In eastern Holmes County, the Amish Jacob Mast family of Walnut Creek, who settled there in 1812 only three years after Amishman Jonas Stutzman arrived as the first white settler in 1809, became known for peaceful relations with Native Americans on the frontier. At the Jacob Mast cabin site one mile west of here across a stream, small groups of Native Americans returning from night hunts sometimes quietly entered the unbarred log cabin and slept by the fireplace, and in the morning the Mast family would cautiously look down from the loft before Mrs. Mast descended to prepare breakfast for their unexpected guests. After this peaceful fellowship, the visitors continued to their encampment farther up the hollow. This account presents the Amish as choosing Christian hospitality and nonviolence rather than forcing Native Americans from the land or attacking them, reflecting Anabaptist beliefs that began in 1525 and taught that following Jesus meant never killing fellow human beings. That heritage of peace was part of Holmes County's history as it later became home to the world's largest Amish settlement. The broader family story reaches back to 1737, when eleven Amish families, including the Swiss immigrant Jacob Mast family, arrived at Philadelphia on the Charming Nancy after eighty-three days at sea and about four thousand miles of travel, forming the first sizable Amish church community in America. Too poor to buy land near Lancaster, they moved north into what became Berks County. The tradition of peace continued through the example of Jacob Hochstetler, who taught love for enemies, and through Joseph Mast, who moved to the western frontier of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, to avoid pressure to join colonial militia units during the U.S. Revolutionary War. His son Jacob Mast later married and moved to the Walnut Creek Valley of eastern Holmes County, Ohio, to raise a Christian family.