A grandson of a twice-wounded veteran of the American Civil War and the first-born son of a pioneer in the American telephone industry, Timothy Peter Snyder was a living bridge between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

He was also a boy called upon to do a man’s job–a call that, once heeded, would have fatal consequences.

Formative Years

Born in the Village of Lavelle, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania on 1 May 1898, Timothy Peter Snyder was the oldest son of John Hartranft Snyder and Minnie Rebecka (Strohecker) Snyder. His mother, Minnie, was the daughter of Samuel and Annie (Troutman) Strohecker, of Gordon, Schuylkill County. His father, John, was the son of American Civil War veteran, Timothy Matthias Snyder, who served with the 47th Pennsylvania Volunteer Infantry, and Catharine (Boyer) Snyder.

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

During the early 1900s, Timothy P. Snyder attended the Lavelle School in Lavelle with his sisters, Nona Mae Snyder (1900-1987), who would go on to own and operate Albert’s clothing store in Pine Grove, Schuylkill County with her husband, Allen A. Albert, during the 1960s and 1970s; H. Corrine Snyder (1901-1988), who would go on to become a bookkeeper with the Jewel Tea Company in Baltimore, Maryland; brother, John Sylvester Snyder (1904-1969), who would go on to become a construction manager with McKinney Construction in Northumberland County and then Portland Cement in Allentown, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania; and sister, Catharine Rebecka Snyder (1906-1995), who would go on to become an executive assistant with the New Holland Company and marry businessman Charles F. Courtney (1900-1950).

Also attending the Lavelle School with the Snyder siblings were several of their cousins. A photograph that was taken of their class sometime around 1910 has since been preserved by the United States Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

In 1908, the Snyder siblings welcomed the birth of another sister, Lillian Estelle Snyder (1908-2001), who 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 birth of another child–Chester Hartranft Snyder (1910-1983), who 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 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, Timothy P. Snyder was then 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 meet ends 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.

Their graves are easily spotted from a distance. They are enclosed by a low brick wall. A large, rectangular, gray marble slab covers their three resting places. The graves of Minnie’s sister, Estella C. (Strohecker) Enterline, and her husband, Thomas E. Enterline, and two of their children, George S. Enterline, and Bright S. (“Pat”) Enterline, are located just above the Snyder graves and enclosed within that same brick wall. (T. E. Enterline was also a respected member of the county. He founded and operated the Lavelle general merchandise store.)

* Note: Roughly two years after the death of Timothy P. Snyder, 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. Employed by his father’s company after graduating from Ashland High School, he then installed and managed radio and telephone lines for the United States military in British West Africa and the Pacific Theater of operations during World War II, as a member of the U.S. Navy Seabees. Post-war, he was employed by the Bell Telephone Company of Pennsylvania for nearly thirty years.

As a chief stockholder and secretary of the Lavelle Telegraph and Telephone Company, Snyder family patriarch John Hartranft Snyder oversaw the firm’s expansion, which ultimately connected the Lavelle telephone center with Bell Telephone Company’s facility in Ashland. After forty-seven years of transmission, full control of the firm was transferred to Bell Telephone of Pennsylvania in 1956.

 

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. “Died on Way to Hospital” (brief notice of Timothy P. Snyder’s fatal accident at work). Pottsville, Pennsylvania: Pottsville Republican, 23 April 1913.
3. Maurer, Russ. “Lavelle Telegraph Telephone Company Charted in 1908,” in “Memories of Russ Maurer.” Hegins, Pennsylvania: The Citizen-Standard, circa 1990s.
4. Snyder, John H., Minnie R., Timothy P. and Nona M., in U.S. Census (Butler Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1900). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
5. Snyder, John H., Minnie R., Timothy P., Nona M., H. Corrine, John S., Catharine R., and Lillian E., in U.S. Census (Lavelle, Northwest Butler Township, Schuylkill County, Pennsylvania, 1910). Washington, D.C.: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration.
6. Timothy P. Snyder, in Death Certificates (file no.: 34710, date of death: 22 April 1913). Harrisburg, Pennsylvania: Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Department of Health, Bureau of Vital Statistics.