The below article was in the Crawford County Chapter of the Ohio Genealogical Society Church Records Collection. Author and date are unknown.
In the early days our village continued to be quite small and the language spoken was largely German; indeed, even in the 1910’s there were some students who started to country schools and could not speak English. Also the town was quite self-contained; Hopley, in his 1912 History says,
In April, 1862, New Washington had two churches, two dry goods stores, one drug store, six groceries, three blacksmith shops, five shoe shops, two wagon shops, one flouring and sawmill, a tannery and an ashery (p. 230).
New life, however, came to New Washington with the coming of the Mansfield, Coldwater and Michigan Railroad (later to become the Pennsylvania) which ran its first trains from Toledo to New Washington in October 1872. The resulting influx of new business and people caused a new style of living and eventually brought on a modest inflow of families who were not German – one may read more about this in the Centennial History pp. 19-29.
By the time of the first railroad – the second one, The Pittsburgh, Akron and Western came in 1891 – both St. John’s Lutheran and St. Bernard’s Catholic Churches were well organized and had regular services. Their services, however, were in German and in German and Latin and it was not until the pastorate of Fr. Lawrence Heiland (June, 1881 to January 1, 1888) that St. Bernard’s introduced English into its services and not until Rev. E.A. Boehme’s years here (December, 1878-November 1882) that English services were held one Sunday each month at St. John’s.
As families came to New Washington who were non-German speaking and who belonged to other denominations there arose a desire to have facilities to carry on religious services in English. Hence in the early 1870’s there was created a religious society known as the “Church of God” organized on March 19, 1871, under the direction of Rev. D.S. Warner who served as pastor for two years. This was the first church in New Washington to have English services and its beginning membership listed forty-six worshippers. Dr. J.S. Hershiser and John Hellem (who had a store here) were elders and William H. Pratt (operator of a lumber and planning Mill) was elected deacon. In 1872 a church was built at a cost of $2,200 on land purchased from Jonas H. Miller (Deed Record Vol. 35, p. 402, September 3, 1872, with Christian Guiss and J.M. Guiss witnesses). This was located about two lots north of the present St. John’s Lutheran Church. At the dedication in October, 1872, the membership was 63 but the loss of several families caused support to dwindle. Finally regular pastors were replaced by neighboring pastors and transient preachers.
The Church of God did not seem to lack for activities. In February 1888 there was held a series of meetings at the Church of God Bethel by Rev. L. Rothrock, pastor, and there were seventeen conversions plus ten others who expressed intense interest. In several years he was succeeded by Rev. William J. McNutt. The Cranberry Township Sunday School convention was held there in May, 1891, with Rev. Wolf and Mrs. Moses Pugh as participants. In October 1893 Elder S.M. Young, pastor, who lived near Cranberry Chapel, had services and in 1895 Rev. G.H. Vibbert began a series of temperance sermons. In 1898, Rev. Franklin Rosenberry occupied the pulpit for a service or two. The above serves as examples of what must have gone on at times, especially in its latter years.
The church body was finally dissolved and in 1901 the church property was sold to William C. Burchard (Deed Record, Vol. 83, p. 121) and ultimately it came into possession of Dr. T.N. Patterson, local dentist, who moved it to West Mansfield Street which has most recently housed the Cranberry Inn.
The “Methodist connection” of the Church of God was that in 1878 a “Union” Sunday School was organized and conducted in the Church of God building and the few Methodists in the village combined their efforts with those of other denominations to have services in English. The Methodists were three in number: Robert Hilborn, James E. Cory and W.S. Guthrie and they all took an active part in the Sunday School work. At their request, also, Rev. Meade, pastor of the Good Will Methodist Circuit, preached occasionally at the Church of God. The Church of God was a seed, in a sense, which housed temporarily activities of the local Methodists and it might well have been from here that an embryonic spirit emerged to consider forming a church which was distinctly Methodist.