Note: The following excerpt is from a history of the United Brethren in Christ church (UBC). Martin Boehm and Philip Otterbein were the traveling Pennsylvania preachers who are considered the founders of the UBC. The book has biographies of several other preachers from the Lancaster/Lebanon/Berks county area that were instrumental in growing the UBC denomination. The excerpt below is the biography of Martin Kreider, who was one of the early pioneer UBC ministers. These preachers did lots of traveling and their inspired message won many converts. The United Brethren in Christ is considered to be the first Protestant denomination to be established within colonial America. The early converts came mostly from Mennonite groups; as well as Amish, Reformed, Moravian, and others. The UBC church was known to have fellowship with Jacob Engle's group called the River Brethren, later becoming the Brethren in Christ. They also had friendly associations with the United Brethren.

Martin Kreider performed a service for the United Brethren cause in Lebanon County similar to that of Martin Boehm in Lancaster County. He was born in Lebanon County, November 4, 1740. Next to Otterbein and Boehm, he was the oldest minister from the standpoint of age and probably from that of ministerial service. Dr. Drury is of the opinion that he was preaching as early as 1772. Those Who compiled the list of the United Ministers as of the time of the conference held at Otterbein's parsonage in 1789, included his name as one of them. He, however, was not present at that conference, not at any succeeding, except in the year 1812. His name is not on the list of those who had been authorized, by the year 1812, to perform all the rites of a minister. His ministry in the Word was confined to the people near his home and his relation was that of a lay-preacher rather than that of a licensed or ordained preacher.

A Sacramental Meeting was held on his premises, May 27-29,1797, on which occasion, Newcomer, Martin Boehm, and Christian Crum preached with great power. The Rev. Kreider took part in similar meetings in communities east of the Susquehanna. The Kreider residence was southwest of Lebanon City. His father, Christian Kreider, was a son of a previous generation who had settled in the vicinity of Lancaster. Christian took out a warrant for 585 acres of land whose northern limits now include the southwestern suburban area of the City of Lebanon. Martin, one of four sons, received a share of his father's land. He married Catharine Schmutz whose parents lived about two miles northeast of the city of Lebanon. Martin Kreider and wife Catharine were the parents of eleven children.

The oldest of the children of Martin and Catharine Kreider was John. He married Barbara Smith, and about the year 1786 moved to Hamilton Township, Franklin County. John Crider* was licensed by the original conference in the year 1812. It is this event which may account for the father's attendance at annual conference session. Rev. John Crider was ordained an elder in 1817.

Christian Smith Crider, born February 1, 1811, son of the Rev. John, and grandson of the Reverend Martin, was received into annual conference in the year 1835, and was ordained four years later at a session held in Light's Meetinghouse, Lebanon, Pa. He opened a Mission in the city of York in 1840, in which work he remained until conference of 1842. The following two years he was appointed to York Circuit. He was appointed to Lebanon City Station and its affiliated classes in 1845.- While pastor at Lebanon the first Salem Church was erected. His pastorates terminated in 1848, when he was elected presiding elder and assigned to the Lebanon District. He served as presiding elder of said district for two years. Due to ill health he received no assignment in 1850. He died March 7, one month after that conference had been called into session. Thus at the age of thirty-nine years, one month, and six days, his very promising career came to a close.

So the contribution of Martin Kreider to the church whose cause he espoused is not limited to his personal service in that church but continued in the generations succeeding him.

* In the early legal records the family name is spelled a great variety of ways. In our area "Kreider" predominates; in Franklin County, "Crider."

History of the East Pennsylvania Conference of the Church of the United Brethren in Christ. pp. 38-40