Joseph Yoder (1872-1956) Author, educator, musicologist. 

      Joseph Warren Yoder was born September 22, 1872, in Belleville, Pennsylvania, in the Kishacoquillas Valley (or Big Valley) of Mifflin County. Yoder chronicled his mother’s life in his best-selling work, Rosanna of the Amish, which remains one of the most popular sources ofan “inside look,” into Amish life.1 As an Amish Mennonite-identifying author, artist, and academic, Yoder grappled with these seemingly paradoxical identities until his death.  

      Born into an Amish family, Yoder received the customary Amish eighth-grade education.2 At age sixteen, he attended one of the Valley’s "singing schools," where he learned to read music and sing in parts—a defining moment in Yoder’s life that contradicted the customs of his parents' Old Order church.3 Yoder’s desire to sing in part and teach pushed him to join the more progressive Amish Mennonite church in Belleville, Pennsylvania.4 

      In January 1894, Yoder enrolled at the Brethren Normal School, soon to be Juniata College, in Huntingdon, Pennsylvania, over the ridge from his home.5 There, Yoder found a life-long mentor in Martin G. Brumbaugh, who became president of the Brethren Normal School just as he arrived. At the school, Yoder was drawn to the more expressive Brethren worship and wanted to join the church, to which Brumbaugh famously warned him to “stick to his people.”6 As an educated man who managed to remain close to his conservative, religious community, Brumbaugh was an inspiration to Yoder. Yoder graduated from the Brethren Normal School in 1895 with a teacher’s certificate and gave that year’s commencement speech.7 He returned to Big Valley, assuming the position of the high school principal in Millroy, and later taught at the Elkhart Institute, now Goshen College, a Mennonite school, in Goshen, Indiana.8    

      In 1901, Yoder returned to Juniata as the college’s first Athletic Director and to resume studies in English. After his first year, he was offered full tuition and board if he remained, allowing him to complete his degree.9 During his first year, Yoder, with students and faculty, appealed to the church and college trustees to establish a chapter of the YMCA at Juniata. Yoder also continued to grow the men’s gymnasium program, brought in competitive track and field events, and coached the team in the college’s first intercollegiate competition versus Susquehanna in 1903.10 Yoder’s most controversial yet wide-reaching change was the establishment of a football team.11 

      A talented public speaker, Yoder assembled Juniata’s first intercollegiate debate team in 1902. The team was victorious in three of the years that Yoder served as its captain. During Yoder’s senior year, the team won and were met at the Huntingdon train station by a car dealer, who drove them back to campus in a new Cadillac, one of only five automobiles in town.12 Through all of Yoder’s extracurricular activities, music and singing remained a priority, even earning him the nickname at Juniata of “the Sweet Singer from Big Valley.”13 In Yoder’s sophomore year, he organized Juniata’s first Varsity Quartet, where he sang second bass. Recognized by his baritone voice and signature black bowtie, Yoder sang three out of the four solos.14 

      Yoder graduated from Juniata College in 1904 at the age of thirty-one.15 He began leading singing at teacher institutes and worked as a singing school instructor in Lancaster County, becoming known for his large singing school attendance and teaching abilities.16 In 1915, Yoder accepted a position back at Juniata College as the first student recruiter.17 As in his previous roles, recruiting required him to travel, sing, and promote himself and the college.18 His schedule from 1933 listed 125 school visits across Pennsylvania. He continued to offer summer singing classes and lead singing at teacher institutes during the off-season.19 

      Yoder continued to work as a Juniata student recruiter through the rest of his career. In 1932, at sixty years old, Joseph Yoder married Emily Lane.20 One month later, they bought a home at 1772 Mifflin Street, a few blocks from the Juniata campus.21 With his move back to central Pennsylvania, Yoder started attending the Amish Mennonite Church he had joined in his youth. Yoder wrote “Amish at Belleville” as his church affiliation on a 1935 Juniata College alumni survey.22

      During the late 1930s, Yoder wrote Rosanna of the Amish.23 His biographer, Julia Kasdorf, describes Yoder’s book as an “autoethnography”—a work of literature “in which people present themselves in response to representations that others have made of them.”24 He recorded his mother's life idyllically while highlighting and explaining Amish culture, community, and ideals to outsiders.25 While Rosanna of the Amish was in print, Yoder began a new project, preserving Amish hymns through musical notation. He wanted to make the tunes standardized, believing that the musical variation between Amish communities suggested that the original compositions were being lost. These hymns, however, had survived fourteen or fifteen generations through the Amish tradition of keeping information “by heart”, and Kasdorf suggests that perhaps his objective was sparked by a sense that his Amish identity was slipping from him.26 With his retirement from Juniata in 1941, Yoder devoted most of his time to working on the compilation of tunes, which he called Amische Lieder. He considered the book his masterpiece, preserving an undocumented music tradition with surprising accuracy.27  

      After his retirement, Yoder also began working on his sequel to Rosanna of the Amish titled Rosanna’s Boys, a collection of essays, poems, and reflections that presented a more challenging attitude towards some aspects of Amish culture and church rules.28 He also published Amish Traditions (1950), his most controversial publication, which called for change and reform, criticizing congregational splits and shunning.29 Yoder’s last project, The Prayer Veil Analyzed (1954), analyzed the female head covering, the Amish and Mennonite cap made of stiff white fabric. He denounced the prayer veil, questioned patriarchy and church power, and challenged conformity.30 He called attention to the head covering, not only as a hindrance to beauty and self-expression but also as a symbol of the constraints placed on women that diminish their intelligence, self-esteem, and confidence.31 Yoder began to threaten Old Order teachings, acting as a spur for change in Big Valley while being held up by many Amish people as an example of what a person could be if he left his family, farm, and community for education.32

      Towards the end of his life, Yoder spent most of the year in the Amish and Amish-Mennonite community in Pine Craft, outside of Sarasota, Florida. He died from cancer at the Huntingdon Hospital on November 13, 1956.33 His funeral and burial indicate a mended relationship with the Mennonites in Belleville, where he is buried in the Amish Mennonite cemetery at Locust Grove church.34 Herald Press bought the publishing rights and reprinted Rosanna of the Amish after Yoder’s death; the book remains one of the company’s best-selling works, intended to appeal to the tourist or outsider just as Yoder wished.35  

      Yoder left a legacy at Juniata College as the first Athletic Director, the founder of intercollegiate track and field, football, and the debate team, the organizer and star of the first varsity quartet, and the inspiring student recruiter. Most importantly, his controversial ideas and career, shaped in part by his time at Juniata and the mentorship of M.G. Brumbaugh, have continued to influence the perception of Amish and Mennonites held by those both outside and inside Anabaptist communities.  

 

 

Joseph W. Yoder’s Publications: 

Rosanna of the Amish. Huntingdon, PA: Yoder Publishing Co., 1940. 

Amische Lieder. (Amish Songs). Huntingdon, PA: Yoder Publishing Co., 1942. 

Rosanna's Boys: A Sequel to Rosanna of the Amish. Huntingdon, PA: Yoder Publishing Co., 1948. 

Amish Traditions. Huntingdon, PA: Yoder Publishing Co., 1950. 

The Prayer Veil Analyzed. Huntingdon, PA: Yoder Publishing Co., 1954.

 

 

Amelia Kasdorf 

Word Count: 1250 

 

 

Bibliography 

Bowman, Carl F. Brethren Society: The Cultural Transformation of a “Peculiar People”. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995. 

Kasdorf, Julia. Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American. Telford, PA: Pandora      Press, 2003.  

 

Notes 

  1. Julia Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition: Joseph W. Yoder, Amish American (Telford, PA: Pandora Press, 2003), 24.
  1. At that time, the Amish in Pennsylvania participated in public education. Yoder would have attended the local public school.
  1. The Old Order Amish are the most traditional and conservative sect of Amish groups. 
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 39-41.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 44.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 44.
  1. Yoder intended to take bookkeeping and banking courses, but J.H. Brumbaugh, the school’s president, advised him to take the Normal English course for teacher training. 
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 55. At the Elkhart Institute, he taught language and literature, where he enjoyed the more midwestern Mennonites who were more progressive. 
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 76.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 78-80.
  1. Authorities previously banned football, deeming it too militaristic and dangerous.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 87.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 94.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 92. They gave two initial concerts in Big Valley and then traveled around Pennsylvania, earning themselves a “splendid reputation as the sweet singers from Juniata College.”
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 99.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 100-104. Leading singing at teachers’ institutes eventually took him as far away as Ohio, Virginia, and Illinois.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 125.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 126. Julia Kasdorf notes that this position suited his talents perfectly and “seemed to have been created especially for him.”
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 126.
  1. Yoder and Lane continued independent pursuits and maintained church memberships with different denominations. Emily served as the superintendent of Sunday schools at the Presbyterian church in Huntingdon and was a local Girl Scout leader as Yoder continued working for Juniata College.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 134.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 135.
  1. Yoder read popular novels that perpetuated the “dumb Dutch” stereotype. Unfavorable depictions of the Amish drove Yoder to write a book that would fix public perception.
  1. Rosanna of the Amish is the first and possibly only Amish autoethnography to exist. Amish people are discouraged from speaking publicly in their defense, let alone publishing a book.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 148. Yoder was adamant that his account was true, claiming his authority as being Amish, “one of them,” although more recent research into Rosanna’s family history suggests otherwise.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 158.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 159. Although not used by the Amish themselves, the book was read by ethnomusicologists, who discovered the remnants of medieval European folksongs, long believed to have been lost.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 167.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 169. Yoder was becoming more involved with local controversies, and this book was a culmination of almost a decade of conversations with Old Order Amish people from Mifflin County.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 223.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 225.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 184.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 227.
  1. Kasdorf, Fixing Tradition, 228. His funeral service was led by several Mennonite church leaders and one from Emily Lane’s Presbyterian Church in Huntingdon.
  1. In 1995, Herald Press re-released a new edition of Rosanna of the Amish on the centennial of Rosanna’s death. Compared to the 1940 edition, however, this edition exhibits substantial changes to Yoder’s writing and historical content.