Milo Kreider at Snyder Community

Snyder Community
Hale County, Texas

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Snyder Community Families

Milo G. (1886-1910) and Maude (Snyder) (1886-1964) Kreider

Twenty-two-year-old Milo Kreider, second-born of Jonas M. and Kate Stine Kreider, moved to Hale County with his father in the winter of 1908-9.¹ The two men built a barn on the Hale County land Jonas had bought on May 31, 1907. The 80-acre parcel was the east half of the southwest quarter of survey 1 in block D7, across the road from the Peter B. Snyder farm. Soon, Milo's mother and two of his sisters joined the two men in the Snyder Community.

Maude was the firstborn child of Peter B. and Ida Grabill Snyder. She was born near Cullom, Illinois in 1886. Her parents had been married at the Cullom Mennonite Church, and her father had been ordained there about 1889. Maude moved with her parents, four siblings, and grandparents John R. and Elizabeth Bally Snyder, to Jackson County, Minnesota, in 1894. I'm not sure what her formal education entailed, but Maude was the first teacher at the Snyder School in Texas.

Family stories say that one of Peter Snyder's motivations for moving to Texas and recruiting other Mennonite colonists to join him was to find spouses for his children. In 1910, there were three weddings in the Snyder family! First John S. Snyder married Bertha Kreider in April, then Maude married Bertha's brother Milo on May 5. Finally, on September 29, 1910, Orville Snyder and Ellen Hartzler were married.

I don't know when the "buggy picture" of Milo and Maude (right) was taken, but there are similar photos of Orville and Ellen as well as John and Bertha. I think they were taken in the Snyder Community on the same day!

Milo and Maude's wedding portrait (above) is from the Orville A. and (Lydia) Ellen Hartzler Snyder Collection. It was taken at a Cañon City, Colorado, studio. The couple had moved to Colorado soon after their wedding. In July 1910, Milo and Maude bought two house lots in South Cañon, Fremont County, Colorado.² Milo worked as a carpenter for contractors Lamb & Campbell. Unfortunately, in September, Maude contracted typhoid fever. While caring for his wife, Milo also became ill with typhoid fever. As Maude was convalescing, Milo died on October 22, 1910.³

Maude was pregnant at the time, and decided to return to her parents' home in Texas. Peter and Ida came from Plainview to help Maude, who took Milo's body to Plainview for burial.⁴ Jonas Kreider purchased a block of eight plots in the Plainview Cemetery; his son Milo was buried there. John R. Snyder, Peter Snyder's father, who passed away in 1920 after the Kreider family had returned to Ohio, was also buried in the Kreider block. The other six plots are unused.

Milo and Maude's daughter Ruth Katherine Kreider was born in Peter Snyder's house on March 27, 1911. Her aunt Grace Snyder was not yet four years old! The girls grew up as playmates. The mother-and-daughter portrait of Maude and Ruth at left is from the Orville A. and (Lydia) Ellen Hartzler Snyder Collection.

The big Snyder house was not full, even with extended family members living in it. A number of Mennonite families rented rooms at the Snyders' before building their own homes. In 1914, the Jonas Yoder family, from Kansas, "lived in the Snyder home, renting two upstairs bedrooms, using one for a living room and the other for a bedroom. They lived with the Snyders for about a year and a half until their house was ready."⁴ One of the Yoder boys, Stanley, was only a few months older than Ruth. Although the Yoder family left the Snyder Community in 1919, Stanley and Ruth became reacquainted as adults. They were married in November 1935. (Photo of Stanley and Ruth as kids in the Snyder Community, submitted by their daughter Beverly.

Maude and Ruth shared a bedroom in the large Snyder house for ten years. In 1921, when Peter and Ida Snyder moved to Hesston, Kansas, Maude and Ruth went with them. When the Snyders later went to Michigan to live with their daughter Grace and her family, Maude and Ruth stayed in Hesston for a time, but eventually also moved to Michigan.

1930 Federal Census - Hesston City, Emma Township, Harvey County, Kansas
Kreider, Maude M. - 43-year-old widow, born in Illinois, laundress at the college
Ruth K. - 19-year-old daughter, born in Texas

After Ruth married Stanley Yoder, Maude made her home with them. They lived in Michigan, then California. In 1951, Maude moved to Little Rock, Arkansas with Stanley and Ruth. After an extended illness, she died there on July 20, 1964, at the age of 77.⁵ She was the second of her siblings to pass away, her brother John S. Snyder being the first, in 1958.

Footnotes

1. Cor., "Plainview, Texas, Feb. 23, 1909." Gospel Herald (March 6, 1909): 777.

2. Warranty Deeds, Book 162:234, Fremont County Clerk and Recorder's Office, Cañon City, Colorado.

3. Milo Kreider obituary, The Cañon City Record, Cañon City, Colorado, 27 October, 1910, page 8, column 1.

4. Gladys Rastetter Mason, compiler, “Snyder Mennonite Colony cont.: The Jonas B. Yoder family,” section XV, page 1, unpublished manuscript, no date. The manuscript was submitted to the Snyder Community Project by Mrs. Carl Williams, Hale Center, TX, 14 Nov 2006, and was scanned by Bonnie Snyder Smith for the project’s virtual archives.

5. Maude Snyder Kreider obituary, Gospel Herald Vol. LVII (August 11,1964(: 702 or 703. [from on-line transcription: http://www.mcusa-archives.org/MennObits/64/aug1964.html]

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