Daniel Good Home

The Daniel Good Home carries particular significance among the pioneer homes on the Anabaptist Trail because of its association with the Ordnung und Gemeinde Regel (Church Order and Community Rule) — one of the only primary documentations of actual religious practice, or substantial textual records, of plain-church discipline in Valley Anabaptist history. An Ordnung is a set of community standards that governs religious life in a plain-church community. The fact that such a record associated with Daniel Good has been documented makes this a uniquely rich resource for understanding the lived shape of Valley Anabaptist life.

Daniel Good (1780–1851) was an ordained preacher and, after the creation of Virginia Mennonite Conference, the first Bishop of the Lower (Northern) District. He took part in local religious life, and documented it for posterity. The home preserved on the trail was built about 1810, and was the domestic anchor of his leadership: the place where families came for counsel, where ministers gathered for discussion, and where the everyday work of community discernment unfolded. Before the building of Trissels Church in 1822, it likely served as a place of Mennonite worship. After the Civil War, it was home for some years to Aldine Kieffer (1840–1904), an important figure in the history of Southern and Gospel music.

For visitors interested in the deeper texture of plain-church life — beyond the meetinghouses and the founding stories — the Daniel Good Home and its associated Ordnung offer access to the more interior, detailed dimensions of Anabaptist community: the norms, worship, language and attitudes of nineteenth-century Anabaptism unique to the Shenandoah Valley.

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