Pioneer Mennonite Communities / 57

keting of crops. While the Mennonites had chosen hills that sloped eastward they were now faced with the fact that it was in the fertile lowlands near the canals that the most profitable farming and marketing could take place. Thus even before the canals were completed certain Mennonites of Fairfield County cast longing eyes toward unclaimed land in the flat regions of western Ohio.", Here was cheap land, canals were in prospect, and the Indians were preparing to depart; the Delawares and the Chippewas had gone by 1829 and the Senecas in 1831.

Movement to Allen County

In 1831 John Stemen headed north and after lodging and eating with the Indians in unsettled territory he purchased a tract of fiftyfour acres at $1.25 per acre. He became the first settler in Sugar Creek Township and apparently in Allen County. Little more is known of John Stemen in addition to the following: His wife who was the daughter of a German Reformed minister in Fairfield County died in 1836, leaving five little children of whom the oldest was ten. Stemen helped to build a schoolhouse at Elida, the first in the western part of the county."'

Others followed John Stemen into Allen County from Fairfield County. Henry Huffer, Christian Stemen, John Conrad, Peter Stemen, Sr. and Jr., Henry Stemen, Samuel and Henry Sherrick, John Sherrick, David Campbell, John Burkholder, and Joseph Lauren. These men and their families formed a congregation and in 1847 built a log 'meetinghouse across the road from what is now the Salem Church.

Later movement from Fairfield to Allen County took place in a group when a minister, Christian Culp, and his followers settled in Allen and also in adjoining Putnam County. In 18.53 another minister, George Brenneman, came with several families. George Brenneman was ordained as bishop soon after he arrived in Allen County. His oldest brother, Bishop John M. Brenneman, came to Allen County in 1855 and was installed as bishop of the congregation in place of his brother George.

Not all of the Fairfield County Mennonites migrated to Allen County. A number apparently sold their land and moved to Canal Winchester in nearby Franklin County a few miles southwest of Columbus. In 1842 Lehmans, Millers, Hoffmans, Bowmans, and Ebersoles from Chambersburg also settled near Canal Winchester. A