This people

The county history published in 1882 was written by four men, and two of them were named Rerick. The volume does not say what the two Rericks were to each other. Its biography of J. H. Rerick names a son, Rowland H., born in 1857. Nothing on the page connects him to the chapters signed R. H., and this piece has not established it.

R. H. Rerick wrote the chapter on Newbury Township. At its head is a synopsis of what the chapter covers.

Newbury Township—First Election and Officers—Early Physical Features, Lakes, Indians, Etc.—The First Settler and His Successors—Mills and Towns—Forest Customs—The Amish—Their Customs, Churches, Schools, Etc—General Development.

The Amish are the only church the synopsis names.

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Under that heading he gives them what he gives every church in the township: a date, a place, the men in charge, a count.

The German Baptists, or Dunkers:

The earliest efforts of the church were in 1854, when meetings were begun in the Poynter Schoolhouse. In 1857, the church was partly organized, and Samuel Doney and Samuel Lupold appointed deacons.

The membership of the church is about ninety.

The Methodists:

It was on his farm, at the house of Joseph Nelson, that the first church was organized in the fall of 1837, by a Methodist evangelist, who used to go about on foot among the settlers, doing good.

Joseph Nelson was the class-leader of this little organization, which had about nine members at starting.

The Amish:

In 1844, an event of great importance was the first settlement of members of the Amish Church, in the southwest portion of the township.

There are three districts of the old school in the township, the southern one having, in 1881, 161 members, the western 100, and the northern, including part of Van Buren, about one hundred and twenty. Each district has its Bishop and two ministers.

At present this position is held by Dr. Yoder and David Kaufman.

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The account records seven things for the Amish that it records for no other church in Newbury: belief, dress and the body, houses, reading, language, how the children are educated, and morals and money.

The peculiar characteristic of the church is a literal observance of every injunction of the Scriptures, as they understand them.

The natural grace and beauty of the person is altogether unthought of, or only considered as a snare of the evil one.

German is also spoken continually in their home life, and this is another "tie," and distinction from the "world."

The children are educated to read and write well, but higher studies are considered useless.

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The vocabulary goes with them. Peculiar occurs once in the chapter, characteristic twice, and creed, costume and ornament once each, every time in the account of the Amish. So does one phrase.

A marked degree of morality pervades this people.

The Dunkers in the same chapter are this society. The Methodists are this little organization.

The words were counted across the chapter's scanned text. The same count finds Methodist three times.

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The same volume has a second account of the county's churches, by a different man.

J. H. Rerick signed the four chapters on the county as a whole. In the third of them he outlines the growth of religion, and having named the denominations that came first, he writes:

Individuals connected with other branches were as early here as any of these, but we have no record of organized societies by other churches until 1854, when three church societies were organized—a Congregational at Lima, German Baptist (Dunkers), in Newbury Township, and the Evangelical Lutheran at La Grange.

Still other churches formed societies, but at what dates we have not been able to learn—the United Brethren in Christ, the Free-Will Baptist, the Christian or Disciple, the Albrights, Protestant Methodist and Wesleyan Methodists.

The Amish are in neither list. The word does not appear in any of his four chapters.

R. H. Rerick's chapter on Eden Township, a hundred and twenty-seven pages further on, opens its account of the Amish church with this.

The Amish Mennonite Church was organized in 1854 by German-speaking residents in the township.

It goes on to a frame church built about 1860, and then to 1870, when a handsome brick church was erected, with a seating capacity of 300, at a cost of $2,000.

J. H. Rerick names three church societies organized in 1854. The same volume, in another man's chapter, dates a fourth to that year.

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His list is of organized societies, and by R. H. Rerick's account the Old Amish in Newbury had no meeting-houses. If the outline kept to churches with buildings, that would account for it.

It does not keep to them. It goes on to spiritism, and says that between 1850 and the war spirit-rapping and writing and like phenomena were the leading sensation, with circles formed and seances held. It goes on to a Fourierist association founded by Springfield Township men, which took the name La Grange Phalanx. And it goes on to a co-operative society organized at Lexington in 1843 under the title The Congregation of Saints.

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What he wrote is that he had no record. The page cannot tell us whether he did not know or chose not to say.

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F. A. Battey and Company of Chicago printed both chapters in one book. Its preface names no editor. It is signed by the publishers, in May 1882, and it speaks for the men who wrote the chapters.

the conflicting statements, the discrepancies and the fallible and incomplete nature of public documents were almost appalling to our historians and biographers

In this entangled condition, we have given preference to the preponderance of authority, and while we acknowledge the existence of errors and our inability to furnish a perfect history

Page 66 and page 193 say nothing of each other.

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One of the two men wrote about these people at length, and the other wrote that he had no record of them. Neither quoted one.

R. H. Rerick names fourteen men in his account of Newbury: Millers and Bontragers, a Weirick, a Yoder, Kaufmans, Troyers, a Hostettler and a Plank. Not one of them speaks on the page. Everything the two chapters say about them is said by somebody else.