Article submitted for use by the Stark County OHGenWeb project. Article copyright protected. All right reserved.
Source: The Suburbanite (newspaper); 3577 South Arlington Rd., Suite B, Akron, OH 44312
Article dated: May 4, 2007
By: Ann Kagarise
HARTVILLE - The Stark County Mennonite and Amish Historical Society met at Cornerstone Mennonite Church for their spring meeting on April 24. The Amish and Mennonite community came to Stark County in 1905. The society's first meeting was held in September of 1980 to celebrate 75 years in Stark County. This month's topic was entitled, I Remember. Men and women gathered to share memories from long ago. In 1930, John Gingerich was a young 6-year-old Amish boy. Church services went on for hours on Sundays, and the women would prepare the meal for everyone in the congregation. 'Church began at 9 a.m.,' Gingerich remembered. 'The lady servers had no way to tell when church would leave out. Often at noon, the aroma of fresh brewed coffee would filter in the church audience. Then we knelt for general prayer.' The church services were known for going on long. 'One time, the over-tired and exhausted preacher was reading the long prayer and had to be punched awake three times to pray,' Gingerich laughed. 'The east church troubled themselves mostly with not allowing the bicycles.' After church was over, two benches were pushed together to make a table with benches placed at each side. Tablecloths were strewn across the benches. Elderly men and visitors were fed first. The women sat at another table, and they were fed second. 'The minister at the head of the table would say, 'Now that we are all set, let us silently pray.' That normally meant we were done,' Gingerich chuckled. 'The next table that was served was for young married and newborn children. Finally, the young would sit for their meal.' Each family would take turns having the meal. The host mother would oversee all the meal preparations for that particular Sunday. John remembers 50 loaves of bread being dropped off by the bakery the Saturday before church service. Coffee was served to each of the tables. 'The first group would have their coffee. The ladies would then go and wipe them out a little bit and get ready for the next batch,' he laughed. 'Hot soup was generally placed in the middle of the table so that possibly six persons could ladle directly from the bowl to the mouth,' he remembered. 'The ladies used cereal bowls. My sister Verna told me one time a fly landed in the soup, and she took the ladle and [flung it out], but she said she had lost her appetite for bean soup.' The soup was normally prepared in large copper kettles outside and brought into the house. 'The church meal served as a real time of fellowship and a time to rub shoulders and visit,' Mr. Gingerich fondly remembered. In the 1950s, the Amish were known for having tent meetings. Simon Sommers recalls that time. 'In 1946, two brothers named Lawrence and George thought they should go full time in evangelistic work. Lawrence stood in the middle of that chicken house and said, 'Lord, I would love to have you help me get 5000 souls saved. If you give me $5000 profit on this chicken house, I'll give it to Your cause.' By the year 1951, the brothers had made $35,000, so they decided to buy some tents. The first tent they purchased held a couple thousand people. The tent would travel, and they would have revival meetings every night for weeks at a time. Sommers recalls one particular revival meeting. 'They started out with 2,500. On the last night, there were 17,000 people there.' The tent meetings moved to Orville. 'I remember those tent meetings in Orville,' Elmer Yoder, moderator of the event stated. 'I remember this exodus of Hartville people heading down to Orville and coming back.' 'We often went to those meetings,' Sommers stated. 'I asked some of my unsaved neighbors to go along.' There had been much rain at the time, and the weeds were growing. Brother George stated, 'Let the weeds grow, and let's take care of spiritual things,' Sommers remembered. Those meetings made a difference in Sommer's life. 'I had made a commitment to the Lord. Those meetings were exactly what I needed in my Christian walk, and I know people that made commitments that lasted a lifetime.' Esther J. Yoder recalled the transients that used to travel by trains and stay at their houses. 'We had a lot of tramps. We had one tramp named Frank Burns. I remember him very distinctly. He would come and sit in our two-seated carriage in the barn and read. He usually slept in the barn.' Gingerich remembered throwing rocks at the transients when he was a little boy as they went through town. 'I think many of us did not realize that they were homeless. We need to ask God to forgive us for the way we treated them.' Lucille Schlabach brought in an old-fashioned, 29-inch Hotley to explain how to prepare dry sweet corn. Lucille recalled her mother making dried sweet corn before they had a way to freeze. 'I have a recipe here with my mother's handwriting in an old cookbook. It says, 'Cut corn and scrape cob. Eight pints corn and one-half cup of sugar. Add one-quarter cup of salt, one-half cup of cream, cook, then put on drier.' 'We always had dry sweet corn,' Lucille recalled. 'You just put water in the opening and let it boil. While the water is getting hot, then you prepare the corn.' You can also use a Hotley to dry apples. 'Dried sweet corn and apples with a Hotley is an old fashioned way of preserving food, that has become a lost art,' she stated. Esther Yoder grew up on an 80-acre farm that was given to her parents by her grandfather. She and her siblings had many jobs around the house. 'We shelled corn, we carried water, we brought in kindling, we cleaned, we ironed on the table with a flat iron, and we milked.' Esther had to milk the cows regularly and clean the milk out of the separators. She also had to watch the cows. 'Cows were rotated in different pastures, and at times, they needed watching. It wasn't a bad job, but it was monotonous sitting out there. You weren't busy, but you had to be there.' 'I didn't always have the best of everything,' Esther recalled. 'but we did have food, clothing, and water. We had Christian parents. We had a lot of interaction with people other than Mennonite and Amish. We had a lot of visitors, and we had a lot of tramps.' 'They say it was the good ol' days,' Esther stated. 'I raise some questions about that. I really like my electric stove. I like my washer, I like the telephone, I like my electric sweeper, I like the car and I like a decent mattress. That was then, and this is now. I think, as I look back, God was good to us then. It was different, but this is now. If I had to choose, I think I like things now pretty well,' she laughed. Grace Hostetler was recognized at the meeting for 23 years of service on the Board of Trustees. She served as secretary and treasurer.