3.

Pioneer Amish Communities

The larger part of what is known as the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference had its beginnings in Amish communities of Pennsylvania. These communities were planted in the eighteenth century by immigrants who came from the Palatinate of southern Germany. The original communities which they founded in colonial Pennsylvania later supplied sons and daughters to the westward movement.

The Amish who landed at the port in Philadelphia in the 1700's settled first in Berks County, Pennsylvania. Amish names appear on the earliest records of the county. Among them are King, Yoder, Lantz, Schmucker, Stutsman, Beiler, Kauffman, Stoltzfus, Hochstetler, Miller, Reichenbach, Hershberger, Mast, Nafziger, Zug (now Zook), Glick, Kurtz, and Hertzler.

Of the five original settlements made by these Amish immigrants only one, the Conestoga near Morgantown, Pennsylvania, survives to the present time.' It dates from 1760 when Jacob Mast and his family moved from the Northkill community in northern Berks County. Mast was granted a warrant for land in the Conestoga settlement in 1764. Here he lived with his family of twelve children. Here also he served as minister and after 1786 as bishop, succeeding Jacob Hertzler (1703-86) of the Northkill community. Until 1808, the year of his death, Mast furnished the leadership for this oldest permanent Amish community in America.

The French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War made life difficult for these Amish pioneer communities. Jacob Hochstetler's family, residing in the Northkill community, was attacked by Indians in the fall of 1757. A son and a daughter were tomahawked and scalped and the mother murdered. Jacob and his two sons Christian and Joseph were taken prisoners. Although Hochstetler and his sons later returned to the Northkill community, the settlement declined in

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