The Museum of Fulton County is honored to be hosting the third annual Lauber Hill Founders Day to celebrate the immigrant families who traveled to Ohio and established a farming community near Lauber Hill.
A limited number of tickets are now available for this late afternoon program and meal to be held Sunday, August 16, at the Lauber Hill Reformed Mennonite Church north of Archbold, with the meal to follow at the Pettisville Missionary Church.
Each year the Founders Day event features one of the families that settled near Lauber Hill, with this year’s program sharing the Meister family’s history.
The event will begin at 4 p.m. with a short program in the meeting house, followed by a traditional Mennonite meal prepared using local recipes.
Guests will enjoy fried chicken, mashed potatoes with gravy, corn, green beans, sweet pickles, beets, and sweet and sour coleslaw.
The meal will be served at the nearby Pettisville Missionary Church at 19055 Co. Rd. D on the west edge of Pettisville.
New this year, the Friends of Lauber Hill will be doing a raffle at the Founders Day event.
The group will be raffling a painting of the Lauber Hill Meeting House created by Robert Kroeger, who has done paintings of barns in Fulton County and around the state. Information on the painting can be found at www.barnart.weebly.com.
It is called “The Church, Fulton County.” Tickets will be on sale for $5 each or five for $20 on the day of the event.
Only 200 tickets will be sold for the Founders Day event, to be held at the meeting house located at 7094 Co. Rd. 21, Archbold.
Tickets are $40 and are available for purchase online, at the museum, or by calling 419-337-7922.
Museum members can receive a 10% discount when ordering in person or over the phone. All proceeds from this event will go to support the Lauber Hill fund.
“The Lauber Hill history began in 1834 when several immigrant families from the Upper Rhine River Valley villages of Mulhausen, France, and Schaffhausen, Switzerland, met each other in Marshallville, Ohio, and decided to travel west and purchase farmland in what was then Henry County.
“A hunter and innkeeper, Joseph Bates, and his men from Franklin Township helped them move here on August 22 and erected the Christian Lauber home,” shared John Swearingen Jr., director of the Museum of Fulton County.
“By the 1880s, Lauber Hill’s farming community included a Reformed Mennonite Church, a German Baptist Church, a Froehlich Evangelical Church, the Barneth (Bernath) one-room school, the Werrey Cabinetmaker’s Shop, the Roth Sawmill, the Uhlrich Wagon Shop, and the Leu Blacksmith Shop.
“We look forward to sharing even more stories and Lauber family history at this year’s Founders Day event.”
The Museum of Fulton County and Legacy Gift Shop are located at 8848 State Highway 108, across from the Fulton County Fairgrounds.
The museum is open Monday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and Sunday from noon to 4 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors, $3 for children ages 6-15, and free for members and children under 6.
To learn more about the Founders Day event, shopping, memberships, other events, or planning a visit to the Museum of Fulton County, call 419-337-7922 or visit museumoffultoncounty.org.
Additional information is also available on the museum’s Facebook and Instagram pages.