The Pennsylvania Dutch farm belt around Wadsworth

Wadsworth Township's first settlers were Yankees. On March 1, 1814, Benjamin Dean felled the first tree ever cut by a settler in the township, in what became known as Western Star, on the eastern edge. He was from Vermont, along with his father Daniel, his brother Daniel Jr., and Oliver Durham. Alonzo Durham, born in July 1814, was the first child born in the township.¹

Then, beginning in the 1830s, a second wave arrived: Pennsylvania Dutch families of Mennonite and Lutheran descent, moving up from Pennsylvania. The City of Wadsworth's own history page puts it directly: “At one time, the entire area surrounding the central village of Wadsworth was inhabited by Pennsylvania Dutch.”²

The two groups did not mix. There was a specific historical reason. Their families had fought each other, or their parents had, in the Yankee-Pennamite Wars — a series of Connecticut-versus-Pennsylvania land disputes in the Wyoming Valley of Pennsylvania that started in 1753 and escalated in the 1770s. Wadsworth's official history states plainly that “marriage between the two groups in Wadsworth was considered a mixed marriage.”³

Wadsworth's history page also notes: “Wadsworth is unique in that it is the only area where the Pennsylvania Dutch settled where the Yankees were already established.”⁴

Over time, the two groups worked out a geographic settlement of their own. The Pennsylvania Dutch farmed the outlying township land. The Yankees stayed in the central village as professionals and merchants. That sort still shows on the map. The city of Wadsworth today, incorporated later, is the old Yankee center. The rural township that wraps around it is the old Pennsylvania Dutch farm belt.⁵

Early German-language services were still held in local Mennonite and Lutheran churches. The Wadsworth Area Historical Society is the local authority on which specific 19th-century rural farmhouses and meeting houses still stand.