Written by Forrest Moyer on August 12, 2020
Allen M. Fretz (1853-1943) was a longtime pastor and outstanding leader among progressive Mennonites locally. In 1997, the MHEP Quarterly published a sketch of his ministry, written by grandson J. Herbert Fretz (1921-2013). We publish it now for the internet audience in two parts. The text is slightly rearranged from the original publication, and headings have been added.
First love lost
It was early September, 1883, when 29-year-old Allen Myers Fretz and his companions from Bucks County, Pennsylvania, were visiting friends and
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Written by Joel Alderfer on July 9, 2020
Last year, the family of the late Jacob R. and Mildred Landes Clemens of Lansdale, PA, donated a travel trunk filled with cultural artifacts, memorabilia, photos and papers collected by their parents during two years of relief work in Ethiopia. Jacob and Mildred were sent as relief workers with Mennonite Central Committee to Nazareth, Ethiopia, from November 1946 through 1948.
Their trunk of memorabilia had been given to their daughter and son-in-law, Mary Ann and Brian Hagey, who recently gave it
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Written by Forrest Moyer on June 18, 2020
Silas Manasses Grubb (1873-1938) was longtime pastor of Second Mennonite Church, Philadelphia, a congregation founded in 1894 as an outgrowth of First Mennonite, Philadelphia, where his father, N. B. Grubb, was pastor.
These were progressive congregations of the Eastern District of the General Conference Mennonite Church, and both father and son were educated and well-spoken. Both served as editors of The Mennonite, the denominational paper. Their congregations were filled with Mennonites who sought a modern city life rather than
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Written by Forrest Moyer on June 10, 2020
Recently, a post about scrapple on the Pennsylvania Dutch At-Home Companion blog generated a lot of interest. This post contributes another primary source on scrapple, from Henry R. Bergey of Franconia Township, writing circa 1925.
Henry Ruth Bergey (1843-1925) was a farmer in ”Bergey Valley” along the Indian Creek in Franconia. This is the last entry in a manuscript notebook begun in 1924 when he was 80 years old. You can read more about Henry and his notebook in this post
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Written by Joel Alderfer on June 4, 2020
Traditionally, many communities have unusual personalities, or characters, who are remembered and immortalized by stories that are passed down long after their passing. They are people whose colorful lives may not be well documented in written history, but are often remembered in the oral tradition.
I wrote these bios for the MHEP Newsletter in 1995, based on stories collected from older folks, local historians, and my own research. We’re sharing them here in two parts (this week and next), adding a
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Written by Joel Alderfer on May 27, 2020
Traditionally, many communities have unusual personalities, or characters, who are remembered and immortalized by stories that are passed down long after their passing. They are people whose colorful lives may not be well documented in written history, but are often remembered in the oral tradition.
I wrote these bios for the MHEP Newsletter in 1995, based on stories collected from older folks, local historians, and my own research. We’re sharing them here in two parts (this week and next), adding a
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Written by Forrest Moyer on May 15, 2020
(Updated 9/17/2020)
The first part of this post, about Lydia Gross’s leadership in the Doylestown Mennonite Sewing Circle and proposed Women’s Missionary Society, was written by Mary Jane Hershey and published in the MHEP Newsletter in March 1996.
The rest of the post, written by myself, is about Lydia’s brief marriage to a tattooed ruffian named Henry Howlett, and how the marriage was intentionally forgotten by her Mennonite church and family. Though divorced, Lydia retained the respect of the church and
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Written by Joel Alderfer on May 6, 2020
Back in late March, we published on this blog, Flu Epidemic of 1918: accounts from local diaries, which included excerpts from the diary of Henry D. Hagey, painter-paperhanger, artist and historian of Elroy, Franconia Township, PA. In this post, I’ll expand on his story and feature a selection of photos and artifacts from his camera and hand, donated to the Mennonite Heritage Center by his relatives over the last three decades.
Some biography
The MHC has a few hard-bound copies of this
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Written by Forrest Moyer on April 29, 2020
Title image: Women cleaning benches before annual communion at Deep Run in the 1940s.
Until the mid-20th century, Deep Run East Mennonite congregation — like many Anabaptists — held communion only once a year. Some members viewed the Lord’s Supper as a Christian version of the Jewish feast of Passover, which occurs annually (Timothy Rice, Deep Run Mennonite Church East: A 250 Year Pilgrimage, 1746-1996, p. 43).
The following interesting account was published in the newspaper Bucks County Intelligencer (Doylestown), May
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Written by Forrest Moyer on April 22, 2020
This brief article was written by John Ruth for the MHEP Newsletter, January 1994. It recounts a patriotic event that took place at the Towamencin Mennonite Meetinghouse in 1993.
The Towamencin congregation received a request from the Daughters of the American Revolution for permission to relocate a marker the organization had placed, in 1927, at the junction of the Sumneytown Pike and Old Forty Foot Road, just across the intersection from the Meetinghouse. A current (in 1993) widening of the Pike
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