LAURA RUSSELL
Book Notes
Growth Amidst Struggle: A
Sesquicentennial History of the Longenecker
Mennonite Church. By James O. Lehman. (Winesburg, Ohio: Longenecker
Mennonite Church, 1980. 160p.;
illustrations, maps, notes, index.) Once
again James O. Lehman "puts
together the history of a congregation," and
in so doing makes an important
contribution to Ohio's local history. In
Growth Amidst Struggle Lehman traces the two meetinghouses-Kolb's
and Longenecker's-which today comprise
the Longenecker Mennonite
Church in the Winesburg-Trail, Ohio
area. More than a local religious
history, Lehman's work combines
extensive research in the Holmes County
tax lists, family manuscripts, wills,
deeds, letters, and diaries with inter-
views and secondary readings to create a
valuable, scholarly record of this
Holmes County congregation.
Oliver Evans: Inventive Genius of the
America Industrial Revolution. By
Eugene S. Ferguson. (Greenville,
Delaware: The Hagley Museum, 1980.
72p.; illustrations, notes, index.) An
individual who made a difference, Oli-
ver Evans is best remembered for the
invention of the automatic flour mill
and the high-pressure non-condensing
steam engine. This monograph de-
tails the life and inventions of the
highly original and sharply analytical
genius who revolutionized the
flour-milling industry by introducing the
concept of continuous
production-foreshadowing modern mass produc-
tion-and whose high-pressure steam
engine served as a prototype for the
steamboat engines of the nineteenth
century. Written by the noted histo-
rian of technology who is Senior
Resident Scholar at the Eleutherian Mills-
Hagley Foundation, Oliver Evans offers
a unique interpretative study of an
important American figure.
Jonathan Goldsmith: Pioneer Master
Builder of the Western Reserve. By
Elizabeth G. Hitchcock. (Cleveland: The
Western Reserve Historical Socie-
ty, 1980. xi + 131p.; illustrations,
appendices, bibliography, notes to the
text, index.) One of the important U.S.
masters of the Greek Revival style,
Jonathan Goldsmith left his mark on the
early buildings of the Western
Reserve, and is here fully recognized
for the first time. Elizabeth G. Hitch-
cock has done her job well. Jonathan
Goldsmith: Pioneer Master Builder of
the Western Reserve catalogs all of the known buildings by this famous
architect. The book is clearly
organized, exhaustively researched, and
makes extensive use of the account books
and papers of Goldsmith himself.
Moreover, it is illustrated with
interesting photographs, lithographs, draw-