I prefer the list be open to non-members and for replies to go to the sender. Thanks for all your good work. Keith Yoder

Good morning cousins, A couple things you might want to know about our current listserver. And I have a few questions on how you would like this list to be set up. AOL_Currently, Aol is not getting the correct digest mode on some of the more popular lists. Their newest upgrade is causing the problem for now. Those with the old version don't seem to be having the problem. MSN-Msn is installing new software also. It is changing user names and addresses. While mail to the old address is still being delivered, it causes a problem posting to a closed list. It is not the same address subscribed with. If you find yourself unsubscribed - The current mail handler allows mail to bounce with fatal errors four times and then automatically unsubscribes the address. Just subscribe again (remember to use yoder-l-request@rootsweb.com for server commands) Archives are available for the Yoder list. I'm not sure if they are searchable yet. Short list of server options- 1) open or closed list 2) replies to list or sender Open or closed list An open list allows anyone to post to the mailing list. A closed list requires the poster to be a subscriber. Due to a lot of spam being sent to the mailing lists, many listowners are closing their list. The fine folks at rootsweb have caught several instances of incoming and stopped it before it all went out. (One of the good things about being the Yoder list, Y's are towards the end. Tho they could start at the end of the alphabet as easily). When a non-subscriber tries to post to the list, the message is sent to the listowner. The listowner can either delete it or forward it to the list. (Which would not be a problem for me). Replies to list or to the sender The list is currently set to reply to the sender. An option is to set it to reply to the list. This list is set up for you, the Yoder descendants. How would you like the list to be set up? If you have any questions or problems let me know. ginseng@sssnet.com ginseng@tccbbs.com

Hope one and all had a memorable St. Joder's day...August 16th. It was also the birthday of Congressman S.S. Yoder in 1841 (YR233317) AND the anniversary of Elvis Presley's death. Here are some more Yoder Dates in History which are coming up:\ August 17, 1853- birthdate of Rev. Robert Anderson Yoder (see YNL14) August 18, 1836- birthdate of John Yoter (BQ) unlinked father of Jasper Yotter (1857 Tifflin,Oh-1932 Whitehall,Mt) August 20- birthdate in 1817 of Benedict Yoder (YR239e) whose phot can be found in Descendents of Jacob Hochstetler. Date of death in 1820 of Daniel Yoder who m. Margaret Oyster (OH111). August 21, 1747- Death of Daniel Yoder (OH4) oldest known marked Yoder grave in the United States (possibly the world, considering the way the Europeans re-use their gravesites)(see YNL23) August 22, 1826- birthdate of Col. George M. Yoder, NC Yoder historian.(Con141) August 24- Moveable property of Casper Yoder was sold at auction Aug.24,1778 because of his refusal to swear an oath under the "Test-Act" (see YNL 12 page 3)

In an old German letter, written in 1867 from Willmendingen, Germany to relatives newly immigranted to Amerika, a place called Hollandorf is mentioned twice. Is there anyone in the "Yoder" world who can shed some light on Hollandorf? Where? What? etc? I assume that if it is a place it would be located somewhere along the Rhine River, probably on the German side, but possibly in Alsace or Lorraine, and probably not too far from Willmendingen. It may have been the name of a congregation, or estate. (I am also assuming that the translators spelled this word correctly.) I guess I need a really good historical atlas of the region. Any help will be appreciated.

The Pope had presented St. Joder a bell to take back with him for his diocesan center at Sion, but he had no way to get the huge bell up into the mountains. He then thought oof his power to make the Devil do his bidding. Summoning him, St. Joder proposed to him that he could have a human soul if he could transport the bell up to Sion before daybreak (cockcrow). St. Joder than sat into the bauch of the Bell, a term many of our readers can understand and the Devil in eager anticipation swiftly bore him through the air. But the might of St. Joder was greater than the cunning of the Devil. At the command of the Bishop a rooster crowed before dawn came. There is a painting at the St. Joder Chapel addressing this story and also one about how St. Joder ordered the Bell to ring by itself. It shows St. Joder in full regalia at the entrance of a grotto, with sharp hills in the background and a few buildings at the upper edges of the picture, is shown confronting a bell almost as big as he is. This is probably related to some tale known in the Middle Ages, but All we know about it is that the bell was especially associated with St. Theodore and he was often shown with one. His chapel tower at Sion may have been among the very first in Switzerland to have had a bell. Later on when other bells were cast for churches or monasteries requests were often made for a chip from St. Theodore's bell (like a blessing) that they could incorporate into their new one. In his dissertation about offerings to the saints in the Sion diocese during the Middle Ages Eugen Gruber pointed out that not only were there many requests for such chips, but the bell in Grabunden (Tersnaus Lugnes), one in Bern (Meikirch), and one in Lucerne (Roth) still bear the inscription of St. Joder today. May You and Your family Celebrate a Happy St. Joder Day together.

Here are the latest two messages from Brian. Looks like things will be back to normal soon. If you have any problems, let me know ginseng@sssnet.com Hi all - The new list server has passed all our initial tests, and we're prepping it to go into production. We'll begin ordinary operations and cleaning out the accumulated queue in a few hours, and we expect to be back to completely normal (and hopefully much more stable operations) within the next twenty-four hours or so. Thanks for your patience during the OS upgrade! Cheers, B. [message 2] Hi all - The new list server has passed all our basic tests, and we're now stress testing it by pumping as much of the backlog through it as we can. We've processed about a sixth of the backlog in under an hour, and the box is carrying a load that clearly would have killed the old operating system. We won't know about stability for a couple of weeks yet, but things look very, very good. Lots of tired but extremely happy smiles at RootsWeb tonight. Two important things: I've turned on your listowners pages, but if you use them in the next few hours you may get sluggish responses because of the ongoing stress tests. Things should be normal tomorrow. Second, please don't send bug reports to Karen or me for awhile. THERE WILL BE SOME BUGGERED DIGESTS and such associated with the move -- that's normal! Wait two or three days and then report any problems that may still be present at that point. WEBMASTERS, I've started work on the conversion of the Web server. Tentatively, I believe the conversion will begin Thursday morning. I'll send more information when I'm further along in the process. Cheers, B. -- Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 leverich@rootsweb.com

As you probably know, load on RootsWeb has been skyrocketing. The lists.rootsweb.com server now handles about 50% of the load of the biggest listserver on Earth (plum.lsoft.com), and the www.rootsweb.com server now handles about 20-40% of the load of www.microsoft.com (and they use 15 servers (-8 ). One problem we're having is that the Linux operating system just doesn't seem to be able to handle this load gracefully. We've been having multiple system crashes each day, and it's basically preventing us from doing other things we want to do (like get search engines up and Web interfaces to your message archives). Anyway, the solution seems to be shifting to a different version of Unix -- FreeBSD -- which is generally regarded as much more stable under load than Linux. FreeBSD is used by a number of very large sites, including Yahoo and ftp.cdrom.com (the world's busiest FTP site). We'll be converting lists.rootsweb.com and www.rootsweb.com to FreeBSD over the next few days. You can expect some down time and probably some annoying glitches as we make the transition. Please bear with us -- I think we'll have the moves completed in the next few days, and I'm guessing that we'll be fully back to normal (including achieving our old 98%+ uptime performance) within two weeks. Sorry about the growing pains, B. -- Dr. Brian Leverich Co-moderator, soc.genealogy.methods/GENMTD-L RootsWeb Genealogical Data Cooperative http://www.rootsweb.com/ P.O. Box 6798, Frazier Park, CA 93222-6798 leverich@rootsweb.com

I have no knowledge of this individual. However 30 years ago I spent a considerable amount of time in Liberty, PA and met a chap by the name of Ernie (I think that was his name, but may be wrong) Yoder. If living he would be past 100 now. It stands to sense that he would be a son of Samuel and Celcia Yodar since Liberty is a very small village (population 300?). I seem to recall that he and his wife had six children, none of whom lived very close by. Research in the county seat should yield a will, deeds, death certificate (listing parents?), etc. for Ernie after 1967. Perhaps that will pick up a thread on his mother (or grandmother?) for you and lead you to some present day descendants. If you have any success following this "slim" lead, I would dearly love to hear from you. I was quite interested in Ernie because of my own Yoder ancestry but the contact with him predated my own serious research into Yoders. Sincerely, John M. Slabaugh

St. Joder Day...Next Saturday the 16th! >From an Article by Rachel Kreider: ------ In 1978 when we too visited the chapel, we found in a window-well of the little building an eight-pagebrochure, protected with plastic, entitled: Die Kapelle St. Joder muss restauriert werden. Dated September 1970. It was a supplement to the Nidwainer Volksblatt and it was apparently a publication to generate enthusiasm for one more attempt to restore the chapel, a project that seems to have been spearheaded by Karl Joder of Germany. A whole series of efforts had preceded this one. In 1601 an earthquake twisted the tower and made new foundations necessary. Further repairs were made in 1727, in 1799, and 1877. In 1963 a heavy southwest wind again blew down the tower. Now in this latest appeal, because the local population could not finance the refurbishing, it was hoped that a wider circle of friends and patrons could raise enough money so that work could begin by 1972. >From this brochure we pass on to you some bits of information you might like to knowbefore you go up the mountain to this romantic spot. This community of Altzellen takes in about fifty farmsteads, with a population of approximately 450, who are still devoutly Roman Catholic although they have not been organized into a particular parish. The earliest document extant about the region comes from 1267. Even by then it had been settled for a long time. However, in reading through the names of the earliest inhabitants known to have cleared the forest and made the fields, we cannot find the name of Joder or any name we know associated with it (with the conceivable exception of Baumgartner). Before this date there were Joders across the mountains in the Canton of Bern, but so far we have found no evidence that Altzellen was ever considered a Joder "heimat". One of Karl Joder's maps shows a Joder farmstead that might have been within twenty miles. An anonymous writer at the end of the brochure makes an interesting and plausible speculation. There is general agreement that that the chapel was built in 1482, and he notes that on December 22, 1481, a special meeting of the Diet was held in Stans. not far away: "After the Confederates had thoughly conquered Duke Karl the Brave, they returned as great victors to their homes, but after the victory over the enemy they began to quarrel about the division of the booty and the claim of the tribes that had joined in the fight (Freiburg and Solothurn). The more impossible a peaceful solution seemed, the more both sides put this tangled ball before Brother Klaus..."(a monk "on the border" of the area). There were those who believe that by the time of the Diet meeting, drafts of a contract had already been made up, but because of their common trust in Brother Klaus, he was able to bring about the signing of the document to the satisfaction of all concerned--no mean feat. "Bells were rung everywhere". "The mayor and the aldermen from Solothurn wrote to him: 'We have been informed that you through the grace of the Almighty God and His dear Mother have created peace, quiet, and union in the whole confederacy through your good advice and instruction." The writer continues: "Wouldn't you expect that somewhere the Confederates would have put up a memorial to remember this day...to the peace that had come out of gratitude that they had been saved from a civil war...?" Elsewhere he referred to a tradition that every evening a strip of light would appear on this height "under the Eggiligrat", which was the deciding factor in locating the chapel at that place. Thus in November of 1482 the new chapel was dedicated by the Bishop of Constanz to "St. Joder and the God Mother", and a decision was made by the mountain population to hold a memorial annually. Brother Klaus was among the most noted of the benefactors. A mass robe he gave is still preserved in the church in nearby Wolfenschiessen. Various relatives of families in Alzellen contributed, foremost among them the Flue family of Saxony, with whom the mother of Brother Klaus seems to have had connections. Their patron saint back in Saxony was St. Theodulus (St. Joder), a logical choice therefore for the patron of the new chapel. In conclusion there is a quotation from the treatise on Brother Klaus by Robert Durrer: "In Nidwalden and beyond, worship of the saint had been unknown so that the influence of the Saxons in the face of such genealogical relations must be almost certain." We thus have better explanations about the origin of the chapel that the speculations and fun guesses made by our earlier American visitors. The chapel did not come about because of any sacrificial grass- roots effort of a local clan (like Joders:). Probably from the beginning the symbolism may have meant more to the upper echelons of power than to the farmers around it. Support for it probably came from some places rather far away and in spasmodic fashion. It did not fall into periodic neglect because some clan (like Joders) had turned Protestant and moved away; the chapel has always been in Catholic care. Although local people may not have been able to explain much about the chapel twenty years ago, they were willing to put up a sign promptly to tell the fascinated American visitors where to find it.

In concert with Rachel Kreider, we are drafting a lead article for the October YNL which will feature YR12 "Hamburg Christian"...oldest son of the "Widow Barbara". An overview of YR12 will be followed by a brief summary on each of his children. We'd like to hear from anyone with particularly good property maps, photos of original homestead farm houses, or other items to offer for possible incorporation into this feature. Thanks for any input....Chris Yoder, YNL

I just ran acoss your homepage and the Yoder name drew a light. On my mother's side of the family we have a Yoder with no information or first name. My Yoder married a Pattie Epehimer around 1800 give or take a few years. Pattie was the daugther of William Epehimer and Ann Campbell. If any of this makes a light come on please let me know. My tree starts two generations before Yoder with the Ball family of Penn. For the next seven generations everyone came from North of Philadelphia, some from Frandford, some from Bucks County, and even some from Philadelphia itself. As for Patties religion I do not know for sure. I guess a basic Protestant. Regards, Wes Leiser Wesleiser@aol.com

>From the wall plaques honoring the saint at the St Joder Chapel. A tiny white chapel in a picturesque valley , in the Niwald region of Switzerland, 1000 meters above sea level, located halfway between Stans and Engelberg, with Grafenort, on the highway below, the nearest village. (1) "How King Charles is forgiven his sins by praying with St. Joder" The saint is shown kneeling at the altar, more or less facing us. As in all these pictures, he is shown with an aureole, or mandorla--not a narrow halo but more of a gold disc--behind his head, the kind of symbol often used for Jesus and the saints as painted by early artists. The king, toward the left in the picture, kneels behind St. Joder with hands outstretched, an attendant kneeling on each side of him but respectfully behind him. Charlemagne (Charles the Great) lived from 742 to 814 A.D. and St. Joder, Bishop Theodore of Sion in southern Switzerland, lived in the fourth century. This immediately illustrates how errors can creep into oral tradition not substantiated by written records. As stories were handed down from generation to generation two other saints became confused with St. Theodore. Thls later "Carolingen St. Joder" was especially popularized by a wandering monk, Ruodpertus, who attributed the same accomplishments and qualities to a bishop coming four centuries later as for the real St. Theodore. However the character of these saints was so identical that when of the true St. Joder was eventually identified, the high esteem felt by the people did not need to be altered. (2) "How King Charles hands the spiritual and secular emblems (crosier and sword) over to St. Joder" In this picture the principals are standing, each with his attendants, as the emblems are transferred. We might think of Charlemagrle's ups and downs with papal power in his day, or perhaps later struggles between church and state going on at the time the pictures were painted; but it is very likely that the artist was simply making a pious observation treat eve.. so great a monarch as Charles the Great would be willing to submit to the representative of the Heavenly Kingdom, especially one as outstanding and good as St. Joder.

New files have been added to the FTP site. These are: In the main Directory: BERSTAX.DOC- Yoder Extract from the Tax Index of Berks County, PA... 1754-1768 by Hellenbach. PATAX.DOC- Early Yoder Pennsylvania Tax Records from the Pennsylvania Archives Series. SP-CEMS.DOC- Yoders in the Cemeteries of Somerset Co., Pa based on a Cemetery Search by Bob and Mary Closson of Apollo, Pa. IA-RECDS.DOC- IOWA RECORDS, including WPA & Other Cemetery Records and Washington County Index of Death Records. MIAMI.DOC- Miami County, IN Death Records 1850-1920, and Howard County,IN records. In the YNL Subdirectory: -Four index files which include the "Every Name Index" produced for the Hardbound YNL issues 1 through 20. These will later be included in the HTML versions. Thanks to Dorothy Coffman for the Pa Data, to William Johnson for the Ia Data, and to H. Walter Yoder for the Miami and Howard Co., IN data. ---Chris Yoder, Editor, YNL

Aug. 16th is "St. Joder's Day" in the Swiss Reformed calendar. How are you and your family going to celebrate it? I'm hosting a Pizza Day at my office and plan to send out "Happy St. Joder's Day" cards to my family. Make your own plans now. (For articles on St. Joder, see YNL 2, 6 & 7,and 22 and the Yoder Web Site http://www.genealogy.org/~yoder/)

Can anyone help on this one? "> stevel@bellatlantic.net wrote: > > > > Ok here goes. My Grandmother is Mary Elizabeth Richard nee Neifert. > > Her parents are Mary Trommeter and Jacob Faust Neifert. I believe Mary > > had a sister named Celcia who married a Samuel Yodar. They lived in > > Liberty, Pa. Ultimately am trying to find Celcia which may lead me to > > Mary's parents. I would be happy to know more about Samuel as he and > > his kin are mentioned in my GGrandmother's diaries. Since I know little > > of this family their names are a curiosity to me. Can you help? I > > don't know Samuel's parents or anything like that.

New and expanded files on the descendants of Melchior Yoder have been contributed by Donald Honeywell, premiere researcher of that family line. These records have been uploaded to the ftp directory: ftp://ftp.genealogy.org/pub/genealogy/surnames/YODER/ as the following file names: m1-m23.doc m24-25.doc m26.doc m27.doc melc-unk.doc They are not yet hypertexted and linked into the regular homepages, but this will be done as a part of the next general update. The ftp version of the spusal index has also been updated to include the new melchior data. ---Chris Yoder--

A mass mailing to Yoders is again making the rounds from an outfit in Bath Ohio which offers surname books and delivers a product that has little more than names and addresses out of phone directories. Be forewarned! This happens every couple years and don't order unless you really want what they will deliver to you. Have a good day, Chris Yoder YNL

Looking for a David Yoder who married Catherine Sommers and had a son William Eli Yoder born around Hartville, OH. William has a sister who lived at one time around Sugar Creek. Anyone who may have information about this family, please advise. Thanks. Chris Yoder

In Yoder History.... July 17, 1653- Catherine Joder was born in Steffisburg. Cathrine married Christian Blank, a believed associate of Jacob Amman. July 18, 1826- Henry Yoder (OY4114) "Of Long Swamp" was born to Jacob Yoder and Susanna Ludwig in Rockland Twp, Berks Co, Pa.

browsing through Cyndi's List of Genealogy Sites on the Internet http://www.oz.net/~cyndihow/sites.htm and found a Pennyslvania Bible with some Yoder info. Not my Yoders, but maybe somebody's.