Snyder Community
Hale County, Texas
Snyder Community Families
David Jay (1890-1941) and Ida (Kreider) (1893-1983) Hartzler
David Jay Hartzler was the oldest of
Joseph K. and Mary Gingrich Hartzler's six children. Born near Holmesville,
Holmes County, Ohio, February 15, 1890, David moved to Texas with
his parents in 1907, when he was 17 years old. Ida was born in Medina County,
Ohio, on September 3, 1893, the daughter of Jonas M. and Catherine Stine
Kreider. When she was 15, she moved to the Snyder Community where her father
became the third minister. Dave and Ida were married January 1, 1912. Preacher
Andrew Brenneman performed the ceremony in the Snyder Community.
According to Pauline Hartzler Shie, Earnest E. Miller, the Snyder school teacher
during the 1911-1912 term, and Susie Snyder, daughter of
Peter and Ida Snyder, "stood up" with the couple. Click
here
to see a portrait of the four. That photo and the wedding portrait at left are from the
Orville A. and (Lydia) Ellen Hartzler Snyder Collection.
Dave was twenty-one years older than his youngest sibling Alta. In this
snapshot (right), from the Vita Hartzler Deneke Collection, probably taken in the spring
of 1912, Dave posed
with his sister Alta (middle) and his brother Paul (right), both of whom were born in the Snyder Community.
While living in the Snyder Community, Dave and Ida had three children: Velma (1913), Pauline (1914), and Ralph (1918). The portrait of Velma and Pauline Hartzler (below, left) is from the Pauline Hartzler Shie Collection.
The snapshot (below, right), from the Vita Hartzler Deneke Collection, shows Ralph Hartzler with his grandmother Mary Gingerich Hartzler, on a farm in the Snyder Community.
Alta told me her older brother's family had lived in a small house on the northwest corner of the section containing the Snyder farm (D7, Survey 10). That's where Velma and Pauline were born. Then sometime before Ralph was born, the family moved close to the Joel Guengerich farm (D7, Survey 12). Neil Hartzler, who was close to his grandmother Ida while he was growing up, had the impression that Dave had been a "sharecropper" who farmed someone else's land. Perhaps he farmed acreage belonging to one of the Illinois Mennonites who owned land in the same section as Joel Guengerich's 160 acres.
In 1918, Dave and his neighbor Joel Guengerich held a farm sale together, in
preparation for leaving Texas. This handbill (left) for the sale is in six
pieces now, but Ida had saved it for many years. Ralph Hartzler has kept it
since his mother's death in 1983 and submitted it for use here.
The Hartzler family relocated in Ohio, near relatives in Wayne County. Velma started school in Rittman, probably in 1919, but was sick and missed so much school that she had to start over the next year when the family had moved into the Orrville district. That meant that sisters Velma and Pauline were in the same grade throughout their school years.1 The 1920 census shows the family in Milton Township, Wayne County. David's occupation was farm laborer. Daughter Vita was born in December 1920. The family moved again and Vita went to first grade in Wadsworth. By 1930, the family lived on West Chestnut Street in Orrville.
David died at a young age, just six weeks after the birth of his first grandchild. "On Sunday morning, March 23, 1941, at the time when people were busy getting ready for the Lord's Day services, he was unexpectedly and suddenly called to leave the scenes of earth for the realities of the world beyond; aged 51 y. 1 m. 8 d." Ida married Carl Fulton in 1943 and lived to be almost 90. Her grandchildren knew her as Grandma Fulton, of course.
David Jay Hartzler's obituary, Gospel Herald, Vol. XXXIV, No. 4, April 24, 1941, page 94 or 95. See transcription.
Ida B. Kreider Hartzler Fulton's obituary, Gospel Herald, Vo. 76, Number 44, November 1, 1983, page 766. See transcription.
Footnote
1. Telephone interview with Candice Shie Watson (Winchester, Virginia), by Bonnie Snyder Smith, 2 July 2006. Notes held by Bonnie Snyder Smith. Mrs. Watson is the granddaughter of David and Ida Hartzler and the daughter of Pauline Hartzler Shie, who was born in the Snyder Community in 1914.
copyright ©
2007 Bonnie Snyder Smith
