REV. JOSEPH S. PETERS, pastor of St. James Reformed church, Allentown was born May 16, 1879, at Fogelsville, Lehigh county, the oldest son of Joseph H. Peters, who died on July 4., 1884. The following year, in the month of September, the orphan son entered Bethany Orphans' Home at Wormelsdorf, Pa.; there he received a good Christian training. Through the good influence of the superintendent, Rev. Thomas M. Yundt, the subject of this sketch was prompted to enter the ministry and his early school training was obtained at the above institution, where men were engaged as instructors who had taken advanced courses in schools of pedagogy and whose ambition it was to teach for life. At the age of sixteen, while still an inmate of the home, young Peters passed the teachers' examination held at Robesonia, Pa., and at once became teacher of the intermediate grade at the home. After teaching one year, his mother having then remarried, he left the home to take up his residence with Mr. and Mrs. William S. Baer, at Schnecksville. Lehigh County. After attending the Summer Normal of Prof. J. P. Deibert and one winter session of the local school he graduated the next spring with first honors in the township of North Whitehall. There he taught the succeeding two winters in Saegersville and Pleasant Corner respectively. He entered the Keystone State Normal School in the spring of 1899, qualifying for the senior class and graduated in 1900. After teaching two years he prepared at the K. S. N. S. and entered the sophomore class of Franklin and Marshall College, from which he was graduated in 1906. While in his last year at college and during his first year in the seminary he taught mathematics during the spring term at the K. S. N. S. During the summer of 1906 and '07 he was solicitor for the Allentown College for Women, and for a brief period acting president of the institution. He graduated from the Eastern Theological Seminary at Lancaster in 1909. For a period of three and one half months he was the substitute for Rev. E. R. Eschbach. D.D., of Frederick, Md. Having received a call in October. 1909, to become pastor of the Emmanuel Reformed church, York, Pa., he accepted the charge and took up the active ministry January 1, 1910. Early in February he was ordained and served that congregation until April 15, 1913, when he began ministerial work in his home city, Allentown, to which his parents had removed in January, 1900. There he organized St. James Reformed church under the auspices of the Mission Board of the Reformed Church, which is a flourishing young congregation. Rev. Peters was married June 7, 1910, to Nettie M. Ziegler, daughter of William and Emma (Koch) Ziegler. The union was blessed with two children. Dorothy Z. and Joseph S.