Trenton Mennonite Church (Trenton, Ohio, USA)
The Trenton Mennonite Church in Trenton, Ohio (Mennonite Church USA) (formerly called the Apostolic Mennonite Church, officially named the "Apostolic Mennonite Society"), was originally an Amish Mennonite settlement established in 1819 by Christian Augsburger and five other families from Alsace, France, who organized an Amish congregation in 1825. In 1832 a shipload of Mennonites from Hesse settled here. Since the two groups did not get along well together two separate congregations (Amish-Augsburger, and Mennonite-Hessian) were organized, although the first meeting houses were not built until 1863 and 1864, respectively, by the two congregations. In 1897 the two were merged and in 1907 a brick church building, with a seating capacity of 250, was erected. A third faction, which did not agree with either the Augsburger or the Hessian group, organized separately at Collinsville in 1835 but the group was never large and dissolved after a generation, the members joining the other two groups.
Historically this settlement is important as the first Alsatian Amish settlement in North America and as the mother colony from which the many first Alsatian Amish settlers went to central Illinois (beginning in 1829) and later to eastern Iowa (beginning in 1840), to Henry County (Wayland) and Davis County (Pulaski). Joseph Goldsmith, a prominent early Amish bishop, was ordained here in 1838. The Augsburger (Amish) congregation belonged to the Amish General Conference, 1862-1878, but never joined the later Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference. In 1892 the Hessian congregation joined the General Conference Mennonites.
Grubb, W. H. History of the Mennonites of Butler County, Ohio. Trenton: W. H. Grubb, 1916.
Address: 2 East Main Street, Trenton, OH
Website: Trenton Mennonite Church
Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, pp. 136-137. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.
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To cite this page:
MLA style: Amstutz, J. E. "Trenton Mennonite Church (Trenton, Ohio, USA)." Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. 1953. Web. 19 May 2013. http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/T746.html.
APA style: Amstutz, J. E. (1953). Trenton Mennonite Church (Trenton, Ohio, USA). Global Anabaptist Mennonite Encyclopedia Online. Retrieved 19 May 2013, from http://www.gameo.org/encyclopedia/contents/T746.html.