1948 Mennonite Publishing House

1948 Paul M. Lederach, a young bishop from Franconia Conference, his education and work at Mennonite Publishing House; Overholts and Loucks family of Scottdale, Pennsylvania, coal and coke history and institutions to mid-century, Abraham Jacob Metzler; Andrew’s invitation to work at Scottdale, its mid-century vitality and image; Miller domestic life, fourth son David is born, and Andrew’s urge to move; Roy R. Miller and Berdella Blosser, birth of daughter Gloria Elaine.

In the late forties, Paul M. Lederach was a young Mennonite leader and student on the move; at age nineteen, he was ordained a minister the Franconia Mennonite Conference, the old eastern Mennonite conference north of Philadelphia.  Known as a bright young student, from the conference’s historical Mensch and Lederach families, he kept study and ministerial leadership together in his youth and for the rest of his life. In a conference still somewhat skeptical about higher education, the young minister asked his bishops if he could continue studying, and they approved. By 1945 he had finished his bachelor’s degree at Goshen College in Indiana, and a year later he earned a Bachelor’s in Theology from the newly created Goshen Biblical Seminary led by the Anabaptist Vision dean Harold S. Bender (chapter 1944). A year later, Lederach was at the nearby Eastern Baptist Seminary earning a Masters in Religious Education. And finally there was a doctorate in education which he earned from the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Ft. Worth, Texas, in 1949; the topic of his dissertation: “History of Religious Education in the Mennonite Church.”  And if that schooling trek was not enough, he was also ordained a bishop, as his neighbor John L. Ruth would say “at the ripe old age of twenty-four.”

Paul M. Lederach would greatly influence my life several decades later, and his son James was a neighbor and friend. What fascinated me coming out of the Amish Mennonite stream, was that the old Mennonites carried a parallel history of which I knew very little. The Lederachs had arrived in the Americas already in 1717 and their conference carried the Mennonite stream of church life for several centuries right next to urban Philadelphia. Lederach was also the great-grandson of the legendary Franconia minister Jacob Mensch who while a minister in his traditional Conference also carried on correspondence with Mennonites all over rural North America.

But Lederach often mentioned to me that although much of the Mennonite and Amish heritage is rural, his was not. I remember when I first met him at his office; he had a large print, a cityscape of Pittsburgh hanging on the wall. His parents Willis and Mary Lederach had been commissioned to be workers of a city mission at the Norristown, Pennsylvania. His father Willis was a banker and his mother Mary oversaw a growing family and was matron of a city mission.  She was also a capable public speaker, more so says John Ruth, than most of the preachers in the conference. She must have passed along some of her public speaking qualities to her tall minister scholar son because he was an eloquent Bible teacher and forceful speaker, even taking on controversial issues such as upbraiding his local traditional members for their leisure of smoking and chewing tobacco.

But by 1948, Lederach’s study and ministerial duties were soon supplemented by also actively working for the Mennonite Publishing House (MPH) in Scottdale, Pennsylvania. He did some writing for the Uniform Series Sunday adult school lessons for editor Clayton F. Yake; and he  wrote the first edition of a Mennonite Youth Fellowship (MYF) manual. A year later, Lederach became employed full-time in publishing where he would continue in employment for three decades, generally giving leadership to curriculum and Christian education materials for the denomination. In the late forties, the Mennonite Publishing House in western Pennsylvania was at its height of influence among the Mennonites, hence a good institution to which an aspiring  young leader might attach himself.   

The printed page was still the main form of popular communication at mid-century, and Mennonites had a new generation at leadership which was ready to do publishing. Literature professor Paul Erb had replaced the elderly Daniel Kauffman as editor of the popular weekly Gospel Herald. An entrepreneurial local son fresh out of Civilian Public Service, Ralph Hernley came back to his hometown and was heading up the production and printing presses. The Hernleys had lived in Scottdale since 1908, and by mid-century most of the Hernleys were working at Mennonite Publishing House; it was a veritable family as well as church business. One of the lead editors was Clayton F. Yake who created the popular magazine Youth’s Christian Companion and an influential Herald Sumer Bible School Series. One measure of Yake’s self understanding was that he called his office “the East Room.”

In 1948, the publishing house had built a new brick addition to its tile walled-plant along Walnut Avenue which housed printing presses in the basement, provided space for a bookstore, shipping and warehousing on the ground floor, and the top floor provided space for a warren of twenty-six editorial and business offices. Over one hundred people worked at the institution, and leading it all was a charismatic executive minister called Abraham Jacob Metzler.  At that point it was popular to call people by their initials and Yake would have been C.F. and Metzler, A.J.

The energetic Abraham J. Metzler was at his prime as general manager which he served from 1935 to 1961, and the business was expanding, including other languages such as Spanish (the Herald Summer Bible School Series) and the historic German used for the Amish and conservative Amish Mennonite groups and now by the immigrant Mennonites who were driven out of the Russian empire. My father Andrew wrote articles for Herald der Wahrheit, a German and English twice-monthly journal and read the Mennonite Publishing House’s weekly Gospel Herald. He even wrote an article “A Christian’s Weapons of Warfare” which appeared in June of 1947. But mostly he was writing for the German English language Herald der Wahrheit, also printed at Scottdale.

Dear reader, surely you are wondering why all this commentary on Mennonite Publishing House in Scottdale, Pennsylvania, during my early years in Holmes County, Ohio? First, I would spend most of my professional adult life here, but there's a more immediate reason. In the mid-80s, my father Andrew got up in our Scottdale Kingview church one Sunday and said he had been invited to come to Scottdale in 1948, and since he could not come he was glad that his son could come a generation later in his place. I had never heard this direct connection so explicitly before, and I thought my father may have drunk too much coffee that morning. At best I knew that A. J. Metzler was expansive, traveled widely during this period and often made a comment that people should come to Scottdale and work at the publishing house. I thought he may have made such a random comment to my father. The occasion was that we had returned from Venezuela, and my extended family was present for a ministerial licensing service for work at Laurelville Mennonite Church Center. Unusual as it sounded to me at the time, I made a journal note and then got busy at Laurelville and never asked much about it.

But it was more than a passing comment. In the Spring of 2010 when I looked at Andrew’s correspondence from the late 40s, I discovered that Andrew had indeed been invited to come to Scottdale already June 22 of 1947 in a letter from Joseph G. Gingerich, president of the Amish Mennonite Publication Board in Kalona, Iowa. This board published the Herald der Wahrheit which was printed at Scottdale’s Mennonite Publishing House. Apparently Andrew had sent an inquiry earlier regarding Scottdale employment and regarding the church situation. Gingerich responds that in consultation with the manager “Brother Metzler” at Mennonite Publishing House, the work would be full-time year round to serve in German typesetting, proofreading and editorial, “such work as you could do around there.” Regarding church life, he admits that although only a Mennonite church exists at Scottdale, “Somerset is 35 or 40 miles away and has Mennonite, Conservative, Old Order Amish and what we call the Beachy church.”

On the back side of this same page of the letter, Gingerich continues to write personally in German of some relatives and people he has known in the Holmes County area, and of his desire to see Andrew and speak to him personally. My mother also remembers the invitation and of an Amish publishing delegation coming to the Hummel farmstead to visit with Andrew and her about this position. But mostly Mattie remembers that when my Father's side of the family got wind of this possibility, they were firmly against such a move. I suppose more pointedly, the Millers were hysterically against it, my mother claiming that there was weeping and wailing for a week at even the thought all this. They knew that this move would be the end of Andrew and Mattie’s family as members of the Amish if they moved to Scottdale.

By mid-century Scottdale was the most common publication address of the Mennonites, and even the Mennonite Community Association which was begun in 1948 used Scottdale as its office with Ralph and Elizabeth Hernley among its main leaders. The Hernleys even bought some land west of the borough, selling off lots and hoping to have it settled with Mennonites in a kind of back-to-the-land communitarianism. Hernleys were influenced by rural American  sociologists and by some post-World War II Mennonite leaders, notably the Goshen College ethics and history professor Guy F. Hershberger, author of other influential work in 1944: War Peace and Nonresistance. The Mennonites and the Amish retained a rural heritage longer than the rest of North America, and some of their students had studied rural sociology at universities, hence there seemed to be somewhat of a fit for renewing this effort. A generation later, some Mennonites would repudiate this rural community effort with equal vigor but that is a later story.

In spite of the Scottdale address for Mennonite publications and institutions, it would not have been a natural place to think of the Mennonites living and working, notwithstanding the Mennonites living in the area since the 1790s. Scottdale was located in an industrial and mining region in the middle of the rich Connellsville coke vein. For over 50 years this region provided the coal and coke energy which stoked the Pittsburgh blast furnaces to produce the iron and steel for America and the world. America was becoming a post- agriculture manufacturing and industrial society, and the Pittsburgh region was the key player in this industrial and financial growth. The steel industry had begun with leaders such as Henry Clay Frick and Andrew Carnegie in the late nineteenth century and was still going in the mid-twentieth with the giant United States Steel Corporation leading the way.

By the 1920s Scottdale had a good number of industrial and banking magnates (attested by the stately houses still standing), and the surrounding workers’ coal patch houses (mainly the photos still remaining). Although Scottdale had suffered severely during the1930s economic depression, it was recovering with the resurgence of need for steel during the World War II years and by the late 40s was again a vibrant small town with good employment, neighborhood clubs, a theater, a roller rink, and a high school hang-out called “Ye Olde Nut Shoppe.” It was a mix of the traditional Scotch-Irish and Germans and the gritty still bilingual Italian, Polish, Hungarian, and other eastern European neighborhoods. There was also a small African American community at Kiefertown along Jacobs Creek. Whatever the vigor and diversity, the area also had a certain coal and coke town shadow of soot and attendant health issues.  

This industry was not all foreign to the early Mennonites who had arrived from Lancaster County and Bucks County with the westward expansion shortly after the nation became independent. In the nineteenth century Abraham and Maria Overholt had built up a large farming, milling, distillery, coal mining and coke business, a veritable industrial community which is still standing near Scottdale, now called West Overton Village. The Overholt’s grandson Henry Clay Frick would go on to coal and coke leadership eventually joining with Andrew Carnegie to form what became the United States Steel Corporation. Fame came for his contribution to industry, finance and art collections mixed with infamy for labor relations and presiding over one of the most tragic labor disputes in United States history, the Homestead Strike of 1892. Even the town of Scottdale was laid out by the Mennonite families, the two brothers Jacob and Peter Loucks who a generation earlier came from the Franconia region where Paul Lederach had grown up.

But if the first generation or two of the Overholts and Stauffers and Loucks remained Mennonites, their children and grand children left en masse, and by the end of the century membership had dwindled to fewer than twenty elderly members. However, among the end-of-the century remnant were an earnest elderly widow Nancy Stauffer Loucks (1808-1900) and her son Jacob Loucks and grandson Aaron all of whom were especially staunch Mennonites and carried a vision of renewed church life. Young Aaron seemed to have a head for both business and ministerial leadership (often combined in that era). So Nancy and Jacob provided the family finances to build a new church building in town in 1893, and a few years later to build a printing and publishing firm across the street on 616 Walnut Avenue.

So why a twentieth century Mennonite publishing headquarters in Scottdale? One might respond that a wealthy and devout Stauffer and Loucks family once lived there and provided leadership.  And as mid-century publisher Abraham Jacob Metzler would proclaim, it was at the center of the old Mennonite world, it was within a one-day car-driving distance (400 miles) and good rail connections to the big Mennonite communities of Lancaster, Pennsylvania; Harrisonburg, Virginia; Kitchener, Ontario; and Goshen, Indiana.   

Although my father Andrew never physically visited Metzler’s Mennonite Publishing House at Scottdale until several decades later, he often spoke of it. Before I arrived in 1970, the name was an early image for Andrew’s desire for publishing, writing and public life. Scottdale provided a counterpoint to the domestic tranquility at the Hummel farm hidden among the Holmes County hills. Andrew was restless, even as so much of his life seemed to be going well with a growing family and success at farming.

In March Mattie delivered a fourth healthy son to join Paul, Roy and me; they named him David. As with the other children he was delivered at home, but their Millersburg family doctor Luther High told Mattie this birth was the last one he would deliver at home. She would now be expected to go to the Pomerene Hospital in Millersburg. Mattie had plenty of help nearby as her father Levi Schlabach’s family lived within a mile, and her in-laws the Martin and Martha Millers were only a few miles over the hill by what we used to call the schloop weg, a hidden one-path trail. Paul the first-born was in his first year at Sharps school, the one-room school within a half-mile and with the bilingual teacher Loyal Brown. Paul’s aunts and uncles were at the same school--Mary, Katie, Abe and Melvin. 

If Mattie was contented with her growing family, farming and living near extended family, she was sensitive to her husband Andrew’s increasing unhappiness in living in a lane behind the knob of the Berlin Township farm. The farm lane went off of a little township road and then you went up over that little knob and down below, you could see the three buildings, the barn, a glazed block hog or chicken house, and the house still farther down into the wide gulch, heading towards the woods. For our dog mixed-terrier Bounce this was ideal territory for hunting raccoon, groundhogs and squirrels, and, of course, to the four little boys this all seemed natural.

But for a young father who grew up in a large family sitting almost on top of the well-traveled Berlin-Charm road and who worked away with English-speaking folks most of his life, the Hummel place was too much isolation. You got up in the morning and saw only wooded hills, several fields and tree lined valley heading down into more backwoods. This might be okay for a hermit or a Henry David Thoreau, but not for a restless and now lonely young man who would rather live in Concord, near a library or maybe a bookstore. 

Finally, there was the nearness of the aggressive father-in-law Levi Schlabach (L.L.). When Andrew’s male dog wandered off the Hummel farm one time, he returned home without his cajones. The prime suspect for rendering Bounce a eunuch was L.L., and I still remember as a boy when my father would tell me this story. He admitted that he was never sure who neutered his dog; but it was clear to me that the story had symbolic meaning to my father. In any case, Andrew and Mattie began to think about a move. That winter they started looking for another home—maybe not as far away as Scottdale, Pennsylvania, but at least at the other end of the county.  

A Berlin teacher and school executive Roy R. Miller (1906-1985) who had been away in Civilian Public Service (CPS)  during the War was contented to settle back into life in Holmes County, bringing along and his new wife Berdella Blosser (1920-2003). Roy R. and Berdella had met in CPS during the war while Berdella was working in the offices of the Mennonite Central Committee in Akron, Pennsylvania. Roy R. was an educational leader at the Sideling Hill Camp also in Pennsylvania. Miller had been executive head of Berlin High School and East Holmes Schools from 1939-42, and in 1947 picked up his duties again. Roy R. resumed his established professional role, had lots of family relationships, and was conversant in the bilingual English and Pennsylvania Dutch culture. On the other hand, Berdella had grown up in Columbiana County, Ohio, and found life in the Holmes County community a considerable adjustment what with its newness for her and without close friends nor family nearby. But she and Roy would soon start a family, and on April 30, 1948, Berdella gave birth to a daughter; they named her Gloria Elaine.    

Most of this chapter comes from family conversations, especially my mother Mattie. Some of Paul M. Lederach’s story comes from a telephone conversation with him on March 1, 2010, as well as John L. Ruth’s Maintaining the Right Fellowship (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1984); the Scottdale Mennonite  history is told in Edward Yoder, The Mennonites of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania (Scottdale: Scottdale Mennonite Church, 1942) and on publishing, John A. Hostetler’s, God Uses Ink (Scottdale: Herald Press, 1958). I told my own version of this story in “The Growth and Decline of the Mennonites near Scottdale, Pennsylvania: 1790-1890,” Pennsylvania Mennonite Heritage (October, 1990, pages 2-15). Joseph G. Gingerich’s letter of June 22, 1947, inviting Andrew to work at Scottdale is in the Andrew A. Miller collection in the Archives of the Mennonite Church, Goshen, Indiana. In this same file is a copy of the article A[ndrew]. A. Miller, “The Christian’s Weapons of Warfare,” Gospel Herald, Supplement (June, 1947, page 269).