Mennonites first entered the northern Shenandoah Valley about 1730 and settled in present-day Rockingham and Augusta Counties by the 1770s. They initially worshiped in private houses. The original Trissels Church, also known as Brush Church, was constructed about 1823 two miles northwest of here beside a cemetery with graves dating from the late 18th century. Trissels is the oldest continuously functioning Mennonite congregation in Virginia. Sermons were delivered in German for several decades. A second sanctuary replaced the first in 1900, and a third opened in 1950. The cemetery later expanded onto the sites of the two earlier churches.