Collection HM1/219 - Jonathan P. Smucker Papers

Jonathan P. Smucker, a leader in the Indiana-Michigan Amish Mennonite Conference, was born in Wayne County, Ohio on 8 May 1834, the son of Bishop Isaac Schmucker (1810-1893), the first Amish bishop in Indiana, and the great-grandson of Swiss immigrant Christian Schmucker from Bern and Barbara Stoltzfus of Zweibrücken. Jonathan Smucker's first wife was Salome Pecht (died 1893). To this union 11 children were born. In 1895 he married Mary Stutzman Kauffman, and then located east of Goshen, where he died 23 November 1903. He was buried in the Union Center Cemetery northeast of Nappanee.

Jonathan moved with his parents to Knox County, Ohio in 1838, where his father was ordained preacher. In November 1841 Isaac Schmucker and family located in Elkhart County, Indiana, where two years later he was ordained bishop. In 1873 Jonathan Smucker joined the small Amish Mennonite settlement at Grovertown in Starke County, Indiana, where he was ordained deacon and later preacher that same year by Bishop Jonas D. Troyer (Troyer was the leader of theprogressive Amish Mennonite schism from the Old Order Amish in Elkhart County in 1854). In 1875 Smucker moved to west of Nappanee and took charge of the small Amish Mennonite congregation which worshiped on West Market Street in Nappanee. In 1878 he was ordained bishop in this congregation by bishops Joseph Stuckey and Isaac Smucker. He was active in Amish Mennonite circles from Pennsylvania to Oregon, and was a strong promoter of church unity.