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joy regular religious services, but in the fall of 1849, the two elders from Lee County, Joseph Goldsmith and Christian Swartzendruber, visited Johnson County families and conducted church services for them in D. P. Guengerich’s fourteen by sixteen foot log house. Later the ministers of Lee County preached for these isolated families several times. Their church however, was not organized until the spring of 1851. By that time there were more than a dozen Amish families living in the community and at least twenty-seven members were included in the first church organization. Elder Joseph Goldsmith, perhaps assisted by Christian Swartzendruber, again officiated at these services. During the first months after their organization, they held serv-ives every three weeks but after that every two weeks.•■'-As was the custom among • the Amish, communion’sendees were not held immediately after the organization of the congregation, but a period of time was allowed to elapse before plans were made for the observance of the Lord’s supper. - Their first communion service, therefore, was not held until in the spring of 1851. The congregation at that time met in the home of D. J. Gingerich, and Jo-iseph Goldsmith again was in charge. At this meeting Frederick. Swartzendruber, son of Jacob and brother of Joseph, was ordained to the office of deacon, this being the first Amish ordination in Johnson County. A year later Jacob Swartzendruber .was ordained bishop or elder of the Johnson County church. He and John Gingerich had been ordained preachers in Germany before 1833. In 1855 the first ordination to the office of preacher took place. The one chosen was Joseph Keim. Three years later he was ordained to' the office of assistant elder, and for a number of years he assisted Elder Jacob Swartzendruber.With the coming of Daniel Schoet-tler family from Fairfield County, Ohio, in the spring of 1850, the stream of steady migration began which in time made the Johnson County Amish settlement the largest in the state. Tiie Benedick Miller and John Kempf families from ; Fairfield County, Ohio, came in the i fall of the same year, but during ; 1851 eleven families came. Among , these were Preacher Jacob Swartzen- • drufcer and wife and his son, Frederick and family from Allegany Conn- ■ ty, Maryland, and Preacher John Gin- : gerich and family, his two sons, Dan- : iel J., and . Christian J., with their . families, and his son-in-law, Henry Stutzman, and wife, all from Fair- ; field County; Ohio. These six families migrated in May 3851. The remaining five families arrived in September of that year. They were , Preacher Peter Brenneman and family, Isaac Eash and family, John Roth ' (Rhodes) and family, John Schla- -baugh and wife, and Jacob P. Guen-gericli and wife, all from Holmes County, Ohio.The year 1851 was perhaps the wettest in the history of Iowa, as a rainfall of seventy-five inches was reported for that year. From the last of April until the middle of July there was almost incessent rain. When the Swartzendrubers arrived in Johnson County on May 2, 1851, they learned! that it had been raining steadily for two weeks and .that the roads were deep with mud, which the Easterners soon learned was as sticky as “shoemaker’s wax”According to the report of her son, Mrs. Frederick Swartzendruber, felt that she was going away from home and relatives to a dreary and dismal . country, a country of want and pov- tLEWIS
Newspaper Details
Webster City Daily Freeman Journal
Webster City, Iowa, US
Sat, Jun 08, 1957
Page 80
Full Page
Clipped by
Anonymous
IA, USA 19 Feb 2017
Other Publications Near Webster City, Iowa
Hamilton County Journal
Webster City Tribune
Webster City Daily Freeman Journal
Standard Atlas of Hamilton County Iowa
