Pioneer Amish Communities / 79

the post-Napoleonic era in Europe.

Early leaders included Jacob Conrad, Sr., who had been ordained as a minister for the Montebeliard congregation in Alsace. He was the first minister of the Stark County settlement. John Schloneger, son of Michael, was the first bishop, being ordained briefly as a minister before moving to Ontario, Canada. David Maurer was the first deacon and was ordained before 1850. For some years he was the only church leader, and ministers from Holmes County, Abraham Mast and Moses Miller, assisted him. From 1859 to 1870 John K. Yoder of Wayne County had bishop oversight. He was succeeded in 1870 by Michael Schloneger, Jr., who died in 1906.

Beginnings in Fulton County

One more important community laid its foundations through Amish immigration from Europe in the nineteenth century. This was the Fulton County community of northwestern Ohio and of which the Central Church at Archbold became the "mother" church.", The trek to this wilderness began on March 8, 1834, in Mulhausen of Alsace, a city about eight miles from the northwestern boundary of Switzerland. A group of twenty traveled by three teams to La Havre, France, in seventeen days and from thence on April 8 began the slow voyage to New York. The group consisted of Jacob Binder and wife (Mary Stuckey), one son and six daughters; Christian Lauber and wife (Magdaline Zimmerman) with three daughters and one son; and Christian Rupp and wife (Christina Stuckey) with their three children.

From New York they proceeded by the Hudson River acrd the Erie Canal to the Fulton Canal. From thence they traveled to Canal Fulton in Stark County where Peter Schrock and other Amish brethren from Wayne County met them. Here they enjoyed hospitality for six weeks. Here, too, they met another group of immigrants whose European home was only fifty miles from them and who had docked at New York shortly before they had arrived and who had proceeded to Wayne County. This other group which was to share with them the rigors of pioneering in northwestern Ohio consisted of Jacob Kibler and wife (Susanna Meister) and seven children; John Georg Meister and wife (Margaret Keller) and twelve children; and John Van Gunday, a widower with four children.

The two groups formed a company and faced westward in