by John H. Oberholtzer
(1809-1895), an early leader of the General Conference Mennonite Church
at Quakertown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was written to
unidentified friends in Germany. Oberholtzer provided an evaluation of
Mennonites in America, emphasizing church renewal more than the 1847
church division in his own community in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. He
wrote, “In the end, many of our people clung too tightly to externals
as is seen already in the case of the Galations and others in the early
period of Christianity. … I shall therefore for the present not say any
more about the general corruption but will now tell you about our
Reformation” [word is underlined in original]. This is a handwritten
original letter, in Gothic script, filling 8 legal size pages. It was
purchased by Harold S. Bender from Emil Wuerz, South Germany, in 1936,
and it has been published in German (1937) and English (1972).
Oberholtzer was part of the West Swamp Mennonite Church, Quakertown,
Pennsylvania, which became part of the larger General Conference
Mennonite Church in 1860. It was Oberholtzer’s great-great-grandfather
who had emigrated to the United States from Switzerland in 1702.
Source:
John H. Oberholtzer Collection. |
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Interior
of the Germantown Mennonite Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in
1915, where John W. Bayley was serving as minister since 1905. He
stirred up interest, roofed and refurbished the historic meetinghouse,
added a stone Sunday school annex, and raised money to pay for it all.
The Eastern District Conference had accepted this elderly Methodist
carpenter-preacher as a Mennonite minister and elected him president of
their conference. Source: Germantown Mennonite Church Collection.
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In the late 1970s, Victor
Alvarez and his family served as leaders of a group of about eighteen
Hispanic Spanish-speaking persons within the Houston (Texas) Mennonite
Church. Houston Mennonite began in 1967 and was first an associate
member of the General Conference Mennonite Church before becoming a
full member. Source: Hispanic Mennonite
Convention Photograph Collection.
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Mennonite Historical
Bulletin
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Mission
Statement:
"God calls us to preserve our faith heritage, to interpret our stories,
and to proclaim God's work among us."
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