Bluffton, Ohio

Bluffton was founded in eighteen thirty-one by a mix of Swiss Mennonites, German Reformists, and Irish Catholics, an unlikely combination that managed to coexist in the rolling farmland of Allen County, Ohio. The Swiss settlers who arrived in the early eighteen thirties came by way of Wayne County or directly from Switzerland and from France near the Swiss border. The Irish contingent wanted to name the new village Shannon, for the green fields that reminded them of home, but there was already a Shannon in the state.

The Swiss settlers noted the hilly terrain and proposed Bluffton, for the bluffs overlooking the site. That name stuck. Today Bluffton is home to Bluffton University, a Mennonite institution founded in eighteen ninety-nine that carries forward the community's original religious identity in the middle of Ohio farm country.