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to 1942 · the North Liberty Brethren field
Before there were separate Brethren congregations there was one — the Whitmer church, covering much of the county's southwest — and its remainder, Oak Grove, was disorganized in 1942. Shultz's county part, read whole, tells it: the congregation that originally comprised all of southwest St. Joseph County was led by the pioneer elder Abraham Whitmer, succeeded by his son Daniel, then Daniel Hartman, then Daniel's son M. I. Whitmer — "familiarly known as the Whitmer Church" — with 175 members in 1882. Its preaching points included the main one on Whitmer's own farm in Greene Township, "where the Oak Grove Church stood for many years"; Palmer's Prairie Church on the Michigan Road five miles south of South Bend; the Waldsmith school house; and the Taylor school house two miles west of North Liberty. After the North Liberty group bought the former Episcopal church and organized separately in 1917, "the work at Oak Grove gradually declined… the church was disorganized in 1942." Oak Grove's meetinghouse stood in Greene Township, on the siting Shultz states, while its territory and membership included Liberty Township's country people; it is carried here as a congregation of the North Liberty Brethren field with its Greene Township ground stated plainly, not smoothed over — and Greene Township's own telling belongs to the county's later builds.