Ancestor Eli Yoder

The year was 1899: the summer my great-grandfather, Eli Yoder, built a barn on his farm in Aurora, West Virginia.  Henry Mosser was hired to move his saw mill operation to Eli’s property to cut the timber into lumber.  One Thursday as Eli felled a tree, he caught a gray squirrel that fell with it.  Somehow that little creature squirmed around until he bit Eli – through his leather glove – into his thumb at the first joint.

Thinking nothing of it, Eli kept on with his work.  But around midnight of the same day, his thumb became very painful.  The next morning they sent for the doctor, who announced Eli had blood poisoning, but would do his best to treat it.  Someone had to be with him day and night.

In the middle of this entire trauma, Eli’s wife Dora had to cook meals for the saw mill hands, log cutters and haulers.  When Eli was at his worst, he got the news that his father, Christian Yoder, was dead.

Those were the days long before penicillin, and the excruciatingly painful ordeal lasted three months for Eli.  But that was not what killed him.  After the doctor cut his hand open “in a good many places,” it drained and he soon recovered. 

Eli moved his family to Summit Mills, Pennsylvania and was a highly esteemed farmer of Elk Lick Township.  Physically frail at the age of sixty-seven, with his right arm having been paralyzed for some time, he was still able to do some light work and drive the wagon to town.  

One Sunday morning as his family attended the Amish Mennonite Church, he was home alone.  Suddenly two young men appeared at the kitchen door and asked for something to eat.  My great-grandfather was not the kind of man to turn any hungry person away, but he was suspicions of these two.  However, he set about getting them something to eat.  Soon, a noise at the front of the house caught his attention.  Looking out, he saw two more young men carrying crocks of butter and other things out of the cellar.

He immediately went outside to stop them, and the gang of four miscreants began to throw stones at him and threatened to kill him.  He went back inside the house and the four got away with one crock of butter.  He wasn’t hit by any of the rocks.  But the frightening encounter with the ruffians coupled with the memory of his father’s robbery and torture by the McClellandtown Gang twenty-five or thirty years earlier, so reacted on his nerves that he suffered a physical collapse after the vandals left.

Monday (the next evening) three young men, Fiddler, Frickey and Schrock, came to Eli’s house to make settlement, they said, by order of the guilty parties.  The three insisted they didn’t know who the guilty parties were.  Eli and his family said they would not accept any settlement unless the guilty party showed up.  The emissaries finally said they would bring the culprits to make amends the following evening.

But the next day, Tuesday, Eli became much worse, so much so that the family sent for Dr. J. W. Wenzel to administer medical treatment.  Dr. Wenzel said Eli was suffering severely from nervousness and his vital signs were very low.  He tried to do what he could, but to no avail.  Eli died at 7:30 that evening. 

None of the gang showed up Tuesday evening to make amends and Detective M. R. Leckemby and Constable D. R. Cramer began a search that night that ended in their apprehension. 

I see a pattern of trauma, fear and intimidation in my Yoder family’s history; it gives me some insights about my grandfather Claude (Eli’s son) my own father, Edwin (Claude’s son) and myself.  I thank God for the power of the Name and blood of Jesus that breaks every generational curse and stronghold of the enemy in our lives!  Hallelujah!

I am deeply indebted to my son-in-law Keith Yoder, son of Alton J. Yoder of Meyersdale, PA, for making the historical documents of these accounts available to me.  There are no photographs of Eli.

Copyright © 2014 Elaine Beachy