Melchior Brenneman:

Son of Melchior Stehman Brenneman (1718-1794) and Anna Good (1722-1800)

Grandson of Melchior Brenneman, "The Pioneer" (1665-1737) and Elizabeth Jane Stehman (1670-1737)

MELCHIOR BRENNEMAN, 3rd was born in Conestoga Township, Lancaster Co., Pa., about 1741 (the tradition that gives the date as 1739 has been practically disproved). He married Susanna Bucher, dtr. of Christian Bucher, Sr., of Donegal Twp., Lancaster Co. Her brother, Christian Bucher, Jr., married Veronica, dtr. of Melchior's first cousin and neighbor, Rev. Melchior Brenneman.

Melchior and Susanna had ten children: Melchior, Joseph, Annie, John, Elizabeth, Maria, Abraham, Henry, Martin and Christian. They seem to have lived on a farm in Conestoga Township till 1785 or 1786, when they moved to a new farm of 120 acres that Melchior had bought in Donegal Township.

We are able to fix the location of his homestead in Donegal with accuracy, for on Aug-. 5, 1815, he and his wife deeded a part of his plantation "to Jacob Eversole and Joseph Shenk, managers and trustees appointed by the Menonist Society for building a house of worship for that society." Good's Mennonite Meeting House stands today on that plot of ground, which the deed describes as "lying along the road from Rankins Ferry on the Susquehanna to Elizabethtown, bordering Melchior's other land." We also learn from this deed that Melchior bought the land on Aug. 18. 1785, from John " Weiland and wife Magdalena.

He died in the year 1818, intestate, leaving an estate valued at $7832.78. He is not buried at the cemetery at Good"s Church. According to the present owner of his homestead, Mr. Amos Ebersole, he was buried in a small private cemetery along the Bainbridge Pike a short distance to the east of the church, which cemetery was later obliterated when the road was widened, and the old stones sunk well down below the roadbed. There were other Brennemans buried in the old graveyard. It was located on the farm now owned by Joseph Nissley (1937).

Most of his children secured better land in Dauphin and York Counties and moved to those sections. His only descendants in Donegal Township at the present day are the progeny of his daughter Annie Wissler.

[Adapted from The Brenneman history by Albert H. Gerberich. Printed by Mennonite Pub. House, Scottdale, PA, 1938.]