Collection III/35-007 - Orrville Mennonite Church (Orrville, Ohio) Records

Orrville Mennonite Church (Mennonite Church), in Orrville, Ohio, was established in 1909 as a mission cooperatively by members of theOak Grove Amish Mennonite Church and the Martin Mennonite Church. In 1909 the group took over the former Reformed Church building, which had been bought in 1907 by interested Mennonites. In 1911 the mission was taken over by the Mennonite Board of Missions and Charities who operated it until 1921 when it was turned over to the Ohio Mennonite Mission Board. On 2 April 1922 the congregation was organized as the Orrville Mennonite Mission Church with 100 charter members. On 22 November 1936 it was organized as the Orrville Mennonite Church, and became for the first time an independent congregation, a member of the Ohio Mennonite and Eastern Amish Mennonite Conference, no longer under a mission board. Up to this time it had been treated as a child of the two Ohio conferences who furnished joint bishop oversight. A new brick meetinghouse was erected in 1950. I. W. Royer served as pastor from 1 June 1912 to 1953, when Harold Bauman, who had been associate pastor since 1947, assumed full charge, followed by Lester Graybill in 1958. The membership in 1957 was 265.