Growth-and Some Decline-of the Churches / 103

in Holmes County where the congregation in the Walnut Creek area faced a difference of opinion on the question of outdoor baptism in streams." Outdoor baptism became the practice and as such was an innovation. Certain leaders also favored the erection of a meetinghouse in this Amish community that had had its services traditionally in homes. However, not all agreed to these innovations. The result was a division in the congregation, Levi Miller led the conservatives into a separate way in 1852, and Moses P. Miller was leader of the group which advocated change. In 1862 the Walnut Creek church building was erected and here Moses P. Miller's followers worshiped. The two groups went their separate ways in the following decades.

The importance of this division is that it became part of a larger movement within the Amish churches. It paralleled trends going on in the Oak Grove area of Wayne County. It also helped to create a divisive movement within the Pennsylvania Amish who had to decide for or against continuing fellowship with those Ohio congregations that were beginning to build meetinghouses. This posed a problem for the Conestoga and Millwood districts by 1870 and led to the division noted elsewhere.

The Egly Movement

There was another division that left its impress on Ohio Amish churches. Henry Egly (1824-90) who was born in Germany settled in Butler County, Ohio, and at seventeen became a member of the Amish church." After his marriage in 1848 to Katherine Goldsmith, young Egly moved to Adams County, Indiana, where he lived the rest of his life. Here he was ordained deacon (1850) and minister (1854). Before the latter ordination he underwent a long illness during which he experienced a spiritual awakening. After this he stressed more and more the need for an experiential knowledge of conversion in order to be a church member. He won about half of his congregation to this view. Disagreements arose and he resigned his pastorate and formed a separate congregation in 1866.

As Egly's movement spread, it reached other Amish communities. By 1869 or 1870 it was felt in the Fulton County, Ohio, Amish community. Jacob Rupp was the local leader of the movement and his son Joseph was to become the first local preacher. In 1880 a small brick church was built east of Archbold for the congrega-