Henry Brenneman 1791-1866
Henry was great-grandson of Melchior Brenneman who was exiled from Switzerland to the Palatinate of Germany. A son Melchior, Jr., settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, about 1717. Henry Brenneman, his grandson, moved from Rockingham County, Virginia, to Fairfield County, Ohio, in 1816. He was the father of bishops George and John M. Brenneman and of minister Daniel Brenneman. With his sons he operated a flour mill which shipped its produce to the city of Lancaster in Fairfield County where it was loaded on canal boats.
married to Susan Funk, sister to Joseph Funk, musician and publisher of Singers Glen in Rockingham County, Virginia. The coming of the Beerys to Ohio was important if for no other reason than the fact that among their descendants one finds the future leaders of Ohio Mennonite churches. Beery's daughter Barbara married Henry Brenneman and to this union were born the sons John, George, Henry, and Daniel-all to become familiar as church leaders in the nineteenth century."
As time passed in frontier Fairfield County the population increased; log cabins gave way to three-story houses; and "bank barns" rose from timber hewn from the virgin forests. In 1815 the United States government contracted for mail to be carried from Pittsburgh to Maysville, Kentucky. Stagecoaches arrived in 1820. By 1825 the Ohio canal penetrated to Fairfield County. With all this the price of wheat rose from twenty-five cents a bushel to a dollar a bushel. Potatoes, of little market value before canal days, soared to forty cents a bushel.
Oddly enough with the coming of canals the farms of the Mennonites were not located for the most economical growing and mar-
