Pioneer Amish Communities / 75

Werey) and Joseph Kauffman were ordained ministers. In 1861 John Warye was ordained bishop and served till 1903. Warye was a nineteenth-century immigrant from Germany where he was born in 1824 at Hessedorn Stadt.

Something of the pioneer life of the early West Liberty settlers is preserved in the History of Logan County and Ohio, an illustrated work published in 1880." The volume contains numerous thumbnail sketches of the important personalities in business, agriculture, religion, and politics who occupied Monroe, Rush Creek, Bloomfield, Union, and Richland townships in the Mad River Valley area. Among these are the following who were of the Amish faith.

Noah Yoder, who was born in Mifflin County in 1827 and who came with his parents to Ohio in 1845, was the owner of 250 acres of "choice land which is adorned with the best of improvements in the way of fruit and farm buildings." Apparently he began his busiess career "without means or pecuniary aid and has at length risen to the front rank of Logan County's agriculturalists." 9

Among the "prominent farmers and selfmade men" of Monroe Township was Jonas P. Yoder. Born in Mifflin County in 1815, the second of a family of twelve children, he began "doing business without money or `backing' " since his father had no worldly goods to bestow on his son. In 1850 he came westward and purchased ninety acres of land in Monroe Township. This he later increased to "550 acres of excellent land, all of which is a credit to his industry and good management." Jonas P. Yoder was, according to this record, a man who attended "to his personal concerns" and was known as a staunch and reliable citizen in the community."'

Mrs. Barbara Yoder is included among the list of leading logan County people. She was born in 1820 in Huntingdon County, Pennsylvania, where her limited schooling was in a log cabin. "Her younger days were spent at the spinning wheel or the loom, the potato patch or the garden." She married John Yoder (no relation) in 1843 and the next year came by water and stage and by five-horse team to Logan County. After her husband's decease she continued to live on the 175 acres of fine arable land on which she and her husband originally settled and raised their seven children."

Daniel C. Yoder began life in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, in 1825. He spent his boyhood "attending school in the pioneer cabins, going to mill on horseback, reaping wheat with the sickle, going to