Snyder Community
Hale County, Texas
Mennonite Colony
Disbanding
Most of the Mennonite colonists had left the Snyder Community by 1923, many of them returning to their former home communities. One by one, the "ministering brethren" who had preached at the Plainview Mennonite Church had sold their farms and relocated. Andrew Brenneman had moved his family back to Ohio in 1916. Jonas M. Kreider and his family had returned to Ohio in 1917. In 1918 or 1919, George B. Landis had gone. Peter B. Snyder had moved his family to Hesston, Kansas in 1921. The 1923 Mennonite Year-Book and Directory shows a membership of nine at Plainview but no minister or deacon is named.1 Joseph and Mary Hartzler, who returned to Ohio in January 1924, may have been the last of the Mennonite colonists named on this web site to leave Hale County. (Ferdinand and Amanda Rastetter stayed in Hale County. I don't know the departure dates for Milton and Barbara Near and their daughter and son-in-law, Henry and Lucy Landis.)
The Snyder Community historical marker suggests that poor weather conditions discouraged the Mennonite farmers. Dust storms, prairie fires, hail, and the severe droughts of 1915 and 1916 were cited. Life was hard for the Mennonite farmer colonists. Family stories indicate that some of the original colonists were unable to manage their farms without the help of sons who had married and left Texas. Others say the women missed extended family, friends, and their way of life in the places from which they had come. Interestingly, some who had come to Texas for health reasons, left for the same reason.
Footnotes:
1. Mennonite Year-Book and Directory (Mennonite Publishing House, Scottdale, Pennsylvania, 1923) p. 54. [It seems likely the Year-Book documented data for the year preceding publication, although even that could be out of date. The 1922 edition lists P. B. Snyder (minister) and John Snyder (deacon) at the Plainview Church. Peter Snyder had moved to Kansas in 1921 and John Snyder had died in the Snyder Community on September 10, 1920.]
copyright ©
2006, 2007, 2008 Bonnie Snyder Smith
