A granddaughter of a twice-wounded veteran of the American Civil War and the third-born daughter of a pioneer in the American telephone industry, Catharine Rebecka (Snyder) Courtney was a twentieth-century success story.

Born six years after the dawn of a new century, and known to family and friends as “Kitty” and then the more fashionable “Kit,” she arrived during an era in which medical care providers across the United States routinely failed to address the dangers faced by women during pregnancy and the shockingly high infant mortality rates which persisted well into that new century, and which still, sadly, are failing to be addressed in many parts of America in the twenty-first century. According to the late American demographer Ben Wattenberg, in 1900, “more than one of six American infants … died before the age of one, and mothers were 100 times more likely to die in childbirth than they were” in the year 2000.

But Kit’s mother was a survivor who made sure that her daughters would be survivors, too. Women of great faith, they spent their formative years attending the Christ Evangelical Congregational Church in the Village of Lavelle in Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, where meetings were often held by a local chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU), one of the first organizations in the United States to focus on social justice issues, including the widespread abstention from alcohol and drug use to reduce domestic violence and other forms of violence against women and children, the creation of kindergarten classes in public schools, the establishment of eight-hour work days and a system of equal pay for equal work, health and safety protections for consumers of food, beverages and medicines, and prison reform.

A working woman during a time when women rarely worked outside of their homes, Kit (Snyder) Courtney went on to become a trusted confidante in corporate America who could be relied upon by business executives to keep their records accurate and up to date and their schedules running like clockwork.

Formative Years

Born as Catharine Rebecka Snyder in the Village of Lavelle, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania on 25 August 1906, Kit Snyder was the third daughter and fifth child of John Hartranft Snyder and Minnie Rebecka (Strohecker) Snyder. Her mother, Minnie, was the daughter of Samuel and Annie (Troutman) Strohecker, of Gordon, Schuylkill County. Her father, John, was the son of American Civil War veteran Timothy Matthias Snyder, who had served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and Catharine (Boyer) Snyder.

* Note: Kit Snyder also decended from American Revolutionary War Patriot Johann Nicholas Schneider, according to a membership application that was filed by her younger brother, John Sylvester Snyder, and later approved by the National Society of the Sons of the American Revolution during the 1940s

During the early 1900s, Kit Snyder attended the Lavelle School in Lavelle with her older siblings, Timothy Peter Snyder (1898-1913), Nona Mae Snyder (1900-1987), Helen Corrine Snyder (1901-1988), and John Sylvester Snyder (1904-1969). All had been born at the Snyder family home on Main Street in Lavelle, with Tim having been born roughly two years before the end of the previous century, on 1 May 1898, and Nona having been born shortly after the dawn of the twentieth, on 29 January 1900. Corrine and John were born, respectively on 9 September 1901 and 2 May 1904.

* Note: Although born with the given name of “Helen,” Kit’s older sister, Corrine, disliked her given name, and gradually began calling herself “H. Corrine Snyder,” a name she would come to use for business purposes as an adult. Family and friends knew her as “Corrine.” Those closest to her called her “Eenie.”

In 1908, the Snyder siblings welcomed the birth of another sister, Lillian Estelle Snyder (1908-2001), on 30 September 1908. She would go on to become a head nurse at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts and a clinical nursing instructor at the Allentown Hospital School of Nursing before working for the pharmaceutical company Merck Sharpe & Dohme in Baltimore, Maryland.

Around this same time, the family’s patriarch, John Hartranft Snyder, co-founded the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, which was officially incorporated in 1908. John H. Snyder was subsequently credited with installing the first telephone lines in the Lavelle Valley, as well as in rural areas south of the city of Ashland in Schuylkill County. During the firm’s early days, its main communications center was based at the Snyder family home on Main Street in Lavelle.

In addition to John H. Snyder’s involvement with the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, John Snyder’s wife, Minnie, and their oldest children operated a dry goods store from the ground floor of the Snyder family home in Lavelle, which was located directly across from the Lavelle School.

By 1910, the increasingly prosperous Snyder family was welcoming the arrival of another child — Chester Hartranft Snyder (1910-1983). Born on 17 October 1910, he would ultimately grow up to become an insurance company executive.

But that progress would be abruptly halted when the Snyders experienced the first of two tragedies. In 1911, the Snyder family home in Lavelle was destroyed by fire. The family members subsequently rebuilt their home at the same site on Main Street, but were required to relocate to Ashland during the construction. As a result, the family underwent several years of hardship.

A Heartbreaking End

As if that devastating fire had not been tragic enough, Kit’s older brother, Timothy P. Snyder, was critically injured two years later during a coal mining-related accident. Just nine days shy of his fifteenth birthday, he fell from a coal train while working as a laborer at the Potts Colliery in Locustdale, Schuylkill County on 22 April 1913. The train, which was in motion at the time, ran over his legs. His battered body was taken from the colliery to the Ashland Hospital in Ashland, but he died while en route, at 2:30 that same afternoon.

Snyder family records and oral histories confirm that the teenaged Timothy P. Snyder had taken a man-sized job at the colliery to help his family make ends meet during the rebuilding of their home following the 1911 fire. He remains at rest with his parents, John Hartranft Snyder and Minnie Rebecka (Strohecker) Snyder, at the Snyder family plot at the Citizens’ Cemetery in Lavelle, Pennsylvania.

Roughly four years later, the final Snyder

sibling–Willard Emery Snyder (1917-1972)–was born in Lavelle on 31 July 1917. Like his father before him, Willard E. Snyder would have a long relationship with the telephone industry. He would also have a close bond with Corrine Snyder for more than half a century because she was largely responsible for helping to raise him while her parents managed the Snyder family’s businesses and kept the family afloat during an increasingly challenging economy.

It was Willard, in fact, who created Corrine’s nickname. Unable to pronounce her name (“KO-reen’) correctly as a toddler, he called her “Eenie,” and it stuck, becoming a beloved moniker for a much-beloved sister and aunt.

On 8 August 1918, the Snyder siblings’ paternal grandmother, Catharine (Boyer) Snyder, the widow of American Civil War veteran Timothy Matthias Snyder, died at her home at 1131 Church Street in Reading, Pennsylvania. In her late sixties at the time of her death from complications related to pulmonary tuberculosis, Catharine’s remains were transported to the Brock Cemetery in Ashland, Schuylkill County, for burial beside her husband on 11 August.

Perseverance in the Face of Adversity

As a chief stockholder and secretary of the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, Snyder family patriarch John Hartranft Snyder continued to manage the firm’s expansion throughout the teen and early adult years of the older Snyder siblings.

By 1920, Kit Snyder was still residing at home in Lavelle with her parents. Also residing at the Snyders’ home were her siblings: Nona, H. Corrine, John S., Lillian E., Chester H., and Willard E. Snyder. According to that year’s federal census, Nona was a nineteen-year-old “Saleslady” in a “Clothing Store,” and was the only one of her siblings working that year. Their father, John H. Snyder, was described as a “Carpenter” who was employed in the “Coal Mines.” All of the Snyder children, except for Willard (but including Nona), were described as having attended school since the beginning of that school year.

That same year, the Snyder sisters’ mother and aunts, as well as other women across the United States of America who were twenty-one years of age or older, were granted the right to vote, following the ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution on 18 August 1920.

By 1926, Kitty and Eenie Snyder had moved out of the Snyder family home in Lavelle and had relocated to the city of Reading in neighboring Berks County, Pennsylvania. On 26 August of that year, Reading newspapers were reporting that “Miss Nona Snyder, of Lavelle,” was “spending time with her sisters, Misses Kitty and Corrine, of Bethany Church, Reading.” Both Kitty and Corrine were living together in an apartment at 1037 North 4th Street in Reading. Eenie was employed as a bookkeeper, while “Kitty” worked as a stenographer.

By the winter of 1927, their younger sister, Lillian, had also moved out of the Snyder family home in Lavelle. Enrolled in the Reading Hospital School of Nursing on 5 February 1927, she resided in Reading with Eenie and Kitty at their apartment. Following her graduation on 9 May 1929, Lillian then pursued additional training at the same nursing school, and was also appointed to the faculty of the Reading Hospital School of Nursing as a nursing instructor.

And then another unfathomable tragedy struck. On 28 October 1929, the Dow Jones (America’s stock market) suffered a thirteen percent loss, followed by a twelve percent decline the next day, sparking a worldwide financial disaster that would ultimately come to be known as the Great Depression. “By mid-November, the Dow had lost almost half its value,” according to historians at the United States Federal Reserve.

The slide continued through the summer of 1932, when the Dow closed at 41.22, its lowest value of the twentieth century, 89 percent below its peak. The Dow did not return to its pre-crash heights until November 1954.

As the Great Depression deepened, two of Kitty Snyder’s older, umarried siblings continued to live at home with their parents in Lavelle, according to the 1930 federal census. Like so many other Americans, Nona Snyder was unemployed, but her brother, John Sylvester Snyder, was bringing home wages from his work as a lumber company laborer. Their twelve-year-old brother, Willard, was still a student at a public school in their county. Their father, John H. Snyder, continued to toil away as a coal mine laborer.

Eenie, Kitty and Lillian, however, were still living and working in Reading. According to the 1930 federal census for the city of Reading’s Fourteenth Ward, they were lodgers residing at the home of sixty-seven-year-old widow Emma Beyerle, which was located at 807 North 5th Street. Eenie was a bookkeeper who worked for the Jewel Tea Company, the firm that would employ her for thirty-four years, while Lillian was confirmed to be a registered nurse. Kitty was employed by an iron company as a stenographer. (Her 1936 application for a United States Social Security Number noted that she was an employee of the Reading Iron Company.)

According to historians at the FDR Library & Museum, “By the time that FDR [Franklin Delano Roosevelt] was inaugurated on March 4, 1933, the banking system had collapsed” and “nearly 25% of the labor force was unemployed.”

Factories were shut down, farms and homes were lost to foreclosure, mills and mines were abandoned, and people went hungry. The resulting lower incomes meant the further inability of the people to spend or to save their way out of the crisis, thus perpetuating the economic slowdown in a seemingly never-ending cycle….

In the First Hundred Days of his new administration, FDR pushed through Congress a package of legislation designed to lift the nation out of the Depression. Roosevelt declared a “banking holiday” to end the runs on the banks and created new federal programs by so-called “alphabet agencies.” For example, the AAA (Agricultural Adjustment Administration) stabilized farm prices and thus saved farms. The CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) provided jobs to unemployed youths while improving the environment. The TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) provided jobs and brought electricity to rural areas for the first time. The FERA (Federal Emergency Relief Administration) and the WPA (Works Progress Administration) provided jobs to thousands of unemployed Americans in construction and arts projects across the country. The NRA (National Recovery Administration) sought to stabilize consumer goods prices….

Those efforts came to be known as President Roosevelt’s “New Deal for the American People.” By 1938, the United States Treasury Department was funding large-scale public infrastructure improvements, including the construction of new railroad lines and new housing for Americans who were homeless or living in residential homes or apartments that were unsafe, which was heartening news for Kitty’s older brother, John Sylvester Snyder, who had relocated to Northumberland County to begin what would become his lifelong vocation as a construction industry executive.

Around this same time, Kitty’s sister, Nona Snyder, also made the decision to move out of the Snyder family home in Lavelle to begin her own journey as a business professional. By 1938, Nona was making a new life for herself in neighboring Lebanon County.

* Note: Still involved with the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company to some degree over the next few years, the Snyder sisters’ father, John H. Snyder, would gradually begin to curtail his business efforts as he fell ill with cancer. The operations of Lavelle Telephone and Telegraph were subsequently connected to those of the Bell Telephone Company’s facility in Ashland. After forty-seven years of transmission, control of the entire firm was then transferred to Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania in 1956.

1940s

Having begun her professional life as a young woman, Kit Snyder was employed for most of her adulthood as a stenographer or private secretary to corporate executives in the iron and steel industry. Continuing to live together with two of her still-unmarried sisters during the opening months of 1940, Kit was documented as a flatmate of Eenie and Lillian Snyder on 1 April of that year. Now residing at 713-1/2 North 5th Street in Reading, Eenie was documented by a federal census enumerator as having earned eleven hundred dollars for her previous fifty-two weeks of work (roughly twenty-five thousand U.S. dollars in 2025), Kit was confirmed to be employed as a secretary at a hardware store and Lillian was described as a registered nurse who worked in private duty setting.

Sometime in early 1941, however, their living situation radically changed when Kit and her sister Lillian (both of whom were now in their early to mid-thirties), chose to relocate Boston, Massachusetts. That big move enabled Lillian to join the nursing staff of the nation’s renowned Peter Bent Brigham Hospital. Subsequently engaged in providing medical care to women and children at the hospital, she also trained nursing students and staff as part of national defense preparations for America’s increasing involvement in World War II.

Meanwhile, Kit found work in Boston as a private secretary for the A. M. Byers Company, which would soon become the largest wrought iron producer in the United States.

*Note: Although both Kit and Lillian Snyder relocated to Boston in 1941, they did not reside together, at least initially. Lillian lived in a dormitory that was operated by Peter Bent Brigham Hospital for its nursing students and staff, while Kit resided alone in an apartment at 40 Berkeley Street, according to a Boston city directory. By June of 1942, newspapers were reporting the federal government’s directive that hospital and university nursing programs train fifty-five thousand student nurses between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five, by 1 September of that same year, to replace registered nurses who would be reassigned to “battlefield duty.”

Around this same time, Eenie Snyder, now in her early forties, also departed from Reading–transferred by her employer, the Jewel Tea Company, to a bookkeeping position in Lehigh County. On 1 October 1942, Eenie was documented by the United States government as a resident of an apartment building located at 949 North 19th Street in Allentown. The form on which this address was listed was handwritten by the Snyder sisters’ youngest brother, Willard, in his capacity as an electrician’s mate with a Seabee battalion of the United States Naval Reserves.

Based on entries for Lillian and Kit in a 1943 edition of the Boston city directory, the two Snyder sisters moved into a new place together sometime in late 1942 or early 1943. By the summer of 1943, they were residing in a large apartment building located at 6 Autumn Street, near Lillian’s hospital job in Boston. (Kit was still working for A. M. Byers at this time.)

The first years of the 1940s would prove to be difficult ones for the Snyder sisters, however, as their father, John H. Snyder, became increasingly frail due to stomach cancer. On 22 May 1944, he was forced to undergo major surgery at the Geisinger Hospital in Danville, Pennsylvania. As his condition worsened, Seaman Willard Snyder was brought home from his duty station on Midway Island in the Pacific Theater of World War II for a thirty-day leave of absence to visit their dying father.

Kit’s flatmate, Lillian Snyder, then resigned her position as a head nurse at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston around this same time, “to come back home to stay with her parents,” according to “Lavelle Nurse Home,” a news report that was published in the 18 July 1944 edition of the Mount Carmel Item. In doing so, Lillian ended a promising career with one of the leading academic medical centers in the United States, causing her to spend the remainder of her nursing career striving to regain the power and prestige she had accrued during one of the happiest and most fulfilling periods of her life.

Sadly, the surgery their father had endured was not enough to save him; on 5 August 1944, John Hartranft Snyder succumbed to cancer-related complications–just weeks after Willard Snyder had returned to his duties on Midway Island. Following his passing at the Snyder family home in Lavelle, John H. Snyder was laid to rest at the Citizens’ Cemetery in Lavelle, in the same family plot where the Snyder siblings’ older brother, Timothy P. Snyder, had been buried after his tragic, fatal accident in 1913.

Kit, who had returned to Boston, still worked as a private secretary for the A. M. Byers Co. and still lived in the apartment she had previously shared with her sister, Lillian (at 6 Autumn Street), while Lillian remained behind at the Snyder family home in Lavelle to care for their grieving mother.

* Note: On 1 October of that same year (1944), Eenie Snyder was documented by the United States government as still residing in her apartment at 949 North 19th Street in Allentown.

Soldiering on in their respective military and civilian capacities, their sadness and collective sense of fear increased, as it did for so many of their fellow Americans, when they read the shocking news that U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had died on 12 April 1945. Although they understood, intellectually, that there would be a smooth transition of power at their nation’s highest level, as Vice President Harry Truman became the next president of the United States, they worried about what might happen next as their younger brother, Willard Snyder, and other sailors and soldiers continued their fight to bring an end to World War II under the leadership of a new commander-in-chief. Joining with others across the nation who mourned the late president, they read news coverage of his death and funeral, which included memorable images in Life Magazine and other publications that were created by renowned photographers Wayne F. Miller, Ed Clark, et. al.

Their fears gradually morphed into halting feelings of hope, however, as word spread that an end to the global conflict might be closer than they had dared dream. Buoyed by a radio broadcast on 8 May 1945, during which senior U.S. military officials proclaimed that Victory in Europe had finally been achieved, they joined with other Pennsylvanians in V-Day celebrations that were tempered, for them, by the knowledge that their youngest brother was still in harm’s way in the war’s Pacific Theater of operations.

During the summer of 1945, the Snyder sisters were finally able to relax as radio stations and newspapers announced, in mid-August, that the Empire of Japan had surrendered and, on 2 September, had formally signed the Japanese Instrument of Surrender, sparking V-J (Victory over Japan) celebrations across Pennsylvania and worldwide. They would see their youngest brother soon.

That reunification process began on 18 October 1945, when Seaman Willard Snyder ended his tour of duty on Midway Island. Shipped with other Seabees to San Francisco, he arrived on 26 October and was stationed there until ordered to return to the East Coast. Part way through his trip home, however, he became ill during a stopover in Olathe, Kansas. Redirected by a superior officer to the U.S. Naval Hospital in Great Lakes, Illinois, he was admitted there on 9 November, and received roughly two weeks of treatment for malaria, which he had contracted while in service to the nation. Subsequently transported to the U.S. Naval Personal Separation Center in Bainbridge, Maryland during the third week of November, he was honorably discharged on 24 November 1945, and allowed to return to his childhood home on Main Street in Lavelle, where he would continue to reside with his older sister, Lillian for the next several years.

Still residing in Boston, Massachusetts two years later, Kit Snyder married steel industry salesman Charles Francis Courtney, Jr. in that city on 12 July 1947. Following their honeymoon, they began to make a new life together in the city of Lancaster, Pennsylvania.

1950s

Still residing in Lancaster with her husband, Charles Courtney, at the dawn of the 1950s, Kit (Snyder) Courtney lived with him in an apartment building at 912 New Holland Avenue. Her husband, “Charlie,” was employed as a salesman for steel manufacturer Peter A. Frasse & Co. Inc., and was active involved in numerous professional, fraternal and civic organizations, including the American Society of Metalurgical Engineers and chapters of the Elks and Shrine.

Their happy times were cut short, however, when Charlie died, leaving Kit as a grief-stricken, forty-four-year-old widow. Felled by an acute coronary occlusion on 1 December 1950, he had passed away at the Lancaster General Hospital at 1:01 a.m. on 2 December. Subsequently cremated, his remains were later inurned in the columbarium at the Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading.

By April of 1950, Kit’s older sister, Eenie Snyder, was still working for Jewel Tea as a bookkeeper and was still living alone in apartment number two at 930 North Nineteenth Street in Allentown, where she had resided since the late 1940s. That same month, a federal census enumerator confirmed that their brother, Willard, was the head of a household which lived in the Snyder siblings’ childhood home on Main Street in Lavelle. Also residing with him were his wife, Genevieve, their daughter, Judy, and Willard’s sister, Lillian, and their mother, Minnie. Lillian had resumed work as a hospital nurse by this time, while Willard was employed as a repairman by Bell Telephone.

Subsequently employed as a member of the nursing faculty and staff at the Allentown General Hospital in Lehigh County after April 1950, the still-single Lillian once again shared an apartment with her older sister, Eenie, who was also still single. From this point forward, they would continue to live together for the remainder of Eenie’s life (first in Allentown, then in Baltimore, Maryland, and finally in Lancaster, Pennsylvania). Battling cancer, their mother, Minnie, also then relocated from Lavelle in order to move into the same apartment in Allentown. During this phase of their lives, Eenie was employed by the Jewel Tea Company as a bookkeeper, while Lillian was serving as a clinical nursing instructor on the faculty of the Allentown Hospital’s School of Nursing.

On 28 April 1952, Minnie R. (Strohecker) Snyder succumbed to cancer-related complications. Following her death in Allentown, she was laid to rest beside her husband and her first-born son, Tim, at the Citizens’ Cemetery in Lavelle.

Less than a year later, the Snyder family’s oldest daughter, Nona, finally decided that she was also free to marry. So, at 8 a.m., on 23 September 1953, she wed Allen Adam Albert (1907-1993), the owner of Albert’s clothing store in Pine Grove, Schuylkill County. Their wedding ceremony was held at the First Evangelical Congregational Church in Lebanon, Pennsylvania. A subsequent report by the Lebanon Daily News noted that “The couple was unattended” during the ceremony.

Meanwhile, Kit (Snyder) Courtney was still living in the apartment that she had shared with her late husband in Lancaster. Gradually regaining her sense of self, she won the praise of corporate executives for her work as a private secretary for the New Holland Machine Company.

In 1956, Kit’s sisters, Eenie and Lillian Snyder, opted to make yet another radical change. They relocated to Baltimore, Maryland, enabling Lillian to accept a position as a registered nurse with Merck Sharp & Dohme, the pharmaceutical company known for its development of streptomycin, the first medication proven to be effective in the treatment of tuberculosis–the disease which had sickened and killed the Snyder sisters’ paternal grandmother, Catharine (Boyer) Snyder. During Lillian’s tenure at Merck, her employer would become increasingly renowned for its development and distribution of vaccines that prevented the spread of measles, mumps and rubella, saving the lives of countless children worldwide. Her employer also became increasingly profitable as its scientists developed medications to treat various aspects of heart disease.

The Realities of Life as a Working Woman in America

Although there were now more professional opportunities open to Eenie, Kit and Lillian, enabling them to climb higher on the ladders of success for their respective fields of employment, they were, in hindsight, shockingly underpaid for their hard work. From the mid-1950s through the late 1970s, women were paid roughly forty percent less than what men were being given for similar types of work, and they were still largely relegated to jobs that were considered to be “suitable jobs for women.” According to the United States Department of Labor’s Occupational Handbook of 1959, bookkeepers, private secretaries and other clerical workers had become “the second largest of all the major occupational groups in the United States.”

Altogether, slightly more than 9 million men and women were employed to take care of the vast amount of correspondence, recordkeeping, and other office duties necessary to the operation of modern businesses and government agencies.

Stenographers, typists, and secretaries [were] by far the largest specialized group of clerical workers. Bookkeepers [were] the second largest group. Other large clerical occupations include[d] those of telephone operator, shipping and receiving clerk, cashier, mail carrier, and office machine operator.

Clerical work [was] the largest of all areas of employment for women. In 1958, about 3 out of every 10 employed women were officeworkers…. More than 90 percent of the telephone operators; the stenographers, typists, and secretaries; and the attendants in physicians’ and dentists’ offices offices [were] women. Women also fille[d] more than three-fourths of the jobs as bookkeepers, cashiers, and office machine operators….

Graduation from high school [was] the usual minimum educational requirement for entering clerical jobs. Additional business courses or some college work [might also have been] required for jobs requiring specialized skill. The most widely sought office skills–stenography and typewriting–[could] be obtained either through high school or business school courses…. The operation of many kinds of office machines, such as adding machines, special bookkeeping machines, and billing machines [was] often taught on the job…. Reading comprehension, numerical skill, and good knowledge of spelling and grammar [were] important in obtaining a job and essential to advancement. Ability to get along with others [was] also rated high among the qualifications necessary for success in office work….

Women in beginning clerical jobs … had average weekly salaries of about $45 to $55 in late 1957 and early 1958, in most of the 19 labor market areas surveyed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics…. The highest paid clerical workers were men accounting clerks … whose average weekly salaries ranged from $83.50 in Boston, Mass., to $102 in Cleveland, Ohio. Among women clerical workers, secretaries were generally the highest paid with average salaries ranging from $66 a week in Memphis, Tenn., to $89.50 in Cleveland, Ohio….

Pay levels for officeworkers tend[ed] to be higher in manufacturing than in most nonmanufacturing industries….

In large offices, bookkeeping jobs range[d] from entry positions as clerk or machine operator to the highly responsible post of head bookkeeper…. Bookkeepers in jobs with greater responsibility [generally posted and balanced] accounts and [performed] more difficult work such as preparing summary reports…. The head bookkeeper [had] responsibility for all aspects of his department’s work….

About 900,000 workers were employed as bookkeepers in 1958; more than three-fourths of them were women. Well over one-third of all bookkeepers [were] employed by retail stores or wholesale houses….

In Baltimore, Maryland, where Eenie and Lillian were employed, the average salaries for “clerical” workers during the winter of 1957-1958 ranged from roughly fifty-one dollars per week for the lowest classification of bookkeeping machine operator to roughly seventy dollars per week for the highest classification of accounting clerk. Nationwide, the average salary for women who were entry level accounting clerks or bookkeepers was roughly fifty-five to seventy dollars per week, while women who were experienced accounting clerks were typically paid between sixty-eight and eighty-four dollars per week–compared with men in similar jobs who were paid roughly twenty dollars more per week.

With respect to Lillian’s chosen field, there were four hundred and twenty-five thousand nurses employed across America by 1955. They were working in clinics, hospitals, laboratories, nursing homes, patients’ houses, and physicians’ private practice offices. “Nursing, the largest of the major health service occupations, [was] second only to teaching as a field of professional employment for women” with more than ninety percent of registered nursing jobs held by women.

Registered professional nurses furnish[ed] nursing services to patients, either by giving direct nuring care or by supervising allied nursing personnel. As the persons with primary responsibility for carrying out physicians’ instructions and with independent nursing duties, professional nurses [were] important members of the medical health team. Generally, their main concerns were: Care of the sick and injured, prevention of illness, and promotion of good health. They performe[d] such tasks as administering medications and treatments prescribed by a physician; observing, evaluating, and recording symptoms, reactions, and progress of patients; assisting in patient education and rehabilitation; improving the physical and emotional environment of patients; and instructing auxiliary nursing workers or students….

Minimum starting salaries of general duty nurses employed by hospitals in 16 metropolitan areas approximated from $55 to $70 a week in 1956-1957, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics…. Weekly salaries of general duty nurses (including both beginning and experienced nurses) were generally between $60 and $80 during the same period. In comparison to general duty nurses, head nurses averaged about 10 to 15 percent more and supervisors of nurses and nursing instructors about 20 to 30 percent more…. Office nurses … earned $3,600 a year on average [by 1958]….

Occupational health (industrial) nurses averaged from $76.50 a week in Boston to $93.50 in Los Angeles…. An American Nurses’ Association survey of nursing education programs indicated that nurse educators and administrators had a median salary of $4,140 in 1956.

1960s

Still living alone in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania apartment she had briefly shared with her husband, Charlie, Kit (Snyder) Courtney had finally built a new future for herself by the early 1960s as a private secretary for Sperry New Holland in neighboring New Holland, Lancaster County. (Formerly the New Holland Machine Company, the firm had been purchased by the Sperry Rand Corporation in 1947, and was later known as Ford New Holland, after it was bought by the Ford Company, and then as New Holland, after it was bought by Fiat.)

Over the decades that Kit was employed in New Holland, her employer was transformed into one of the largest manufacturers of farm equipment in the United States and globally, as it expanded its operations to Canada, Belgium, Brazil, and Japan. As a result, she was actively involved with professional and civic organizations, including the National Secretaries Association, International, and did well enough, financially, that she could indulge her passion for travel.

In 1963, Kit was part of a tour group that traveled to Japan, Thailand and Hong Kong. Lancaster’s Intelligencer Journal published a story about the group’s twenty-three-day adventure in its 2 April 1963 edition, which included a photo of their tour group standing in front of a large bronze Buddha in Japan.

Meanwhile, her younger sister, Lillian Snyder, was still working as a registered nurse for Merck & Co., Inc. at its blood bank in Baltimore, where she continued to reside with their older sister, Eenie.

In 1969, the Snyder sisters received word that their brother, John Sylvester Snyder, had been hospitalized after suffering a stroke. Following his death in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania on 12 November 1969, he was laid to rest at that city’s Cedar Hill Memorial Park.

1970s

Each retired as of 1971, the three Snyder sisters who had resided with one another throughout their professional lives–Eenie, Lillian and Kit–had settled into a comfortable life in a second floor apartment (apartment D-4) that was part of the Williamson Square Apartment Complex at 206 North President Avenue in Lancaster.

Close enough to volunteer as docents at Wheatland, the home of former US. President James Buchanan, which is still located at 230 North President Avenue, they spent a fair amount of their time sharing their knowledge of American History and passion for lifelong learning with elementary, middle and high school students. Frequent Sunday dinner guests at the home of their younger brother, Willard, and his family during Willard’s final years, they continued to visit Willard’s widow and daughters, as well as other nieces and nephews well into the next decade, and were lovingly nicknamed the “Lancaster Aunts.”

Nearly three years to the day after their brother, John S. Snyder, had passed away, they received word that their youngest brother, Willard Emery Snyder, had suffered a heart attack at work on 10 November 1972, and had died later that same morning. It was a terrible shock. He was still in his mid-fifties and had been slated to start his vacation the next day. Following graveside funeral services on a cold, rainy 13 November, he was laid to rest at the Sinking Spring Cemetery in Sinking Spring, Berks County, Pennsylvania.

Later Life

Throughout the late 1970s and early 1980s, Kit (Snyder) Courtney and her sisters, Eenie and Lillian Snyder, were avid travelers, sending postcards to family and friends from their trips across the United States. They proved to all who knew them that there was no such thing as being “too old” to learn and have fun.

As Eenie’s health began to decline, however, their group travels gradually slowed. Even so, they still found ways to remain active and socialize with family and friends by entertaining guests at their apartment on a regular basis.

On 6 May 1987, the trio received word that their eighty-seven-year-old sister, Nona Mae (Snyder) Albert, had died at the Pottsville Hospital in Pottsville, Schuylkill County. Following funeral services, she was laid to rest at the Saint John’s Lutheran Cemetery in Pine Grove, Schuylkill County.

With that death, Kit’s older sister, Eenie, officially became the Snyder family’s “matriarch.” Preferring to stay close to home during their latter years, they remained active, with younger sister Lillian, as members of the First United Methodist Church in Lancaster.

As Eenie’s heart disease became increasingly worrisome, however, she was admitted by her physician to St. Joseph’s Hospital in Lancaster in late December 1987. A fighter to the end, she survived to witness the dawn of a New Year, but then suffered a cardiac arrest on 8 January 1988, while still being treated at that hospital. Her remains were subsequently cremated and inurned at the Charles Evans Cemetery Columbarium in Reading, a cemetery that is located within a short walking distance of where the Snyder sisters’ paternal grandmother, Catharine (Boyer) Snyder, had spent the final years of her life.

Illness, Death and Interment

Tragically, Kit (Snyder) Courtney then became one of a rising number of aging Americans who developed severe memory issues later in life. Subsequently diagnosed with Alzheimer’s Disease, she received care from her sister, Lillian Snyder, during the early stages of her illness. Ensuring that Kit felt as loved and vibrant as possible, Lillian, a retired registered nurse, began to make preparations for the more advanced care that Kit would need as the illness progressed.

By the early 1990s, Lillian had arranged for their relocation to Cornwall Manor, a nonprofit senior living community located in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania, which allowed her to live independently with Kit as long as possible until Kit was transitioned to Cornwall Manor’s Health Center for more advanced care.

Following Kit’s death at that health facility, at the age of eighty-nine, on 27 August 1995, her cremains were inurned beside the urns of her husband, Charles F. Courtney, and older sister, Eenie Snyder, at the columbarium at the Charles Evans Cemetery in Reading.

Lillian Snyder, who continued to reside at Cornwall Manor for the remainder of her life, passed away at that same health center, at the age of ninety-two, on 7 June 2001. Her cremains were then also inurned beside those of her sisters at the Charles Evans Cemetery Columbarium in Reading.

 

Sources:

1. “100 Years Ago–1911” (brief news recap of the 1911 fire which destroyed the Lavelle, Pennsylvania home of John Hartranft Snyder and his family). Pottsville, Pennsylvania: Republican-Herald, 17 March 2011.
2. “Allen and Nona Albert’s Retirement a Loss to Long-Time Customers.” Tremont, Pennsylvania: The Press-Herald and The Pine Grove Herald, 12 February 1970.
3. Attendance, Graduation and Employment Records of Lillian Estelle Snyder, Reading Hospital School of Nursing, 1927-1939 (Catharine Rebecka Snyder’s younger sister). West Reading, Pennsylvania: Office of the Registrar, School of Nursing, Reading Hospital.
4. Beyerle, Emma; and Snyder, H. Corinne [sic, Corrine], Catharine R. and Lillian E., in U.S. Census (City of Reading, Fourteenth Ward, City of Reading, Berks County, Pennsylvania, 1930). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
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6. “Catharine Courtney, 89, Private Secretary” (obituary). Lancaster, Pennsylvania: New Era, 28 August 1995.
7. Catharine S. Courtney, in “Clubs: York Woman Heads State Secretaries.” Lancaster, Pennsylvania: New Era, 23 April 1956.
8. Catharine Snyder (death certificate of Catharine Rebecka Snyder’s paternal grandmother, Catharine (Boyer) Snyder), in Death Certificates (file no.: 91429, registered no.: 1242, date of death: 8 August 1918). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.
9. “Catherine Courtney [sic, Catharine]”, in “Obituaries.” Lebanon, Pennsylvania: The Daily News, 28 August 1995.
10. Charles F. Courtney (death certificate of Catharine R. (Snyder) Courtney’s husband), in Death Certificates (file no.: 103378, registered no.: 912, date of death: 2 December 1950). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.
11. “Charles F. Courtney” (obituary of Catharine R. (Snyder) Courtney’s husband). Lancaster, Pennsylvania: The Sunday News, 3 December 1950.
12. Courtney, Charles F. and Catharine R., in Polk’s Lancaster City Directory, 1950. Boston, Massachusetts: R. L. Polk & Co., Inc., Publishers, 1950.
13. Courtney, Charles F. and Catharine R., in Polk’s Lancaster City Directory, 1960. Boston, Massachusetts: R. L. Polk & Co., Inc., Publishers, 1960.
14. “Died on Way to Hospital” (brief notice of Timothy P. Snyder’s fatal accident at work). Pottsville, Pennsylvania: Pottsville Republican, 23 April 1913.
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