2.

Pioneer Mennonite Communities

The growth of Mennonite churches in Ohio began soon after 1803, the year that Ohio became the seventeenth state of the new nation. There is little reason to believe that migrating Mennonite groups came to Ohio for reasons different from those of others who moved westward. The financial depression throughout the country in the early 1800's left many persons bankrupt. Money was worthless, prices were low, commercial cities on the coast were "dark and silent." The depression, outlasting the War of 1812, gave homeseekers a good reason to turn westward, and this they did. Wagons loaded with men, women, and children, and some portion of this world's goods swarmed on the newly built roads. Through one Pennsylvania village in the year of 1811 on the way to Pittsburgh "two-hundred and thirty-six wagons and six-hundred Merino sheep passed in a single day, all bound for Ohio. . . . From Lancaster, Pennsylvania, came the report that a hundred families had passed through that town in one week."' It is not strange that Ohio's population grew from 42,000 in 1800 to 230,760 by 1810.2

Religious groups who settled Ohio's virgin lands were varied.' In the northern part Congregationalists and Presbyterians were dominant. In southern Ohio Methodists and Baptists were numerous. Besides these, Catholics, Quakers, Mennonites, Dunkers, Mormons, Jews, and Shakers made up the complex religious life of this pioneer state. Before the mid-century had passed there were communities and towns with German, Swiss, and Finnish people in addition to the New England and Virginia stock that went to make up Ohio's population.

Beginnings in Northeast Ohio

The earliest trace of Mennonite interest in Ohio apparently goes back to a Jacob Nessly (1753-1832), the grandson of a Men-