62 / Pioneer Mennonite Communities

minister who served tae settlement from 1840 to his death in 1872. There is no record of any meetinghouse, and evidence points to services being held in homes. Tae community never became large, and many descendants of its members moved westward.

Small as tae congregation was, and isolated in its early years, it is of special interest to note tae following observation made about it by P. F. Schneider, a Methodist minister, who on page 70 of Die Lebenserfahrungen von Joh. Schneidersen, published in Cincinnati in 1860, says:

Most of our neighbors were Pennsylvania Germans and were very helpful to us in everything, so that we felt quite at home among them. They were Mennonites and I often visited their regular church services in the neighbor

hood. I found among them many very good Christians who, as I believe, took seriously the matter of working out their soul's salvation. In particular I became acquainted with several of their preachers who came from a distance from time to time and under whose preaching I was much edified.'

Going westward in tae early decades of tae nineteenth century Mennonites planted still another settlement, this one in Seneca County which was a part of tae Black Swamp area of northwestern Ohio. Cholera epidemic plagued tae area, and death rates were high in tae years of 1834, 1849, 1852, and 1854.

Mennonites arrived in Seneca County during tae 1820's and in 1842 or earlier built a church building." Jacob Troxel and his family of Stark County, Ohio, were among tae first members of tae Seneca County Mennonites to settle tae area. In tae 1840's Isaac Rohrer arrived. Jacob Detweiler came in 1844, he and his wife being natives of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Tae Michael Hunsicker family, natives of Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, came to Seneca County by way of Columbiana County, Ohio. Isaac and Mary Hunsicker are also listed among tae settlers, Mary's death occurring in 1840.

Nicholas Lehman and family were other settlers to live in tae Seneca County settlement. Other Mennonite family names include David Metzler from Mahoning County, Christian Beam, and Jacob Zutavern. 39

Fortunately a description of tae settlement's meetinghouse has been preserved and is worth reproducing here because it is thought to be "typical." From a firsthand description of tae twenty-four by thirty foot building we learn that:

The meetinghouse was built of hewn logs. Tae seats in the front part (north