Snyder Community
Hale County, Texas

Post-Mennonite Years

The Snyder Community after 1923

    The departure of most of the Mennonite families by 1923 did not mean the end of the Snyder Community. Most of what I know about the Snyder Community after 1923 comes from issues of Hale County History and from Federal Census schedules. My early focus for this web site has been on the Mennonite colony, but I hope to develop this section as well. Submissions from visitors would be most welcome.

Families

    Data and stories from these families are included in the Hale County History issues about the Snyder Community. Some of them lived there before 1923 but because they bought property from departing Mennonite families, I've listed them in this section about the post-Mennonite years. Many of them stayed in the Snyder Community until death or moved into Plainview upon retirement.

Henry J. ELLIS and Veda THOMPSON

Ben M. HARRIS and Creola McANNELY

William JOHNSON and Lydia Clemintine SPRINGER

Owen Calvin McCLAIN and Lora Olivia HOPPER

John P. McGARR and Elsie HOXIE

Robert L. WILSON and Telitha Eugenia GRIFFITH

Church

    The Mennonite families had used the little school house as a church. By the time the large brick school was built (1923), there was no longer a Mennonite congregation in the Snyder Community. The second floor of the new building had an auditorium that was used by various church groups after 1923. According to Yreva Mai McClain Ellis, "Denominations rotated from Sunday to Sunday, but usually the whole community attended all the worship services, regardless of which denomination was 'in charge' that Sunday."¹

Footnote

1.Gladys Rastetter Mason, compiler, and Dorothy Watters Jamar, editor, "The Traveling School Building,"  Hale County History Vol. VII (May, 1977): p. 8.

 

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 copyright © 2006, 2007, 2008 Bonnie Snyder Smith