70 / Pioneer Mennonite Communities

ministry was a unifying force among the scattered, struggling congregations. He and Henry Stemen were the itinerant bishops whose labors formed a bond of mutual fraternity and brought about an organization of persons of like faith.

For some years, how long it is not certain, the Ohio Conference included Mennonite churches in Indiana. As late as 1862 John M. Brenneman presided at sessions of the Indiana Conference and according to one source "for a number of years the conference in Indiana was a sort of extension of the Ohio Conference. `35