On May 5, 1970, the Idaho State Journal ran a story, on the first page of its eastern Idaho news section, about two places that shared a name. One was Arbon Valley. The other was Arbon, Switzerland, a town in the canton of Thurgau on the southern shore of Lake Constance. Lena Sexton wrote it. Her subject was a run of letters, started in 1966, that had put a history of the Idaho valley by Mrs. D. T. "Sod" Williams of Arbon into a Swiss newspaper.
The article does not give Mrs. Williams's first name, but she was Nelda Ward Williams (1923–2024). She was a daughter of Elmer and Susan Ward of the Ward family and married Donald Thayne "Sod" Williams in 1942. Her 2024 obituary names her sons Barry and Brad, and their birth years there match the ages, 26 and 16, that the 1970 article gives. In 1970 the family ran the cattle and quarter-horse ranch at Arbon that this site describes in The Williams family of Arbon in the arena.
The letters
The first letter came in the summer of 1966, from Lisa Ammann-Irminger of Arbon, Switzerland. It reached Mrs. Williams at a busy time, and she put it aside. Then a second Swiss writer, Rudolf Ackermann, sent one of his own. Both writers, the article supposed, had come across the Idaho Arbon in print somewhere; it gives no clue to what they had read or where.
It was September 1967 before Mrs. Williams answered Mrs. Ammann-Irminger. What came back from Switzerland came quickly, and it carried a request: would she write up the story of the Idaho valley? She did, and she included eleven pictures of the valley as it looked then. Her account, with photographs of the Williams family, was in the Swiss town's newspaper no later than November 1969. Material went the other way too: Mrs. Ammann-Irminger wrote out a long history of Swiss Arbon for Mrs. Williams and added picture postcards of its landmarks.
What the Journal printed
The Journal did not reprint Nelda Williams's history. On the valley itself it gave only a few lines: the Arbon family had given the place its name, the log house they first lived in was still there, and Joseph Nicholas Arbon, a son of the first homesteader, was living in Pocatello. Most of the space went to the Swiss town, as Mrs. Ammann-Irminger had described it, with a photograph of its castle and church tower and one of her.
Two of the Journal's details about the valley do not fit easily with what this site has found. The article put the Arbons' homesteading in the early 1900s. The Arbon family's account has George Arbon and his son Joe in the valley by about 1893; the same page dates George Arbon's homestead on Section 23 to 1901, which may be where the later date came from. The family page also says the farmstead on Church Road still stands, but only the foundation of the original log cabin is left, between the house and the church. The archive does not know whether the log building the Journal had in mind in 1970 was that cabin or another, or when it was lost.
A valley historian
Nelda Williams went on to tell the valley's story more than once. She was one of the writers of the Ward chapter in Laurie Ward Call's Bannock Valley (1982), the local history behind much of this archive, and in 1999 she wrote her account of the winter of 1948–49, which this site reprints. Her history for Swiss readers, written between 1967 and 1969, is the earliest of her writing about the valley that this archive has found.
What she wrote for the Swiss paper is not known here. The archive has not found a copy of the Swiss article. The Journal did not name the Swiss newspaper or the date the story ran, and it did not list the eleven pictures she sent. If a copy is still kept among family papers in the valley or in Arbon, Switzerland, it has not reached this archive.
On this site: Joseph Nicholas Arbon, Elmer Mosiah Ward, Sod Williams and his quarter horses and the Arbon area history.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, May 5, 1970, page 9 (section B, page 1). The original article is under copyright; this is our own report of what it said.
A newspaper in Arbon, Switzerland, had printed a history of Arbon Valley written by one of the valley's own longtime residents, the Idaho State Journal told its readers on May 5, 1970.
The writer was Mrs. D. T. "Sod" Williams. Alongside her history the Swiss paper carried photographs of her, her husband and the couple's two sons, Barry, 26, and Brad, 16. Lena Sexton wrote the Journal's story.
Two letters from the Swiss town reached Mrs. Williams before she wrote any: the first from Lisa Ammann-Irminger in the summer of 1966, which she was too busy to answer, and a later one from Rudolf Ackermann. Both had apparently learned of the Idaho Arbon through their reading, the paper said, without naming what.
Her reply to Mrs. Ammann-Irminger went out in September 1967, and the answer from Switzerland was quick: would she write up the history of Arbon, Idaho? Mrs. Williams did so, adding eleven recent pictures of the valley, and the Swiss town's newspaper had printed the piece no later than November 1969. In return, Mrs. Ammann-Irminger wrote a long history of her own town for Mrs. Williams and sent postcard views of its historic spots.
According to the Journal, Arbon Valley owes its name to the Arbons, a family it said took up homesteads there early in the 1900s. The paper said their original log house had been kept and still stood in the valley. Joseph Nicholas Arbon, one of the first homesteader's sons, was by then living in Pocatello.
Mrs. Ammann-Irminger's description of her own town filled most of the article. Her town occupies a peninsula on a large lake, she explained, a site that had long drawn notice. The year 280 A.D. is the earliest point at which it appears in the historical record, she wrote. In Latin the town was Arbor Felix, which she rendered as "lucky tree." Older still, according to the historians she cited, was a Celtic name from which the Latin one was formed. Christianity came early as well: beneath the St. Martin Church of her own day, the footings of a seventh-century church had been uncovered. Where the town's old citadel stood had long been a puzzle until digs between 1958 and 1962 proved it had occupied the peninsula. The town still had a number of old landmarks. Its castle was put up in 1510–1520, but the castle's tower likely goes back to about the year 400. St. Martin's bell tower was built in 1457, and a lime tree that serves as a town landmark was 271 years old. To usher in the Sabbath on Saturdays, the twelve bells of the two towers rang in concert for fifteen minutes.
The Journal ran two photographs with its story, one of the castle and the St. Martin bell tower and one of Mrs. Ammann-Irminger. Her picture's caption said she was a native of the Philippine Islands whose parents were Swiss. Her schooling and working life had taken her around Europe, and she had spent nine months in New York. English was one of several languages she spoke.