Hartford, a small town in Lyon County, Kansas, located in the northeast corner of Elmendaro Township near the Coffee County line, the site of a former Amish Mennonite congregation. A few Amish settlers located near Hartford about 1880. During the early eighties several Amish Mennonite settlers also arrived. Most of these came from Iowa and Pennsylvania. In 1885 a large part of the congregation in Union County, Pennsylvania, moved near Hartford, and a new congregation was organized with Andrew Miller and David Stoltzfus as ministers. Joseph Schlegel of Nebraska served as bishop of the congregation during the early years. A younger Joseph Schlegel of Hartford was ordained a minister and later a bishop of the congregation. He spent the last years of his life at Hydro, Oklahoma. Because of church dissension and crop failures, the congregation became extinct, the last members leaving about 1910. Hartford was the chief trading center of the Amish and Amish Mennonite settlers.

Bibliography

Adapted by permission of Herald Press, Harrisonburg, Virginia, and Waterloo, Ontario, from Mennonite Encyclopedia, Vol. 2, pp. 666-667. All rights reserved. For information on ordering the encyclopedia visit the Herald Press website.

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