166 / Growth in the Early 1900's

Liechty of Wayne County, Ohio. Lina Zook, also of Wayne County, married Jacob A. Ressler and in 1903 sailed as a missionary to India.

In Eastern States

Among the new congregations of the early years of the twentieth century was Providence Church located at Oyster Point, Virginia.' A number of the founders of this church came from Ohio. They included D. Z. Yoder of Smithville, D. S. Yoder of Orrville, and Isaac Stoltzfus of West Liberty. These men and their families, together with Christ Miller of Cass County, Missouri, and J. Z. Mast, Long Green, Maryland, were organized as a congregation by two bishops from Ohio, Fred Mast and J. S. Gerig, in 1900. In 1902 the congregation petitioned for membership in the Eastern A. M. Conference, the request being granted.'

Another congregation to form in the eastern states was at Westover, Maryland. The settlement here was formed by the Daniel P. Yoder family from Oscoda County, Michigan (1909); the Christian Schrock family from Virginia Beach, Virginia (1914); Amos Ogburn from Kenmare, North Dakota (1916,); and Ira M. Zook from Cass County, Missouri (1919).' Though communion services were held as early as 1913 by Bishop John S. Mast of Conestoga Church near Morgantown, Pennsylvania, the congregation was not organized till 1919 when Bishop Mast did this in the home of Israel Kauffman. A meetinghouse was built the next year.'

For some years Bishop Mast had oversight of the congregation known as Holly Grove. In 1922 Aaron Mast of the Millwood congregation in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was ordained to serve as a resident pastor. Mast moved his family of seven to this developing community in the fertile, vegetable-producing Eastern Shore of Maryland. Here in time, despite unimproved roads and isolation from cities, a prosperous community developed. Leading evangelists and Bible conference speakers came and went in the course of the years.'

"Reasonable Land," Good Markets, a New Church

The growth of new communities in these years, as in the nineteenth century, was frequently the result of a quest for cheaper land or better markets for a group of religious people with generations of deep attachment to the soil. This accounts for the origin