Recorded Signs of Existence

 

As we enter another season of religious holidays—both Passover and Easter—my mind turns in gratefulness to the records such religious institutions have provided us. As I chase after any signs of the existence of Nicholas Snider, my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather from the early 1800s, I realize I wouldn't even have what little I do know about him, if it weren't for the record keeping mandates of such organizations. 

I think also, unfortunately, of how much doubt I have that I've located the right Nicholas Snider in those baptismal records back in Adams County, Pennsylvania, before that German immigrant moved his family to Perry County, Ohio. Unlike the pristine handwriting preserved in some of the Catholic baptismal records I've checked for relatives back in their European homeland, the records from Conewago Chapel look like the handwritten scrawl one might expect from a cleric serving on the frontier—hurried, and not quite sure about whether, at a moment's notice, he and his little flock might have to flee for safety.

I think also about the little quirks I spot as I try to find each of Nicholas' children recorded in the church records at their birthplace. In 1812, for instance, Nicholas' wife was the only parent mentioned for the baptism of their daughter Maria Augusta. Where was Nicholas? And what was the meaning of the parenthetical note, "a catholica" after Elizabeth's name? I am not sure whether inspecting these oddities would lead me to clues, then answers, to the larger question of who, exactly, this Nicholas Snider actually was, and where he came from before landing in Pennsylvania. For all I know, they could be false leads, leading, well, nowhere.

A bit more information on what records in Adams County are still available from that time period would be helpful. It's time to broaden the search away from Nicholas, the individual, to examine who made up his community, and where they traveled to arrive at that settlement.

Goals Met —> Results Gained

 

If meeting goals means gaining results, how did my research goal for this month's DNA matches turn out? Since this is the time for my biweekly count, I have the answer: my mother-in-law's tree gained a lot.

Face it: connecting those DNA cousins to a family tree means verifying their position in the family. And that's not just by taking a lab's word for the connection. I need to know how these matches connect to the family tree. That requires collaboration by documents. Adding DNA matches to the collateral lines in a family tree can really make that tree grow quite bushy.

Reviewing the seventy eight DNA matches who connect to my mother-in-law's family through Nicholas Snider's son Jacob was just the first hurdle. Now, with the exception of two ThruLines candidates whose suggested tree includes a name twin instead of the right ancestor, I've completed the second goal: to verify the twenty eight DNA cousins who descend from Nicholas' son Lewis.

All that work has added up to one fact: I wouldn't have gained 485 more individuals in my mother-in-law's tree in the past two weeks if it hadn't been for that goal. A lot of work, yes—it feels good to know the job is done—but a significant addition to the family tree that might not have happened without the guidance of DNA testing and the tools available at the testing sites I've used.

My mother-in-law's tree now stands at 37,852 individuals, all documented by multiple records connecting them to the family. But even though my focus this month has shifted to my mother-in-law's family, don't think my own tree has languished in the meantime. Since I needed to close out the previous month's project, I did manage to add another seventeen individuals to my own tree from that project. That tree now includes 40,223 documented people. Until I return to working on my family's tree with my Twelve Most Wanted goals for the last three months of the year, I suspect that tree will not grow much more over the summer.

Gaining nearly five hundred new entries in my mother-in-law's line in the past two weeks, though, is a massive research pace. I doubt I'll keep going at that same rate, although I do have 155 more Snider DNA matches to review this month. We'll check on progress in another two weeks—and then, it will be high time for a well-deserved break.

Reaching Goals: Step by Step with Fortitude

 

It is likely just as true for genealogy as for any other endeavor: you can get more accomplished if you set research goals for yourself. The caveat, of course, is that you actually do the work you've set out for yourself.

In the case of my process of selecting my Twelve Most Wanted ancestors to research for the year, each monthly focus has sub-categories. One of those categories is to review, update, and catalogue my DNA matches for that specific ancestor. This may all seem elementary and routine—after all, you can't accomplish a goal without tackling it step by step—but there is another component I've lately discovered is also needed in this process: fortitude.

Take this month's research focus: my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas Snider. While a second great-grandfather may not seem that far removed from our own generation—I actually know some people who have lived to see their own second great-grandchildren—in my mother-in-law's case, her family's generations were long. By that, I mean there was a lot of time elapsed between generations, especially when it came to those Catholic families with many children. A youngest child of a youngest child could mean generations that were separated by forty years or more.

Bottom line for all that: Nicholas Snider had a lot of descendants to trace. And there were quite a few of them in the past decade who have become fascinated with DNA testing. To put some numbers on this detail, my DNA test for this line—provided courtesy of my husband for his mother—currently has 261 matches tied to Nicholas Snider's line.

Let's step back to that research goal for this month: Nicholas Snider. If part of that goal is to verify all those DNA matches, I've got a lot of work ahead of me. Granted, part of the step-by-step process for the past ten years has been to research each of the descendants of this ancestral founding immigrant, Nicholas Snider. There are a lot of names—plus documentation to verify—already in place in my mother-in-law's tree, thanks to that decade-long, step by step process. But that is just the foundational work. Next is the process of going through each match listed on Thru-Lines (for those Ancestry DNA matches), to verify their connection to this most recent common ancestor.

My genealogy happy dance for this weekend is that I completed the review of all DNA matches who link to Nicholas' eldest son, Jacob. When I started this project at the beginning of April, that meant reviewing eighty DNA matches—but something happened along the way: the number of DNA matches inexplicably reduced by one, then by another, leaving the count for my task now at seventy eight matches to verify.

Still, that's seventy eight people with records to verify. Yet, step by step, I got through the process. True, there were five I simply couldn't verify. That may be due to insufficient access to records—some states' records are more available online than others—but it could also be owing to mistakes in the match's own tree. I did spot a couple matches for whom documentation didn't seem to support the trees from which ThruLines draws its information.

One helpful tactic I tried this month was to start work on this DNA match list from the bottom rather than from the top. I had always done so from the top in the past, but I was concerned that I would run out of steam before finishing—and besides, I would simply be repeating the process if I started from the top once again. So I reversed engines and headed to the bottom of the pile this time.

Another approach was to keep a separate list of each match I completed, to ensure I hadn't skipped any—and, as I realized was also important, to note each "match" for whom I couldn't supply documentation or find verifiable connections.

Once at the top of the list, having completed the process for each descendant of Jacob Snider, it was time to move on to the next son of Nicholas Snider—but which one? I toyed with the idea of moving to the next largest grouping—that would be the descendants of Simon Snider, for whom I'll need to tackle sixty DNA matches—but decided on a different approach. Rather than jump around on the readout—not to mention, deal with another daunting number—I opted to simply go down the list as it was provided by ThruLines. 

With that, my next grouping to work on is the twenty eight DNA matches linked to Nicholas' son Lewis. Twenty eight seems like such a breeze after eighty, giving me a psychological lift from the grind of the last series. But strangely enough, working on this different set of descendants brings its own "flavor." I've already spotted two ThruLines charts which simply can't be possible. One was a case of confusing two different men with the same first name but differing middle names; the other will require building out the proposed match's own tree, as ThruLines connected that tree with an ancestral woman for whom I can find no marriage record.

Despite the different problems I'm encountering with this second ancestral line, I've already completed eight of the twenty eight listed DNA matches for Lewis Snider's line. And the next son of Nicholas after that will be Aloysius Joseph Snider, who represents only four DNA matches. Each segment completed brings me step by step closer to finishing this research goal. Though I had my doubts at the beginning of the month that I would completely tackle this pile of 261 DNA matches, getting over that first hurdle of nearly eighty matches was certainly an encouragement.

The Snider Will

 

Sometimes, just looking at the details of an ancestor's will can help connect the dots between the current generation of the decedent's offspring and relatives belonging to earlier generations. It is not so much a case of looking at the names of those who will inherit parts of their father's estate, but a matter of examining the connection with witnesses—and sometimes executors—named on the document.

In Nicholas Snider's case, he drew up his will in Perry County, Ohio, and signed it on April 17, 1854. Best I can tell, he died just shy of one year later. His will was presented in court on April 27, 1855. In the brief document, his son Conrad was named first, being the son with whom Nicholas had been living at the time of his death—or at least at the most recent census. Also mentioned in the will were Nicholas' unmarried daughter Catherine as well as his married daughter "Mary" (baptized Maria Augusta), along with several sons.

Looking at the names listed in the will for Nicholas' sons, I can find Jacob, the eldest, then Joseph (being Aloysius Joseph, as the first son by that name was said to have died at sea), and Lewis. Simon was named as executor, but there were no bequests made in the document for him. There was no mention of either Peter or Andrew, Nicholas Snider's two remaining sons, though Peter was certainly alive at the time, being mentioned as a son of Nicholas in a 1902 book, A Biographical Record of Fairfield and Perry Counties, Ohio.

It was the others named in the will that had me wondering, though. In drawing up a will, it was not uncommon to see a close family member of the father's generation called upon to ensure that the provision of the will be attended to faithfully. Sometimes, such a person might be the widow's brother, for instance, but in other cases, a trusted business partner might be called upon.

In the case of Nicholas Snider, he chose one of his sons to serve as executor. For the witnesses to his will, he asked two men to sign: John Lidey and David Church. Both of those names stump me. I am fairly certain neither of them were connected to Nicholas' wife's family—and at any rate, she had already died, so there was no need to protect her interests in her widowhood. 

The question still comes up in my mind, though: when Nicholas moved his family from Pennsylvania—even by way of Maryland—was there no one from among his own family to make the long trip to Ohio with him? I'm still looking for familiar surnames, but records on this end of his life are too far removed from the time period when any other family members might still be alive. Perhaps returning to those earliest census records might help spot possible connections in either 1810 back in Adams County, Pennsylvania, or 1820 after the family removed to Perry County, Ohio.

Meanwhile, Looking Ahead . . .

 

What happens when eight children of eight siblings go on to have multiple children of their own—and those are just the grandparents of the current generation? That's what has got me wrapped up this week: connecting the DNA matches of Nicholas Snider's descendants to the right places in my mother-in-law's family tree. 

It hasn't been a smooth ride. And looking ahead, I see many more hours of work before I even get close to finishing out the nearly eighty DNA matches for just Nicholas Snider's oldest son Jacob.

While I realize that looking ahead won't necessarily produce information on the founding immigrant ancestor's origin, I keep hoping these strands of DNA will lead to a family line which did preserve some of the oldest stories. A family Bible, perhaps, or an heirloom passed down from the passage from Germany—or wherever it was that Nicholas and Elizabeth originated.

True, some of the shared stories can turn out to be family myths. We've already seen that with one great-grandson's biography. Out of the thirty six DNA matches I've reviewed so far from son Jacob's line, no one else has come up with any stories—but I'm less that halfway done with just that eldest son. But if any descendants would yield the hoped-for stories, it would likely be either that eldest son's family, or perhaps the lone daughter who did marry and have children.

The task is admittedly tiresome. It involves not just laying down links to DNA matches in the family tree, but verifying connections by attaching records—not just one record, but whole series of records, such as each decennial census record. Work on some family lines turns out to proceed smoothly, but other lines hit snarls and tangles with unexpected deaths, trauma, and tragedies. You get a sense of a family's wellbeing, just going through the brief documentary overview of each member's life. I may not know where Nicholas Snider came from, but I'm getting a clearer sense of where his family headed to over the ensuing generations.

While Nicholas spent a few years of his life living in Pennsylvania and eventually settling in Ohio, where my mother-in-law's family remained, I am now following subsequent branches of Nicholas' son Jacob's descendants who saw fit to migrate further to Iowa, and ultimately to Minnesota. Some, even, continued the move westward to arrive in California, not far from where I live now. To think that third and fourth cousins live within a commute drive of our home here—while sharing roots that reach back to Ohio and Pennsylvania almost two hundred years ago—does boggle the mind. Those winding migration pathways possess a fascinating pull of their own. 

Revisiting Old Resources

 

When stuck on brick wall ancestors, sometimes I find it helpful to revisit old resources to see if perhaps I had missed a detail from the record the first time around. This month, I'm focusing on one particular brick wall ancestor: my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather, Nicholas Snider. Since nothing from his records in Perry County, Ohio—this German immigrant's final home—helped me trace his origin, perhaps documents from his previous home in Pennsylvania might be worth a second examination. For that, we need to direct our attention to Adams County, Pennsylvania. 

If Nicholas Snider came to Ohio from Pennsylvania, what makes me so sure he came from Adams County? It is thanks to one particular record set that I find indications of this possible stopping point: the baptismal records preserved from a Catholic Church known as Conewago Chapel. Officially called the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, the church was built in the mid-1780s.

Fortunately for our purposes, transcriptions of the baptismal records from Conewago Chapel preserve some of the information I'm seeking. In addition, thanks to the work of institutions like the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, and their partnership with Ancestry.com, I not only have a searchable resource which includes the digitized version of the actual Conewago Chapel baptism entries, but an index by county of all Pennsylvania churches included in Ancestry's collection, "Pennsylvania and New Jersey, U.S., Church and Town Records, 1669-2013."

 Thus, I can find the record for Aloysius Josephus "Shnider" who was baptized there on March 25, 1810, and for his sister Maria Augusta "Schneider" on June 20, 1812. I've noted each child's sponsors—for Joseph it was Joseph and Mary Hildebrand, and for Maria, Catherine Gibbons—in case those surnames become important clues in the future to possible family connections.

As for the Adams County connection for the Snider family, I want to dig deeper, in case I can find other records which might reveal further details on Nicholas and where he originated. After all, though we have the family listed in the 1810 census there, reaching back another decade leads me...nowhere at this point.

Don't Believe Everything You Read

 

It began with a hint from Ancestry.com for my mother-in-law's second great-grandfather Nicholas Snider. Whether he actually spelled his surname that way—or Schneider, or Snyder, both of which I've also seen in records—I can't tell. But sometime during the year of his death, according to this hint, his heirs appeared in court to make a claim based on his Revolutionary War service.

Keeping in mind the Revolutionary War story I had already encountered from the biographical sketch of another descendant of Nicholas, I was all eyes to read the faded and blurry text of this handwritten court entry. Who wouldn't have appreciated a hint like that?!

Taking a first glance at the documents, I spotted some details which agreed with what I already knew about this ancestor: that by the 1855 date of that document, Nicholas was already deceased, as was his wife. Encouragingly, his wife's name on the court record was listed as Elizabeth—a detail which didn't initially disturb me, for the 1850 census had entered her name that same way, despite her full given name being Anna Elizabeth.

Even the son named as heir in this record, who was bringing his petition to court that day, was Jacob, same as our Nicholas Snider's eldest son. That, however, was where the similarities ended.

I've learned long ago that, despite the ease of genealogy websites' habit of providing the breadcrumbs of "hints" to guide us along our research path, one must always—repeat after me, "Always. Always. ALWAYS"—look at the document. With this instance, though, I'll provide an addendum: look at the entire document, not just the first few paragraphs. There are other families out there, believe it or not, who named their children the same names your own ancestors preferred.

I didn't need to read much further when I realized that having another son named Nicholas, while a likely choice for a father by that same name, was not in the records for our Nicholas. Yes, he had many sons—eight that I can find so far—but none of them became his father's namesake.

Furthermore, while our Nicholas did live in Pennsylvania at one point—the location where this petition was brought to court—he certainly didn't die there. As far as I can tell, of his sons who lived to adulthood, all traveled west with him to Perry County, Ohio.

So, the two sons of Nicholas and Elizabeth, who filed their complaint in Crawford County, Pennsylvania, on March 22, 1855? Though they claimed that their father was a soldier in the Revolutionary War, their father was certainly not our Nicholas Snider of Perry County, Ohio, even though he also once lived in Pennsylvania. 

How did that Ancestry hint find its way to my family tree? I suspect it's because several other Ancestry subscribers saw that same document and did the easy thing: click to add it to their tree without reading the thirty six pages of documentation appended to the case file inspecting the original pension claim.

Since I did take a look, I discovered a few interesting points. First discovery was that the Nicholas in question, who died in 1828, was neither of the Snyder Patriots listed in the DAR website. However, even in the packet of documents in the rejected pension file, it seemed that sometimes the applicant was confused with the DAR Patriot who died in 1786.

More to my current question was a letter in the pension packet written in 1916 to the Honorable Halvor Steenerson. At the time of the letter, Halvor Steenerson was a member of Congress representing Crookston in Polk County, Minnesota—the very place where Louis Edward Gossman of that 1897 biographical sketch which prompted this search also lived and worked. Apparently, at the time of the letter, Louis Gossman was then serving as judge.

The letter in response to the congressman's query on behalf of the judge confirmed the same details I had found by reading the entire pension packet: that the Nicholas whose rejected application was on file was a man who died in Pennsylvania in 1828. Apparently, by 1916 Judge Gossman had had second thoughts about that family tale as well, and was seeking some verification—long after, I might add, he had offered that family story for his published biographical sketch.

Just in case the Honorable Steenerson's status wasn't sufficient to round up some solid evidence, I did further reading on Revolutionary War pension applications and bounty land warrant records. A quick and easy index to applicants by state revealed no Nicholas Snyder mentioned from the state of Ohio—especially none from Perry County, home of our Nicholas Snider. But I suspect that even if the judge himself, a descendant of our Nicholas, came to seek verification of that family story in later years, perhaps it would serve us well to remember that old advice: don't believe everything you read—or hear. It may just be a family myth.