Lauber Hill Community / Lauber Hill Meeting House

Side A: In 1834, immigrant families from the Upper Rhine River Valley villages of Mulhausen (France) and Schaffhausen (Switzerland) first met in Marshallville, Ohio. They decided to travel west by canal boat and purchase farmland in what became Fulton County in 1850. Joseph Bates, a knowledgeable hunter and navigator, brought them to German Township. On August 22, 1834, Bates and his hired men erected a log cabin for Christian Lauber and the first families arrived at “Lauber Hill” the following day. The farming community grew and by the 1880s included a Reformed Mennonite Church, a German Baptist Church, a Froehlich Evangelical Church, the Barneth (Bernath) one-room school, the Werrey Cabinetmaker’s Shop, the Roth Sawmill, the Uhlrich Wagon Shop, the Wise Brickworks, and the Leu Blacksmith Shop. Side B: Lauber Hill Meeting House and its cemetery are the physical remains of a unique community of Swiss-French-German-Anabaptist immigrants that once flourished in the area. In the fall of 1835, Minister Christian Beck led Alemannic German speaking worship at the Christian Lauber cabin. A group of “New Mennist” separated from the established “Old” Amish Mennonite churches. In 1852, Lauber Hill’s “plain people” joined the Pennsylvania Reformed Mennonite conference. The Lauber Hill Reformed Amish-Mennonite Church purchased the land for a simple brick meeting house and cemetery in 1865. Later additions were made to the east (1884) and south (1924). A combination English-German hymnal was introduced in 1910. By 1949, services, bibles, and hymnals were all in English. After 150 years, the congregation stopped using Lauber Hill Meeting House in 2019.