Pioneer Mennonite Communities / 55

settled largely by Germans, and by 1830 one of its three newspapers was printed in German and German translations were "affixed in large gold letters to all signs over the stores.""

The first Mennonite to settle in Fairfield County apparently was Martin Landis who in 1799 brought his family to a tract of land two miles south of Lancaster." Other Mennonite names to appear on township tax lists by 1806 were Andrew, Henry, David, and Jacob Buzzard, Daniel Conrad, Jr., Peter Culp, Jacob, Frederick, and Jacob (II) Hoffman, Christian Myers, Christian Stuckey, John Sherrick, and Jacob and John Shoemaker.

Henry Stemen moved to Fairfield County, Ohio, in 1803 from Greene County, Pennsylvania. -He was ordained a minister in 1809 and became a bishop in 1820.

The first congregation of this community was formed by the Mennonite settlers who met for worship in Leather's House, a tavern a few miles south of Lancaster. This was soon abandoned for a two-story meetinghouse which these early settlers hewed from logs and which stood till 1870. As was the case with frontier churches it was used by different denominations, in this case frequently by Lutherans."

At about the same time another Mennonite settlement was growing up in Richard Township. The brothers Henry and Peter Stemen were ordained (by whom it is not known) as minister and deacon respectively of the new congregation. Members of the congregation were likely from among the following Mennonite names of the tax list: Andrew Sherrick, George Blosser, George Bowman, George Bearge (Berkey or Bergey), Henry Orendors (Orendorf?), Theobald Musser, Peter Whitmer, Christian Hoover, John Siegler (Ziegler), Henry Bowman, Elizabeth Fry, Daniel Moyer, Abraham Moyer, and John, David, Samuel, and Henry Shellenbarger.

The two settlements in Fairfield County may have formed one congregation with two meetinghouses, as was often found on the frontier. In a time and place of denominational rivalry the Mennonites, it appears, were occupied mostly with their own internal life, the gathering of their own children into the church, and with a restricted if at all existent program of outreach.

Mennonites in Fairfield County were reinforced by further migrations as time went on. In 1816 the George Beery family of Rockingham County, Virginia, crossed the mountains and with their seven children made the long trek to Fairfield County. Beery was