"Move along now; nothing to see here" may be a cliche from old cop movies, but it might fit quite nicely for an end-of-month predicament with my latest genealogical detective work. I'm not finding anything further on my research goal—immigrant Nicholas Snider—despite persistent effort.
Yes, today I did take the time to trawl through the baptismal records from Conewago Chapel in search of any Sniders—or those many other spelling permutations of the surname—living in Adams County, Pennsylvania, at the same time as my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas. Did I find anything of significance? Short answer: no.
Despite the abysmal handwriting which scrawled out the information I was seeking, I managed to find a mere five other couples with the surname Snider (or spelling variations) living in Adams County who also attended the church where Nicholas had his children baptized. One of the baptisms I found was likely too early to have happened while Nicholas and his family were there. Another was too late, since by then Nicholas had moved his family west to Ohio. But there were two baptisms within the time frame which would be just right.
The first entry was a baptism for Joseph "Shneider" on September 24, 1797. Though the handwriting was challenging to read, my best guess is that the parents were Antonii (?) and Catharina. Sponsors for this baby were also Shneiders, but again the handwriting challenged me to guess: Antonius and Carlara (?).
The latest entry was for a son of Francis Snyder and his wife Elizabeth Rhineheart, who was baptized on October 29, 1817. By then, our Nicholas would be heading west, so I didn't expect to see his name listed as godparent. However, the surname of the godparents looked like "Khune"—which I doubt was correct—but certainly not any variation on the name Snider.
But what about the other two baptisms? A Catharina Shneider, baptized on June 4, 1801—again, likely before Nicholas arrived in this country—was the daughter of Peter and Catherine. What encouraged me to dig deeper was the name of the godparents: Martin and Catherine Gossman. Well, I'm assuming that surname was Gossman; it was written with the double "s" style of handwriting prevalent at the time; otherwise it would appear to be Gofman. At any rate, Gossman has been a surname that has intermarried with later generations of Nicholas Snider's descendants, something to follow up on when I revisit this research questions.
The final possibility for baptisms showing other possible kin to our Nicholas would be the January 3, 1816, baptism of Sara Shneider, daughter of John and Elizabeth Reinhard Shneider. This date might be within the timeframe before Nicholas and his family moved away from Adams County, so I was hoping to find something when I read the sponsors' names, but no luck here. The godparents named were John and Apolonia Becher.
Looking again at the godparents' names for Nicholas' own children yielded no clues, either. After these few attempts, I began wishing for the same search capabilities as I've found for the Irish baptismal records I've used in researching my father-in-law's roots. There, it was possible to search for godparents' names as well as the child's name or the parents' names. I'd be curious to see if Nicholas and his wife Anna Elizabeth had been named as godparents for anyone else in the Conewago Chapel records, if for nothing else than to build their F.A.N. Club listings.
Tomorrow will be one more chance to find Nicholas Snider in early records during his first days after arriving in this country from Germany. Whether I can find an actual document containing his name in passenger records, I'm not sure. But we'll give it one more try before we wrap up and move along.