Plotting the Path to the Past

 

One way to connect our ancestors to their past is to literally trace the path they followed through life—but only on rewind. We need to plot that path backwards through time.

For my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas—whose surname in America eventually came to be spelled Snider—that means starting from the spot of his last days in Perry County, Ohio. We can see from the 1850 census—the last enumeration in which his name appeared—that he was a resident of Hopewell Township, one of the three northernmost townships in the county. He presumably had remained there ever since paying full price in 1820 for the southwest quarter of section twenty two of the land he and his son Jacob had acquired as tenants in common, thanks to the Harrison Land Act of 1800.

Before that, according to another one of those biographical sketches published over a century ago, Nicholas had arrived in Ohio from Pennsylvania, but apparently first by way of Maryland. This report I obtained from a book published in 1902, A Biographical Record of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio. The sketch was actually concerning Nicholas' grandson, William Snider, who was 

a son of Peter and Eleanor (Dean) Snider. His father was born in Maryland in 1816 and was a son of Nicholas Snider, who about 1818 removed from Maryland to Ohio, entering land from the government one mile north of Somerset, in Reading township.

But was this really true? Right away, we can see a conflict in reports again, having just viewed the census record identifying Nicholas' home as having been situated in Hopewell Township. Perhaps by that time, Nicholas' age had warranted his releasing the land to his son Jacob—or perhaps he had simply sold one property to purchase another. Land records can help resolve that discrepancy, but the bigger question is: where did Nicholas and his family live before arriving in Ohio?

To answer that question, we'd need to reach back to the 1810 census. One possible candidate might be the "Nicholass Snyder" whose family resided in Adams County, Pennsylvania. There, his household was composed of two sons under ten years of age and another one between the ages of ten and fifteen, along with a daughter under ten. These could easily be our Nicholas' eldest son Jacob, born in 1799, and younger brothers Joseph and Lewis, plus his oldest daughter Catherine. The ages given for the two adults in the household also fit Nicholas and his wife, Anna Elizabeth.

Could there have been a stop in Maryland before moving onward to Ohio? Very likely: Adams County in Pennsylvania bordered the state line with Maryland. The family could have sold their land in Pennsylvania too close to the date of Peter's birth, and decided on an interim stop in Maryland before heading to their intended destination.

The discovery of that 1810 census does pinpoint a location for Nicholas' family in Pennsylvania. While that seems to be helpful, it also dropped a pin on the Pennsylvania map which caused some conflict with another record I found for a Nicholas Snyder—this one in Cumberland County, just one county to the north of Adams County. We'll need to take some time to evaluate whether that was our Nicholas or not.