Wauseon, OH – The Museum of Fulton County is honored to be hosting the first annual Lauber Hill Community Founder’s Day to celebrate the immigrant families who traveled to Ohio and established a farming community near Lauber Hill 190 years ago.
A limited number of tickets are now available for this late afternoon program and meal to be held on Sunday, August 18 at the Lauber Hill Reformed Mennonite Church north of Archbold.
Each year the Founder’s Day event will feature one of the families that settled near Lauber Hill with the inaugural program sharing the Lauber family’s history.
The event will begin at 4:00 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, noodles, green beans, sweet pickles, beets, and sweet and sour coleslaw.
Only 200 tickets will be sold for the Founder’s Day event to be held at the meeting house located at 7094 Co. Rd. 21, Archbold, OH.
The seating is open, but families can choose their tables prior to the start of the 4:00 p.m. program. Tickets are $30.00 and 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 Founder’s Day event.”
Guests must register to attend the Lauber Hill Community Founder’s Day event on Sunday, August 18. Reservations and prepayment are required since seating is limited for this annual event. Tickets are $30.00 and are available for purchase online, at the museum, or by calling 419.337.7922.
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 12 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 Founder’s 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 Facebook and Instagram pages.
