Family and/or Neighbors

 

One way to pinpoint a mystery ancestor's place in the family line—especially immigrant ancestors—is to look for the "F.A.N. Club" that traveled with him. In the case of Nicholas Snider, my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, the first place where I can find any possible family, associates, or traveling neighbors after his arrival in America would be in Adams County, Pennsylvania. 

Specifically, Nicholas Snider and his family lived there from the early 1800s through some time before 1820, when the Sniders appeared in the census for Perry County, Ohio.

So who else lived in Adams County in 1810 who might have had the same Snider surname? In the case of that particular census, all heads of household with that surname had it spelled Snyder for that enumeration, but I made note of all with that surname who lived in the same township as our Nicholas: Mount Pleasant Township.

There were actually two households claiming that surname besides Nicholas. One, appearing to be a young family, was headed up by someone named John Snyder—a generic name which doesn't reveal much of anything. The other household, however, looks a bit more promising.

That household was headed by someone named Conrad Snyder. I lit up as soon as I considered that prospect, because at the end of the long list of names bestowed on Nicholas' many sons was that same name: Conrad. 

This Conrad, listed in the 1810 census for Adams County, seemed to be an older man with a large family. Included in the enumeration were two sons under ten years of age, another one between the ages of ten and fifteen, and two more between the ages of sixteen and twenty five. Conrad, himself, was categorized as forty five years of age or older, and was joined by a slightly younger wife and seven daughters—in all, a household of fourteen people.

Well? Could Conrad have been Nicholas Snider's father? This is not clear. At age forty five or older, Conrad would have been born in 1765 or earlier. Nicholas himself was born about that same time—1766, according to some notes, though I've yet to find any verification. However, when we found Nicholas in the 1810 census, he had a far younger family than Conrad appeared to have at that time. Since the 1810 census doesn't specify ages above forty five, we can't really be sure whether this was a father-son or sibling relationship without further information.