The Museum of Fulton County has scheduled a free Community Hymn Sing for 4 p.m. Sunday, Nov. 15, at Lauber Hill Reformed Mennonite Church, 7094 County Road 21, Archbold, the museum announced. The program is open to all ages.
Tim Klopfenstein of Pettisville is set to lead attendees in traditional hymns. The Wendell Beck Family Quartet will then perform several songs, according to the announcement.
Admission costs nothing. The museum said donations will be accepted to help maintain the historic meeting house.
John Swearingen Jr., the museum's director, provided historical context in the announcement. He said Lauber Hill's origins trace to 1834, when families from Mulhausen, France, and Schaffhausen, Switzerland, met in Marshallville and chose to go west to buy farmland in what was then Henry County. According to Swearingen, hunter and innkeeper Joseph Bates and men from Franklin Township assisted the settlers in relocating and building the Christian Lauber home.
By the 1880s, he said, the farming community had 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.
The Museum of Fulton County is at 8848 State Highway 108, across from the Fulton County Fairgrounds. It is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $7 for seniors and $3 for children 6-15; members and children under 6 enter free. More information is available at 419-337-7922 or museumoffultoncounty.org.