Remembrances of Calvin Snyder (b. 1874), son of Jasper Snyder (1854-1926) and grandson of Peter Snyder (1820-1900)
In 2000, this information was found on a Snyder family history website created by Van Snyder. However, I can no longer find the information posted on the Internet and have entered this from a printout I made that year. I have tried to type the information in as it was on the website, although I have corrected a few obvious typing errors. The footnotes inserted and their associated comments are mine. Steve Baskauf, 2007
"The following text is copied in full unedited from a 3 page collection of information distributed in 1956, and held in the file since then of the current president of the family reunion.1
Snyder Family History
Compiled by Calvin Snyder and dating back to 100 years.
Read at meeting 11/18/56
Since I am the eldest of the Jasper Snyder family, I have been asked to tell you what I remember of the family background and history.
Peter Snyder, a Dutchman from Pennsylvania2 (my grandfather) walked all the way from Pennsylvania to Shawnee Township, Ohio where he settled. This location is south of Lima. Grandfather's sole possessions consisted of the clothes he wore and an ax. Here he met a young red-haird German girl by the name of Edgecomb, who could not speak English.3 They married and raised a family of eight children - 6 boys and 2 girls - Hannah4 (I called her Aunt Het), who married Charlie Shinaberry; Anne, who married John Protchman5, and who moved west to Kansas for awhile. The boys were George, the eldest, who grew up, married and raised a large family. Walt who went to Texas to work in the oil fields, had a family of 3. Next were Newt, Jasper and Clay. Clay also worked in the oil fields on the derricks. He fell off of one of these and broke his leg. Some of you probably remember Uncle Clay (who used crutches) when he was here for the Golden Wedding anniversary of Jasper and Alice Snyder in October (1922). Besides those mentioned there was another boy (I can't remember his name) who was stolen by the Indians and was tortured and killed. Grandfather wanted to bring his body back home. Someway he learned where the body was, took a team and wagon and went after him. To protect and conceal the body he had a load of turnips. He found the boy's body, put it in the bottom of the wagon, covered it with turnips and brought it safely home for burial.6 When the family was nearly raised, Grandmother was bitten on the toe by a rattlesnake and died.7 Grandfather then moved to Allen County, Ohio, and settled 9 miles outside of Lima on the Lima Findlay Pike. Here he met and married a widow by the name of Bassett8, with several children. They in turn had three children, Alta, the eldest; Ida, who died when she was 21 years of age; and Della, who marred a doctor much older than herrself, by the name of Kaiser. The lived in McComb, Ohio. The had 2 boys, Ned and Jimmy. Jimmy was hurt when he was a baby and playing with the other children and was always crippled after that. This family of 17 lived together in a large house with a center hall, much like the picture in the paper this past week of the house that was President Eisenhower's birthplase in Texas, only larger. I played many times in this house with my Uncles and Aunts.
Now, I can't tell you much about the courtship of Jasper and Alice Anne Lackey, but Alice Ann Lackey was an auburn haired English-Scotch girl and my father used to often call her a blue-blooded Yankee. They married and were blessed with 11 children, 7 boys and 4 girls - Calvin, Warren, Stella, Maud, Jay, Charlie (who died of diptheria when he was 21), Arthur (who died when he was a small baby), Ethel, Florence, Peter and Floyd.
When Warren and I were little our parents lived with grandfather on the Lima-Findlay Pike.9 Here are some incidents that I remember well while we were living there. You know in those days all live stock - cattle, sheep or pigs - were driven on foot to market. Warren and I used to follow the fence and watch the stock being driven through. Then one summer the army potato bugs came in such droves they went right through the house, covering the curtains and everything. There wasn't much left of any potatoes that year.
From here we moved to the Herb Voor10 place further west, and here Stella was born. At about two years of age she contracted lung fever and always had asthma afterward. Maud was born here too.
Here hunting was always good - squirrels, red, grey and black, black squirrels being about the same size as the grey squirrels. I was often that I carried 5 squirrels at a time. Father was a good hunter. One evening he said, 'Cal, tomorrow we get up early. I watched a flock of wild turkeys settle for the night and we're going to get one.' We got up early before it was daylight, covered our lantern with a red handkerchief and got our turkey. Pa also liked to hunt coons. Once we treed two at one time. The dogs got one - the other coon took after Warren and I and we high-tailed it for the house, but Pa got him.
From the Voor place we moved to the Ramsbottom farm and lived here in Allen County, Ohio for two or three years. Here Pa pulled a threshing machine with a team for two or three summers. The team, Sal and bird, were high strung horses and ran away often. One day the threshing machine gut up a head of steam and began to whistle. The team was off! - round and round the field, careening, nearly upsetting at every turn. Dad trying to catch them whenever they came near him. When they were winded pulling the heavy machine, we were able to catch up with them.
Jay, Charlie, Arthur, Ethel, Florence, Peter and Floyd were born in Paulding County, Ohio. When one of the children was a baby, the Jasper Snyder family moved to Paulding County. It was winter when they moved, so they put straw, blankets and a stove in the wagon bed to keep everyone warm. Pa kept a fire going hot enough to blister the new paint on the outside of the new wagon bed. Uncle Clay, Warren and I drove the cattle through, 80 miles on foot. We ate frozen beans on the trail.
Their new home here was two miles west of Broughton, Ohio a log house that Pa built that adjoined the 40 acres of heavy timberland belonging to him. When they started to clear a place for the house, they had to cut and burn the timber in order to have a place on which to put the house. The older boys and Pa worked there during the week, and one Sunday they decided to take the family to see where the new house would be built. When they came within sight of the pile of partly burned timber, Florence, who was a very small girl then, saw the scorched wood and cried out, 'Oh, goody! goody! I see our new house'. When the house was up, we moved in before it was completely finished. There were no doors of window panes in yet, so we used carpets at the doors and windows to keep out the weather. In the wintertime we had to shake the snow off the bedcovers in the morning when we got up.
I remember there was a ladder leading to the second floor instead of steps, and we had to go through a hole in the second floor in climbing the ladder to get upstairs. Maude walked in her sleep at times, and one night she woke up the family by running around in her sleep. Just as she called out, "I've got you, Delmar', (very likely a schoolmate), she ran too close to the edge and fell through the hole. Luckily, she wasn't hurt.
When we lived here Dad cut stave bolts from timber and hauled them to the barrel factory to make barrels. This was one of the things he did to help make a living for the family. One rainy morning he and we older boys went out to cut some bolts, but the rain continued, so he said, 'you boys go to the house and dry the saw (a crosscut) and put it away'. My father was always most particular and careful with his tools. I put one end of the saw on a chair and the other on the floor while I went to find a cloth to dry the saw. Warren, in the meantime, had picked up the baby who was crying and in walking to the other side of the room with the baby, he did not see the saw and ran into it, cutting his leg quite badly. (The scar is probably still there). The leg did not heal for a long time, even though we tried everything we knew to heal it. Finally someone told us to get some lamb's wool and burn it on coal and apply it, which we did. In a short time the leg was quite healed.
I remember Pa made a bench for the children to sit on at the table, and each child had his own place and no one ever traded places at the table. Pa and Ma were very strict about the children's manners and expecially so at the table, and if someone appeard without his hair combed or his hands washed, he was not allowed to eat until he mad himself presentable. Even though my parents were very strict, they allowed each child to select his own food. Of course he was expected to eat all he put on his plate.
Please send in your written contribution to the history of the Snyder family as soon as possible, and no later than March 31, 1957, so they can all be assembled for the next meeting.
Personal experiences, memories of events (your own or otherwise if you have heard interesting accounts of happenings in the Snyder family) of whatever you care to add to this history will be gladly received. Please send material to : Faye Severns 1018 Pemberton Drive Fort Wayne, Indiana Phone: Anthony 86085"
Notes:
1. The was apparently the reunion of Jasper Snyder descendants held in Indiana, and not the Bassett-Edgecomb-Snyder Reunion held in Lima, Ohio.
2. It is known that Peter Snyder was born in New York and also lived in Trumbull County, Ohio and Bath Twp., Allen County, Ohio before he moved to Shawnee Twp., Allen County. However, it is possible that this bit of information as well as others in the first part of this story actually referred to Peter's father, Philip. This may be an indication that Philip was born in Pennsylvania, or came to Pennsylvania with his father Philip before settling in New York.
3. Although we do not know what color Clarinda Edgecomb's hair was, there is no chance that she was German or that she could not speak English. All of her known ancestors were English and had lived in North America for generations. Again, this may refer to the preceding generation: Mary Sharpsteen, the wife of Philip Snyder, Jr.
6. This story could not have involved a son of Peter Snyder (1820-1900) because he was not married until 1840 and by that time the Native Americans in Allen County, Ohio had already been removed to Kansas. If this story referred to a son of Peter's father Philip, then it would have probably occurred in New York.
7. A version of this story is also told by descendants of Amy Snyder Mason. However, it is clear that Clarinda didn't die from the snakebite. She was bitten at their farm in Shawnee but did not die until 1866, years after the family had moved back to Bath Township in 1862.
8. Actually Ellen Baker Kollor.
9. Now known as the Old Dixie Highway. This farm was at the corner of the Dixie and Thayer Rd.
10. Herb Vore, son of Nathaniel Vore
.