It was Easter Sunday, March 27, 1842. The youthful congregation of about fourteen members, and likely twice that many children, was meeting at the home of Preacher Joseph Miller east of Goshen, Indiana. The four families who had moved from Pennsylvania in June 1841 had been joined by five more families from Ohio that fall, and at that time they held their first worship service in Lagrange County.
These rugged pioneer farmers who were carving out homesteads on both sides of the Elkhart-Lagrange county line had survived their first winter and were now meeting for worship on Easter Sunday for the first time in the new year and for the first time in Elkhart County. From then on, they met regularly every two weeks for worship services. From these, and later arrivals, have come the wide variety of Amish and Mennonite congregations now found in northern Indiana.
While the oldest man in the group was forty, most of the nine couples in this new settlement were in their late twenties or early thirties. Each family had from two to eight children, with a total of thirty-five. This new congregation also had two preachers and a deacon. Isaac Smucker, 32, had been ordained in Ohio, and he preached the opening sermon. Joseph Miller, 34, had been ordained in Pennsylvania and delivered the main sermon. Although there is no record to verify it, Deacon Joseph Borntrager likely read the scripture text between the sermons. They probably sang from the familiar Ausbund, and the second song was certainly "The Loblied." The form of worship, the light lunch at noon, and the dialect used in socializing were likely similar to what I experienced in my earliest memories a century later in the same area.
The count of fourteen members present indicates that four adults were absent. Two of these likely were Jonas and Elizabeth Hochstetler, my great-great-grandparents, for they had less than a week earlier welcomed a new baby into their family. Two years later Jonas was to become the first Amish minister ordained in Indiana.
I wish I could have been there at this early meeting, which was setting the precedent for the years to come. No doubt these early arrivals, as well as the dozens of families who came from the east in following years, had high hopes for their community on the frontier. A scouting quartet in 1840 from Somerset County, Pennsylvania had gone as far as Iowa and on their way home were attracted to the land in Indiana, and "agreed to make this region the future home for their church."
However, quite soon it became evident that the ones from Pennsylvania and the ones from Ohio had different ideas of how to "do church," and the county line became the dividing line for two congregations. By the 1850s, as in other Amish communities, further differences became evident between "change-minded" and "tradition-minded" persons on both sides of the county line. Bishop Isaac Smucker and Bishop Joseph Miller, co-ministers from the beginning in Indiana, became leaders of opposite sides, later known as Amish Mennonites and Old Order Amish.
I wish I could have been present at the first Amish worship service in my native Elkhart County. Could I have detected the beginnings of a major division among these devout people who had such noble ambitions? Would I have sensed ways that unity could be maintained even when there were sincere differences among God's people? Through history we hope to learn from the past to help us understand the present and give direction for the future.

Reference:
Borntrager, John E. A History of the First Settlers of the Amish Mennonites and the Establishment of Their First Congregation in the State of Indiana. German edition, 1907. First English edition, 1988.
Miller, Jerry E. Indiana Amish Directory, Elkhart, LaGrange, and Noble Counties. Middlebury, Indiana, 1995.