Amish settled in the Mifflin County region of Pennsylvania - the Kishacoquillas Valley - as early as 1791, coming from Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. In the 1840s there were three Amish congregations in the region with a membership of 290. In 1849 Samuel B. King, a conservative bishop who warned against adopting the use of rubber tires on buggies and who was also accused of giving sermons that were too long, was "silenced", that is he was removed from his ministerial duties. One of the three districts, the "lower" district sided with King and split from the other two districts forming the Byler Amish as the first conservative split from the Amish mainstream in North America.