Since my last visit here, a sign has been placed on the fence saying “Frauke Yoder”. Frauke – “Little Lady” and Yoder – her last name.
Over 100 years ago a 15 year old girl who challenged her Amish upbringing and questioned the treatment of women (something which was just NOT done back then) was deemed a witch, went missing, then turned up dead in a field. No further details could be found accept that she was just apparently dead laying in the field.
When she was buried in the town cemetery an oak tree was planted over her grave to ‘trap her soul’. The tree has since grown around the wrought iron fence (to ‘keep her in’ or to keep others out) that surrounds the grave. A few years back someone girdled the tree in an attempt to slowly kill it (you can see the cut line in the picture above the fence). The superstition goes that as long as the tree lives she can’t return, and apparently someone decided to try to free her by girdling the tree.
There used to be two pieces of her headstone there, as is evident by the older picture of her grave below vs the newer picture I took. The top piece is knocked over in the weeds several feet away towards the ravine and creek below where several other broken headstones are found.
