78 / Pioneer Amish Communities

in at least partial use, till about 1900. The membership was given as 350 with

nearly one hundred per cent of the children gathered into the fold, as they come to the years of understanding and accountability. In 1875 and 1876 two substantial churches were built; Walnut Grove in Union Township on the West Liberty and De Graff Pike; these two congregations are blended in one, having services every Sunday, first at one and then at the other house.

The account quotes from an unnamed source which sets forth the faith and practice of the church as follows:

As a church we are orthodox in our belief; we accept the whole Bible as inspired, therefore the only safe guide; we are non-resistant in principle, therefore opposed to war; difficulties or misunderstandings among the brotherhood must be settled by the church. Mixed marriages of believers and unbelievers are not tolerated; divorce is unknown in the church; our dues to the government in taxes or work are considered binding to a faithful Chris

tian.

The above Amish communities in Ohio were nineteenthcentury migrations from Pennsylvania Amish communities of the colonial or early national era. They were not, however, the only Amish communities that took root in Ohio during the nineteenth century. Two other counties of the state, Stark and Fulton, received Amish immigrants from Europe during the first half of the 1800's and these church communities in time became a part of the Ohio and Eastern Mennonite Conference.

Settlement in Stark County

The Stark County settlement in Nimishillen Township, about four miles northeast of Louisville, traces its first settler to John King (an Amishman from Pennsylvania) who purchased land in 1819 just south of the present Beech Church.'' Michael Schloneger, Sr., purchased 350 acres in Washington Township in 1822. Other families came into the community and by 1830 a log building served as a meetinghouse on the Michael Schloneger farm.

The prominent family names of the early years were Conrad, Schloneger, King, Miller, Sommers, Schmucker, Becher, Krabill, Ramseyer, Graber, Klopfenstein, Linder, and Maurer. These families came directly from Alsace-Lorraine territory in France, and from the Canton of Bern in Switzerland. Their chief reason for coming to the United States was to avoid military draft during