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nonite who emigrated to America from the Swiss Emmental in 1730 and settled in Lancaster County,, Pennsylvania.' Jacob Nessly in 1785 crossed the Allegheny Mountains and settled on an 800acre tract in the upper Ohio Valley, some fifty miles below Pittsburgh, on the left bank of the Ohio opposite the mouth of the Yellow Creek. In 1796 he purchased section 32 in Middleton Township of Columbiana County.

Nessly made trips back to his native Lancaster County in Pennsylvania. On one occasion he counseled with his Mennonite friends about buying slaves and was advised against it.' Doubtless these visits were also a source of information for the Mennonites in the older settlement about the Ohio country and Columbiana County in particular where Nessly owned land. In 1797 he sold some of his Ohio land to three men from Lancaster County, Adam and Christian Kindig of Conestoga Township and John Groff of Martick Township.

The founding of Mennonite communities in Columbiana County, Ohio, began in 1801 or before." Henry Stauffer came from Fayette County, Pennsylvania, and settled in what is now Green Township in 1801. Melchior Mellinger settled in Salem Township in 1803, having come from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. The arrival of Jacob Oberholtzer in Beaver Township took place in 1806. (Oberhalter's origin is not clear, though evidence points to southeastern Pennsylvania.) In 1809 a patent deed was issued to John Zimmerman of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, for land in Green Township where he had settled in 1804.

It was in the years following 1809, however, that the Columbiana Mennonite settlement was to see its number markedly in. creased by migrations from Pennsylvania and Virginia. In 1813 Bishop Jacob Nold of the West Swamp Church in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, learned about Columbiana County from Deacon Martin Mellinger while he (Nold) was on a preaching tour of Lancaster County. In the same year he made an exploratory trip to Columbiana County. In 1817 Nold with his cousins, John and Peter Yoder of Coopersburg in Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, settled in Columbiana County. . Along with Nold and the Yoders were two sisters of the Yoders who also migrated with their husbands, Jacob Landis and William Moyer.

Still others from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, were Joseph Landis and Christian Wisler, who came in 1820. (Wisler was the