54 / Pioneer Mennonite Communities

The stone building and walled-in cemetery are the surviving symbols of a once fairly prosperous Mennonite community. In 1815 Mennonites under Abraham Ziegler from Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, purchased a large property from the Harmony Society for $100,000 according to an indenture in the Allegheny Court Records, dated May 6, 1815.

The Harmony Society (sometimes called Harmonists) moved west and the Mennonites occupied a community site which was to become prosperous but not permanent. The first bishop was John Boyer who moved to Harmony in 1815. Ten years later the sturdy stone church which still stands was built. Bishop oversight of the congregation after 1828 was provided by Bishop Jacob Nold of Columbiana County, Ohio, and following his death in 1835 Henry Stauffer apparently was in charge.

In 1890 the membership of the Harmony Church had declined to about twenty-five members. The last service was held in 1910. It is said that Menno S. Steiner hoped to revive the church in his time but was not able to spend the necessary time with the congregation. Internal dissensions are thought to have played some role in its decline. Adherence to German and slowness to adapt necessary changes also are cited. The cemetery by the church contains the names of Ziegler, Herr, Hunsberger, Fried, Schwartz, Boyer, Tintsman, Stauffer, Moyer, Stamm, Davidhizer, Schantz, and Musselman-Mennonite names traceable to eastern Pennsylvania.

Beginnings in Central and Northern Ohio

Other early conditions under which Mennonites migrated to Ohio were briefly these: In 1797 Congress employed Ebenezer Zane to blaze a trail through the primeval forests west of Wheeling; West Virginia, to the banks of the Ohio River via the present towns of Zanesville, Lancaster, and Chillicothe. Known as Zane's Trace, this "wide path through the woods" became a thoroughfare for early settlers .2' Among the early settlers were persons from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Rockingham County, Virginia. Coming by way of southwestern Pennsylvania in 1799 they were the founders-to-be of Ohio rural communities in which were planted Methodist, Baptist, Lutheran, Reformed, and Mennonite churches. Those from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, spoke a German dialect, Pennsylvania German. The town and environs of Lancaster in Fairfield County (named for the Pennsylvania city) were