This is a bunch of raw notes that will later be folded into an article on the possible connection between the Yoder, Bacon, and Benfield families of the Oley Valley.
The story begins with the Y-DNA analysis performed by the Yoder Newsletter organization. The Y-DNA is passed from father to son, unchanged except for occasional random mutations, so that one can accurately trace the male lineages. One would expect all descendants of any of the Yoder immigrants would be reflected in their male Yoder offspring alive today (and only in the direct line of descent - non-Yoders would have Y-DNA of their own father's father...).
When the results were analyzed, it showed that several of the descendants of Hans Yoder of Oley had different patterns than expected. Here is a quick summary:
This leads one to wonder, if these Yoder men were not descended from Hans directly, who was their father? Did Hans raise children that were perhaps illegitimate children of his daughters? The ages don't seem to work out for that idea. The father could have come from anywhere in the United States passing through Oley, but let's size up the population of the area circa 1730. There were about 32 land owning settlers in Oley (Oley Valley Heritage, pg 25) and undoubtedly some single freemen. With such a small number of people in lower Berks County in general and Oley Valley in particular, it would seem we might find candidates in the Y-DNA database.
A free public site called www.ysearch.org used to provide the ability for people to share and compare Y-DNA results. However the European Union created new laws aimed at protecting privacy which had the effect of shutting most of these sites down in May 2018. The following is a comparison of the closest DNA matches to our lost Yoders:
The blue line shows the Y-DNA for a descendant of Thomas Benfield, while the red line shows a descendant of Jeremiah Bacon. Both of these families were from the Oley Valley area at this time. Jeremiah is approximately the same age as Samuel Yoder and both Samuel and Jeremiah would be of age as to be children of Thomas Benfield. As you can see by the discrepancies shown in yellow boxes, there are very few of them. We don't know for sure what the original DNA might have been (ie, which lines experienced mutations and when), but I created one hypothetical possibility at the bottom. According to Craven Taylors site having 34 of 37 markers match (ie distance of 3) would result in a 25% confidence level. This would be a pretty low confidence level if trying to pinpoint a match across the United States, but might be viewed as reasonable for finding a probable match within the population of lower Berks County in 1730.
Jeremiah Bacon's *father*, Thomas Bacon, seemed to think something was wrong here. He seems to have been estranged from his son Jeremiah writing in his will about 1770, "I give to Jeremiah Bacon, living in Pennsylvania, by some said to be my son, 5 shillings." His other children received property, so it seems he didn't think Jeremiah was his son.
There is nothing in the documents to suggest that Hans Yoder thought that Samuel was not his natural son. Or at least, he raised Samuel and treated him like his natural son. In both his will and in deeds, he refers to Samuel as his son (not "adopted son")>
Thomas Benfield's will of 1 Sep 1764 mentions a list of his "six children" including "John Coafman" (John Kaufman). It's interesting that Thomas's will is in English, but a witness is Frederick Nester. In the probate entry in the county will book, it mentions "published... Last Will... Tho it might have been done in the English Language which the Deponent [Frederick Nester], a German, does not understand". The Benfield children and Jeremiah Bacon all appear throughout the nearby Oley Hill Church (a German church). The Yoders do not appear in many area church records through the 1700's, except for marriages. But it seems Thomas Benfield had integrated into the local Germany community. Then Benfield children also married the local Germans. Note that there was also a John Benfield in the area, presumed to be Thomas's brother, who lived further south. One would expect Thomas and John to have near identical DNA, so John could not be ruled out as a father.
I don't think there's much more we can pin down here. With a small community of people who stayed in the same area for over 200 years, autosomal DNA will be inconclusive (although I have a number of Thomas Benfield DNA matches on ancestry.com). It would be difficult to isolate the mother from autosomal DNA that far back. One might assume, lacking other information, that the mother of Samuel Yoder was Hans Yoder's wife.
I may add more information later, like maps showing the location of the Benfield and Yoder lands. The Benfield land was about 10 miles south of the Yoder house, on the road going towards Philadelphia. There are several deeds for both families that I've plotted. Some of the are shown here.
John/Hans Yoder figures prominently in the New Borns of Oley.
Despite the shrill disunity only too apparent to observers, many, perhaps most, among the more spiritually minded of the German settlers of early-eighteenth-century Pennsylvania shared an underlying set of ideas and attitudes about religion and the proper way of life. These ideas and attitudes were known as "pietism." Pietism was a widespread movement among German Protestants of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries aimed at revitalizing what was considered a corrupt, overly scholastic Protestant Christianity. Pietists believed that conversion and spiritual regeneration were intrinsic elements of the true Christian life. The reborn person's life would be one of piety, hence the term. Pietists believed that one should strive to live in as unworldly a manner as practicable. While pietism formed a spectrum across churches and sects, most German pietists remained within the Lutheran and Reformed churches, and conflicts in those organizations between "pietists" and "orthodox" (nonpietists) could sometimes be bitter. In Pennsylvania, outside the anti-pietist church authorities' geographical sphere of concern, pietism would emerge as a dominant element in Pennsylvania German Protestantism before the end of the colonial period. An analogous and related movement was that of the Methodists within the Church of England during the middle eighteenth century, before they broke away to form their own church.
THE NEW BORN
The dominant religious gathering among the Oley Valley's German settlers up to the 1730s was a radical sect called the New Born. This band of believers was responsible for the abysmally low level of esteem in which colonial Lutheran and Reformed clergymen held the valley. Ministers concurred that New Born beliefs were more dangerous to people's souls and to the social order than those of any other sect in Pennsylvania.
The charismatic founder of the New Born was a "poor day-laborer and helper,"4 from Lambsheim in the Palatinate, named Matthias Baumann. In 1701 Baumann was suddenly taken terribly ill. He went into a delirium lasting days during which, by his account, God summoned him to heaven. God informed Baumann that the end of the world was nigh, and God was sending Baumann forth to proclaim God's truth to the people.
The "truth," as God had revealed it to Baumann, was that all church and sect life as it was known-clergy, sacrament, ritual, catechism, scripture, prayer, communal worship-was an abomination before God and a waste of time. The only way to salvation was through a traumatic experience of spiritual death and rebirth, which incorporated an actual interview with the heavenly Being. Those who underwent this wrenching transformation emerged saved and, from then on, forever free of and incapable of sin. The only true sin, after all, was original sin, which Baumann interpreted as "death to God in spirit."
In the year following his metamorphosis Baumann's preaching moved several of his relatives and neighbors to embrace his theology, but Baumann's logic failed to persuade the Lambsheim authorities. The town court tried the former Reformed worshiper in 1702 for "pietism" and banished him. Orthodox church and state authorities such as those in Lambsheim considered the pietist movement threatening. Pietism, whether in or out of the established churches, might undermine the political and social order by revolutionizing the established churches. Hence their employment of the name "pietist" when describing the terrifying Baumann and his followers.
In 1706 the town of Lambsheim also convicted nine of Baumann's followers on a pietism charge, including Philip Kuhlwein, brother of Baumann's wife Katarina. The court compelled the nine men to clean the town ditches, a noisome task.
Philip Kuhlwein, Baumann's brother-in-law, left Lambsheim in 1709. He joined the exodus of thirteen thousand people from the Rhine Valley to England that took place that year, inspired by Queen Anne's promise of protection for impoverished Protestants. Some of these people eventually settled in Pennsylvania, but most in New York and some in other corners of the British realm. This mass movement of Germans formed an exceptional event in the years preceding the great, continuous migration that began in 1727. Besides Kuhlwein, the participants included Jean LeDee, whose daughter Maria wed Kuhlwein; Johannes Joder, a widower who married LeDee's other daughter Anna Rosina; and Isaac DeTurk and Jacob Weber with their families, all future Oley Valley settlers. LeDee and DeTurk were from Eppstein and Frankenthal, towns a few miles from Lambsheim. Before the end of 1709 Kuhlwein, LeDee, and DeTurk had selected land in Oley. They were the first German-speaking settlers in the valley (though DeTurk, having landed in New York, did not move his family to Oley until at least 1712). In 1714 the master himself, Matthias Baumann, arrived in Oley from Germany.
It is likely that the German-speaking settlement created in the northern Oley Valley in the 1710s was a virtual New Born colony. Perhaps most early-arriving, soon-intermarried families settling in that section were adherents of New Bornism. Some may have converted to "Baumannism" in Germany, others en route I to America, some soon after coming to I Pennsylvania. This hypothesis of a "New Born settlement" is difficult to prove, I however, as the only positively identified j New Born members were Baumann himself, Kuhlwein, Joder, Maria DeTurk I (wife of Isaac), and Martin Schenkel. I Strong circumstantial evidence helps I identify several others, though. Also, I many contemporaries of the New Born I commented that the New Born were very I numerous in the valley. All the marriages of children and the many friendships (revealed in wills and other documents) make the German-speaking, northern I Oley Valley group of early settler families an identifiable cadre. One has to I wonder whether these relationships would have been possible between New Born and non-New Born families, considering the contentious demeanor that seems to I have accompanied New Born convictions.
Baumann and company spared no effort to convey their divine message to the "unregenerate" of Pennsylvania, at least I during the prophet's lifetime (he died in I 1727). The visionary from Lambsheim set I out his beliefs in a tract, A Call to tk I Unregenerate, written in Oley in 1723. Baumann posited what was at times an I almost disarmingly simple logic.
There are but two kinds of people in the world: sinners, as we are born, and righteous, as we are reborn.... There is but one sin, which Adam committed. He died unto God in spirit. And this is what all persons get from Adam: they have died unto God. This they could learn ... when they approach God in prayer. Then the world overwhelms them so that they cannot keep to God as long as one Lord's Prayer lasts without other thoughts entering. ... I know, for I began the Lord's Prayer three or four times and could not bring it to God without other thoughts popping into my head. ... If God does not first show Himself to man, and come to him, man cannot love Him. ... If someone were to write me that I should love him, and if I had never in my whole life seen him, I would ... reply that he should first come to see me so that I could get to know him, otherwise it would be impossible to love him....
You must discover that you lack God in your heart and you must call upon the unknown God that He shall make Himself manifest within you so you can come to love Him.... Man must be ever dying until he comes with Christ to the Cross, dying to his first nature. Just as Christ felt pain outwardly in his flesh, so [you] must feel it in [your] mind.... You will think that God does not want you, that you are finished and must perish! ... You will say that never in your whole life have you ever had greater pain than now. This is the time when life and death contend. If man then remains constant and thinks that even if he be lost he still will not forsake God, presently, God will hear him anew and take up his abode in him....
With the body we cannot sin before God, only before people and other creatures; this the judge can correct. Adam did not do evil with the body. He performed spiritual sin; he died to God. And Christ announced a spiritual righteousness and warned us against spiritual sin.... God dwells in a Christian [i.e., a New Born], therefore he can sin no more.... God teaches him what he is to do outwardly.... God has made him a person who lives according to His law and keeps it.... As Adam was before the fall, so have I been made.(5)
Insisting "that they had only been sent by God to confound men,"(6) Baumann made many trips to other parts of the province, accompanied by some of his followers. A favorite destination for such excursions was the market at Philadelphia, where "their disputations ... were often heard with astonishment, [and] where also Baumann once offered, in order to prove that his doctrine was from God, to walk across the Delaware River."(7) Although the reaction of the Philadelphia audience to this proposal is unknown, it may have been similar to that of Conrad Beissel, the rival mystic who gathered the Seventh Day Baptists in the Cocalico Valley of Lancaster County, organizing the Ephrata Cloister in 1733. The chroniclers of the cloister community wrote in 1786 that the New Born had come to instruct Beissel, "when Baumann commenced about the new birth. The Superintendent [Beissel] gave him little satisfaction, telling him to smell of his own filth, and then consider whether this belonged to the new birth; whereupon they [the New Born] called him a crafty spirit full of subtlety, and departed."(8)
An important element in the New Born mission to "confound men" was the disruption of other groups' religious services. As late as 1753, with Baumann dead twenty-six years and the sect thought to be approaching extinction, Heinrich Melchior Muhlenberg could not conduct the funeral service for devout Oley Valley Lutheran Philip Beyer without an inspired interruption.
An obstinate old man, who called himself Newborn, stood outside, ... and began to preach to several people of his persuasion with noisy blustering which was intended to disturb me. But ... because few people were willing to ... listen to him, ... he ran home in a fit of temper.... This was the basis of his authority: One night, many years ago, he saw a light in his room. He claimed that this light revealed to him that he was a child of God, that the magistracy, the ministry, the Bible, sacraments, churches, schools, etc. are of the devil, that all men must be like him, etc. This would certainly not be a good thing, however, for he gets drunk occasionally and beats his poor wife.(9)
A unique statement of New Born belief was made by one of Baumann's followers in a letter written by Maria DeTurk to relatives in Germany. She referred to the spiritual tumult, trauma, and "wonders" that she experienced in her process of "new birth."
Oley, May 14, 1718 Brothers, sisters, relatives and friends:
I greet you all cordially. I have received your letter, from which I learn what you wish; but to answer which is [not] a small matter. I will make my situation known to you - tell you how it is with me. I am now in a better state than I had been in Germany. Here God made me free from sin. I cannot sin any more, for which I now and shall ever praise God. I clave unto Him, and thus He drew me nigh and has taken His abode in me. If you desire to enjoy the new birth with me, withdraw your mind and thoughts from all worldly things - seek God only - continue to pray, sigh day and night, that God would regenerate you. If you prove sincere, you will experience wonders. Men boast of being Christians who know not what the new birth is. The new birth is the new [corner] stone, which no one knows, only he that receives it.
To emigrate to Pennsylvania is vain, if you are sinners. Who knows whether you will arrive safely? Most persons have to endure sickness-many die. In Pennsylvania there is unrest, too, as well as in Germany. If it is not by reason of war, there is something else which is disagreeable.
Men will never find rest in this world, go whither they will. With God only is there rest. If you see rest elsewhere, you will still be restless - thus it is in America. But if one is free from sin, he may go abroad, or remain in Germany, then he has the most precious treasure with him; he is contented where he is - is delighted with his treasure anywhere in the world.
Preachers and their hearers, all of them, are no Christians, they are sinners. Christ has come to abolish sin. He, then, that is not free from sin, for him Christ has not yet come into the world. All the preachers in the world that have not been made free from sin, and yet can sin, are false teachers, be they pious or impious. Naught but Christ is of any avail in His kingdom. He that hath not Christ is none of His; for where Christ is there is freedom from sin. I again greet you all cordially. Think of what I have written, lay it to heart; it will be more precious to you than all else in the world.
Maria DeTurck
Whose maiden name was Maria DeHaroken.(10)
A discussion of the New Born must tangle with the question of the "outward deeds" of people who believed themselves incapable of sin. Detractors of the New Born alleged that many of Baumann's followers misinterpreted his proclamation of sinlessness as a license for extensive and varied immoral behavior. The Moravian bishop August Gottlieb Spangenberg locked horns with the New Born while preaching in Oley in 1737. He wrote that the New Born "claim that if a man is reborn then everything which he does is good and right, for he cannot sin any more; indeed, they consider obvious acts of the flesh as good," in keeping with this belief.(11) According to the Ephrata chroniclers of 1786, Matthias Baumann himself was "said otherwise to have been an upright man, and not to have loved the world inordinately; but Kuhlenwein, Jotter [Joder], and other followers of his were insatiable in their love of the world."(12) The New Born always will be shrouded in mystery, in this intriguing respect as in others.
New Born beliefs certainly were troubling to Lutheran and Reformed clerics, but the New Born themselves were not unstable cranks. Matthias Baumann, Johannes Joder, and Martin Schenkel held enough respect in the discriminating eyes of the Philadelphia County Court to be ordered to serve on road surveying juries, an important responsibility. Joder and Kuhlwein became particularly substantial farmers, garnering Oley Valley estates of 761 acres and 770 acres at the time of their respective deaths (1741 and 1736). Such freeholds put them on a footing with men like George Boone, Sr., Andrew Robeson, Mounce Jones, and Anthony Lee as founders of valley "first families."
The 1753 attempt to disrupt Philip Beyer's obsequies was the latest known direct reference to New Born activity. Whatever source from which it sprang, the New Born sect was essentially one generation's religion. Baumann's adherents did not succeed in transmitting their faith in the new birth to their children, in any lasting way, though they do seem to have bequeathed a tenacious heritage of anticlerical attitudes. As late as the 1850s, the antiquarian Dr. Bertolet noticed that a surprising number of Oley Township families, in comparison to other communities, were not affiliated with religious congregations.(13)
An apocryphal account by Lutheran church organist and schoolmaster Gottlieb Mittelberger, about actual Oley inhabitants who evidently were or had been New Born adherents, shows that Oley was still saddled with a reputation for irreligion in 1754. Mittelberger returned to Germany in that year, and two years later he published his account of life in Pennsylvania.
I cannot pass over yet another example of the wicked life some people lead in this free country. Two very rich planters living in the township of Oley, both very well known to me, one named Arnoldt Huffnagel [a settler in Oley by 1717], the other Conrad Reiff [son-in-law and heir to Philip Kuhlwein], were both archenemies of the clergy, scoffing at them and at the Divine Word. They often met to pour ridicule and insults upon the preachers and the assembled congregation, laughing at and denying Heaven and future bliss as well as damnation in Hell. In 1753 these two scoffers met again, according to their evil habit, and began to talk of Heaven and Hell.
Arnoldt Huffnagel said to Conrad Reiff, "Brother, how much will you give me for my place in Heaven?"
The other replied, "I'll give you just as much as you'll give me for my place in Hell."
Huffnagel spoke again, "If you will give me so and so many sheep for my place in Heaven, you may have it.''
Reiff replied, "I'll give them to you, if you will give me so and so many sheep for my place in Hell."
So the two scoffers struck their bargain, joking blasphemously about Heaven and Hell. When Huffnagel, who had been so ready to get rid of his place in Heaven, wanted to go down to his cellar the next day, he suddenly dropped dead. Reiff, for his part, was suddenly attacked in his field by a flight of golden eagles who sought to kill him. And this would have happened without fail had he not piteously cried for help, so that neighbors came to his assistance. From that time on, he would not trust himself out of his house. He fell victim to a wasting disease and died in sin, unrepentant and unshriven. These two examples had a visible effect on other scoffers, similarly inclined. For God will not let himself be scoffed at.(14)
Although Mittelberger appears to have misinterpreted New Born attitudes, there is one striking aspect to his admonitory tale - Johann Arnoldt Huffnagel did die in 1753, and somewhat suddenly, judging by the fact that he died intestate (without leaving a will). Conrad Reiff, however, punished by Mittelberger with an untimely death, lived to pass away in 1777, at a ripe old age.
Baumann, Kuhlwein, and Joder were all dead by 1742. The sect literally died out (though the Moravians later liked to claim that they had "defeated" it). There may have been other leaders beside Baumann, but he was the only preacher with the power to keep the nascent sect expanding, and he died early (1727). As early as 1730 a somewhat relieved Johann Philipp Boehm could report, "The blasphemous sect, which calls itself the 'Newborn,' has almost been silenced, for its author, named Matthias Baumann, has I been removed by God. A few of his adherents can still be found. ... But these men have no longer a large following."(15)
The NEW BORN, was a sect that originated in Oley township, Philadelphia, (now Berks county, Pa.) in the early part of the last century. This sect had one Mathias Bowman for some years as leader. He was a native of Lamsheim, Palatinate Germany; having heard of the shepherdless few of his faith in this country, he embarked for America in 1719.
The peculiar tenets of Bowman and his friends can only be gathered from detached fragments gleaned some years ago, from letters and other manuscripts still extant, the Hallische Nachrichten, Colonial Records of Pennsylvania, and Chronica Ephratensis. Bowman, it appears, was honest and sincere: not solicitous to accumulate wealth but that could not be said of all his followers, among whom were Peter Kuehlweit,* Yotler, and others - these loved the things of the world inordinately. They professed sinless perfection - boasted that they were sent of God to confound others. They in their zeal to proselyte, even annoyed the retired Sieben Taeger, at Ephrata, by intruding themselves upon their notice, in their hermitage.
*Colonial Records III 349
Their disputations were also frequently heard in the market places of Philadelphia among the quiet Friends. A cotemporary, the venerable John Peter Miller, says that Bowman proposed to the sceptic Philadelphians to prove to them that his doctrines were divine by walking across the Delaware river on the water. Bowman died in 1727; but traces of the existence of New Born are found twenty or more years after his death.
In the Hallische Nachrichten, p 226, June 10, 1747, the Rev Dr Muhlenberg says: "I started from New Hanover, and eight miles from here, called to see an old person of the so-called New Born, who had married a widow some twenty years ago; with her he had five children. The old man says he was New Born in the Palatinate. The evidences, however, of his having been New Born are simply these: according to his own often repeated declaration he had seceded from the Reformed Church - denounced the sacraments - had refused to take the oath of fealty to the then reigning election, that he and others were imprisoned and according to his opinion had thus suffered on account of Christ and the truth."
"He will not listen to reasonable counsel - he rejects all revealed truth he will not suffer to be taught - he is obstinately selfish - a man of turbulent passions. After he had arrived in this country he united with the so called New Born. They feign having received the New Birth through mediate inspiration, apparitions, dreams, and the like. One thus regenerated, fancies himself to be like God and Christ himself, and can henceforth sin no more. Hence the New Born use not the word of God as a means of salvation. They scoff at the holy sacraments."
In a letter dated Oley Township, May 14 1718, written by Maria De Turk to her relatives in Germany, she says: "Menschen ruehmen sich Christen, und wissen nicht wasz die Neugeburt ist. Die Neugebert ist der neue Stein das Niemand weisz was er ist, als der ihn bekommt;" ie Men boast of being Christians and do not know what the New birth is. The New birth is that New Stone that none knoweth but he that receiveth it. In the conclusion of her letter, she says: "Teachers and hearers - none of them are Christians; for they are sinners; but Christ came to destroy sin. He that is not absolved from sin; for him Christ has not appeared in this world. All the teachers in the world not freed from sin, and not in an impeccable state, are false teachers, be they devout or not. In the kingdom of Christ, none but Christ prevails. He that has not him is none of his; and where he is there man is set free from sin ."
Another sect, which originated and flourished for a short time in Oley Township (Berks County) was that of the "New Born." A Palatine, Matthias Bauman (died in 1727) was the founder and leader of this sect. They professed sinless perfection, maintaining that those who had received the "new birth" could thenceforth sin no more; consequently, whatever they might do, would be right and good. That this doctrine must lead to licentiousness, is self evident. Even twenty years after Bauman's death there were still some adherents of these doctrines.
* see Winebrenner's History of Denoniminations, p 7.
That the activity of Weiss was largely polemical is not only seen from his attitude towards his fellow laborer Boehm but also from a book which he published in 1729 attacking the sect of the New Born. This sect had been founded about the year 1724 at Oley Berks County Pennsylvania by Matthias Bauman. To counteract the influence of these "most terrible of all men, who without hesitation declare themselves equal to God and greater than our Saviour," (as Boehm describes them), Weiss wrote his little book, whose title may be rendered as follows in English:
"The minister traveling about in the American Wilderness among people of different nationalities and religions and frequently attacked, portrayed, and presented in a dialogue with a politician and a New Born. Treating of different subjects, but especially of the new birth. Prepared and to the advancement of the honor of Jesus, composed from his own experience by George Michael Weiss. Philadelphia, printed by Andrew Bradford, 1729." 12mo, v pages introduction, 29 pages text.
In this little work Weiss ably refutes the principal heresies of the New Born. Their claim of perfect sinlessness and union with God is shown to be worthless, their rejection of prayer, of the authority of the Scriptures, of the ministry and of divine worship are proved to be without sufficient reason. The introduction of the book is written in the form of a poem of which the following translation may serve as a sample:
"For if you wish, O man, to find
The Lord most merciful and kind,
And on that awful judgment day
To meet the Judge without dismay,
Then to the words of God give ear
And follow them while you are here.
Regard them as of highest worth,
Place them above all things of earth."
* The only known copy of this exceedingly rare book was found by the writer in 1899 in the Congressional Library at Washington, DC. For an account of it see Reformed Church Messenger of March 9 and 16 1899; also Dr Sachse's German Sectarians of Pennsylvania, Vol I, pp 155-159. It was reprinted and translated in Penn Germania, Vol I, pp 336-361
Baumann so upset the demography that the whole section of Oley was known as enemy territory. Muhlenberg has three to five references, as late as 1755 of lawlessness in Oley long after others say the New Born were dead.
The blasphemous sect which calls itself the "Newborn," has almost been silenced for its author named Matheis Bau mann has been removed by God. A few of his adherents can still be found, and also a few who did not quite agree with him. The worst of them, named Martin Schenkel, utters such blasphemous words against our Saviour (as one can hear from many people), that the ears of a true Christian tingle and his heart must weep, when hearing them. It is a great pity that there is no punishment in this country for such blasphemers. Indeed nothing else can be expected than that the just God, since no one punishes the profaning of His honor, will unawares inflict His judgment. But these men have no longer a large following.
* The New Born held public disputations at market times in Philadelphia, "where also Baumann once offered, in order to prove that his doctrine was from God to walk across the Delaware River." See Ephrata Chronicle, Engl ed, p 17. For the New Born see p 86.
* In 1719, one hundred acres were patented to George Martin Schenkel at Oley, south of Pleasantville, at a place still known as Schenkel's Hill. He was naturalized in 1729. See Rupp Thirty Thousand Names, p 434. In 1734, Martin Schenkel paid quit-rent on 100 acres at Oley. See Rupp, 1 cp 475. He died shortly afterwards. His widow, Magdalena Schenkel, died prior to 1763, when her will was probated. It was dated July 6 1751. She bequeathed to Martin Schenkel, Jr, 175 pounds, to Sarah Yoder 20 pounds, to Magdalena Aplen 20 pounds. Sarah Schenkel, in 1746 married John Yoder, the son of Johannes Yoder, who, after the death of Matthias Baumann, in 1727, was one of the leaders of the New Born. The Ephrata Chronicle (Engl ed, p 18) mentions Kuehlenwein and Jotter as prominent successors of Baumann. (Communicated by Rev John B Stoudt, of Northampton Pa)
Conrad [Reiff] moved to Oley in 1733 and married Anna Margaretha Kuhlwein, Mary, daughter of Philip Kuhlwein, brother-in-law of Matthias Baumann, founder of the Newborn. Kuhlwein had pioneered that area as an advance for Baumann in 1709. When Kuhlwein chose the Oley Valley as the site for the perfectionist Neugeborene colony, he and Jean LeDee were the first German-speaking settlers (Pendleton, 106). Since Baumann came to Oley at Kuhlwein's advise, it is no surprise that Kuhlwein took over leadership of the colony after Baumann's death in 1727.
We should probably assume Conrad Reiff's acceptance of Newborn beliefs, although they were pretty different from those in which he was raised. In marrying the scion's daughter, a family with no sons, he would inherit extensive land holdings. Marriage transported him into the bosom of the Newborn community. Thus, he immediately is identified with the twenty or so families that originally settled the north Oley valley starting about 1712 (Pendleton, 27): Baumann, Bertolet, Levan, DeTurk, Joder (Yoder), Kuhlwein, Huffnagel, Schenkel, Keim, Schneider, Hoch, Ballie, Peter, Herbein, Weber, Kersten, Aschmann, Ritter, and Kauffmann (Pendleton, 18). No one benefited more from the Newborn than Conrad Reiff, who gained a wife, a homestead, two sons and inherited Philip Kuhlwein's estate in less than four years, ranking him among the largest landholders and candidate for richest man of Oley, far surpassing his brother Jacob down in Skippack. He had success in the "transitory riches."
Not only did Conrad Reiff inherit Kuhlwein's estate upon his death in 1736 (Pendleton, 108), he seems to have inherited Baumann's as well. Comparing Pendleton's maps of the Oley Zone of 1725 with 1750, the configurations of the Baumann and Kuhlwein estates of 1725, which adjoin on a southwest axis, are roughly equivalent to the Conrad Reiff estate of 1750. In the 1750 map which indicates Conrad Reiff's holdings (the estate of Philip Kuhlwein), the two tracts seem to join, as if Baumann's estate were inherited by Kuhlwein and then that augmented section inherited by Conrad Reiff. When Baumann died in 1727 did he deed it to his brother-in-law? The two estates that became one were then inherited by Reiff in 1737. Why wouldn't he remain stanch when after Baumann's death the Yoders, John Lesher, Casper Griesemer, Gabriel Boyer, (c. 1736) founded the Oley Reformed Church ( Hinke, Life and Letters, 34)? Conrad must have seemed in 1733 a good prospect to his father-in-law for all that he, even then, intended to trust him with.
*Pendleton, Philip E. Oley Valley Heritage, The Colonial Years: 1700-1775. Birdsboro, PA: The Pennsylvania German Society, 1994.
snip
...when the Yoders, John Lesher, Casper Griesemer, Gabriel Boyer, (c. 1736) founded the Oley Reformed Church (Hinke, Life and Letters, 34). By 1736 however, with both leaders gone, the Newborn were on their way out.
[Tim: I don't think this John Yoder was involved in Oley Reformed in any meaningful way - they are not present in the baptismal records...]
In or before 1714, as we find a deed of that year to Matthias Bowman of Oley, planter, and not so late as Sachse states, Matthias Bauman, a native of Lambsheim in the Palatinate, who believed that in his trances he had been transported to heaven, and received a message to preach, settled at Oley, announcing his regeneration and impeccability. Those whom he could bring to such supposed spiritual condition rejected the sacraments as unnecessary. He frequently went to Philadelphia, and spoke from the court house steps. As his disciples, who were known as Baumanites, but called themselves Neugeborene, were advised not to marry, the sect died with those who had been converted by him or his successors, Kuhlwein and Jotter (John Yoder?).
Mittelberger laments:
"In Pennsylvania there exist so many varieties of doctrines and sects that it is impossible to name them all. Many people do not reveal their own particular beliefs to anyone. Furthermore there are many hundreds of adults who not only are unbaptized but who do not even want baptism. Many others pay no attention to the Sacraments and to the Holy Bible, or even to God and his Word. Some do not even believe in the existence of a true God or Devil, Heaven or Hell, Salvation or Damnation, the Resurrection of the Dead, the Last Judgment and Eternal Life, but think that everything visible is of merely natural origin. For in Pennsylvania not only is everyone allowed to believe what he wishes; he is also at liberty to express these beliefs publicly and freely" (22).
The apparent secular irreligiousness, of say a "Spinoza, Collins, Spenzer, Bayl," (Muhlenberg, I, 139) is turned into a religion by the Newborn. In May 1747 Muhlenberg observed a woman in "Oley, where practically all the inhabitants are scoffers and blasphemers. It is a place like Sodom and Gomorrah and I have preached there several times for the sake of a Lot or two who live there, but the wanton sinners only scoffed and jeered at me" (I, 146). In June 1747, "we stopped in at the home of an old man, one of the sect called Newborn - he will listen to no advice, accepts neither reason nor a higher revelation in all its parts - when he came to this country, he joined the turbulent sect" ( I, 149). Presiding at the funeral of an ex-Newborn member in 1753, Muhlenberg relates that he had "lived in a region inhabited by people who hold all kinds of curious opinions, despise preachers, churches, and sacraments without discrimination, and pride themselves in their own righteousness" (I, 357). During the service, "an old man, who called himself Newborn, stood outside, before the door, and began to preach to several people of his persuasion with noisy blustering which was intended to disturb me."
Monopolizing the term Newborn to denote a sociopath was a mockery of those pietistic people who wanted to get some emotion and integrity into their religion but instead got autocracy. This mockery was purposeful and not ironic. New born of course signifies spiritual birth, a regeneration leading to a changed life, an unworldly life, much as evangelicals say today. The Newborn hijacked the term and made it virtually opposite and antagonistic to any sane belief. The Neugeborene however founded no later denomination. Among the host of visionaries, arriving about 1714, their founder, Baumann, began to travel from Oley into Philadelphia for dialectics against Quakers and others on the courthouse steps, promising them he would walk on the Delaware river. He did not say whether this would be in winter, on ice. His comeuppance from Beissel was nasty. When Baumann visited Ephrata (c.1722). Beissel was so offended at Baumann's (rhetorical) freedom from sin that he offered his own stink as a remedy and repudiation of Baumann's sinlessness. Such was the power of his demons that Beissel seduced other men's wives with promises of spiritual intercourse.
Derision was heaped on the Newborns however to evade the issue of the other sects malfeasance. Muhlenberg, one of the few voices of integrity (June 10, 1747), gave a contemporary explanation of Newborn theology: "this sect claims the new birth which they receive suddenly through immediate inspiration and heavenly visions through dreams and the like. When they receive the new birth in this way, then they are God and Christ Himself, can no longer sin, and are infallible. They therefore use nothing from God's Word except those passages, which taken out of context, appear to favor their false tenets. The holy sacraments are to them ridiculous and their expressions concerning them are extremely offensive" (I, 149). Heavenly visions and inner light preoccupied what Muhlenberg learned of the old man who disturbed Philip Bayer's funeral: "this was the basis of his authority: one night, many years ago, he saw a light in his room. He claimed that this light revealed to him, that he was a child of God, that the magistracy, the ministry, the Bible, sacraments, churches, schools, etc. are of the devil, that all men must be like him, etc" (I, 357-358). This all smacks of the erosion of sanity in ergot poisoning, not that it was, it being merely a societal disease like the Anabaptists eating each other in the attempt to found a theocracy in the Münster rebellion (1534-1535).
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Oley
Oley was the home territory of this mockery: "Many agitators appeared among the backwoods, among them Matthias Baumann from Oley who came in 1719 (sic.) to conduct revivals among the godless settlers. A visionary, he taught that his disciples were free from sin and had no need for Scripture, sacraments or marriage. Many converts flocked to even Quakers, Reformed and Lutheran" (Earnst, 48). Mittelberger, three times references Oley and the newborn. (Philip E. Pendleton. Oley Valley Heritage. The Colonial Years: 1700-1775).
"One of our churchmen approached a rich scoffer in Oly Township and desired to borrow some money. The rich man said to the poor man, "Do you know who my God is?" The poor man replied, "No." The rich man pointed to his manure pile outside the door and said, 'there is my God; he gives me wheat and everything I need" (I, 138).
Wheat, of course, was the region's cash crop. Another, admonished to give thought to his death, laughed "that he had long since thought of his death and decided, as far as his soul was concerned, to enter into a swine, since he was fond of pork anyhow" (Muhlenberg, I, 138). Mittelberger's homily against Conrad Reiff and Arnold Huffnagel for their contempt and mockery of the clergy is the most detailed report of Oley (Journey to Pennsylvania, 84). In it we understand the fundamental mission of the Newborn to mock the clergy.
There Mittelberger made an example of such an "objectionable preacher," giving a Newborn parody:
"Alas, among the preachers there are also several quite irritating ones who offend many people, besides causing much annoyance to our ministers. At a gathering of young farmers from the township of Oley with whom he ministers. I will cite one example of such an objectionable preacher. His name was Alexander. At a gathering of young farmers from the township of Oley with whom he had been carousing he announced that with his sermon he would so move the people standing in front of him that all of them would begin to cry, but at the very same time all of those standing behind him would start laughing. He wagered these same young farmers a considerable sum that he would be able to do this. And on a certain agreed day he appeared at a church meeting, stationed himself in the midst of the assemblage, and began to preach with a great deal of power and emotion. When he saw that his listeners had become so moved that they began to cry, he put his hands behind him, pulled his coat-tails apart, and revealed through a pair of badly torn breeches his bare behind, which he scratched with one hand during this demonstration. At this those who were standing behind him could not help roaring with laughter; and so he won his bet. An account of this disgusting incident appeared both in the German and English newspapers of Philadelphia" (Journey, 45).
Following the riches theme, Muhlenberg says that life in Oley was "lucrative and lascivious." A third time, June 10, 1747, he visits eight miles from New Hanover. "We stopped in at the home of an old man, one of the sect called Newborn. . .he separated from the (Reformed) Church and the Lord's Supper and refused to give the oath of loyalty to the then ruling elector, for which he was examined by the consistory and imprisoned. According to his opinion he had been persecuted and expelled for the sake of Christ and the truth, but as a matter of fact he was only confirmed in his stubbornness. He will listen to no advice, accepts neither reason nor a higher revelation in all its parts, since he is weak in understanding, headstrong, and hot-tempered; and unfortunately he abuses the freedom of Pennsylvania. When he came to this country, he joined the turbulent sect of people who call themselves Newborn."
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