Notes for: Donald Baker Snyder

TOMBSTONE INSCRIPTION: Grandview Cemetery, Fort Collins, CO: SNYDER Donald Baker b 27 Feb 1910 d 4 Feb 1986 Margurite Olson b 2 Apr 1908 d 23 May 1992 BIOGRAPHICAL NOTES: The following is an autobiographical account of "Don Snyder's early life" provided by Bret Snyder: 1. According to the available evidence, I was born in Chicago on February 27, 1910, at the family home somewhere on Cottage Grove Avenue. I can remember hearing my mother say that the event was consummated with the assistance of one Dr. Friend, whose acquaintance I have not since renewed. Years later, in searching for documentary proofs, I found that there was no record of my arrival in the City, County, State of Federal Archives, but with my mother's help I managed to run down a record of my baptism in the [this space was left blank] One of my prized possessions is a postcard written by my father to his brother, Oscar, at Plymouth, Indiana, which depicts a stork carrying a baby labeled "Don" and informs the family of his first child's arrival. The postmark carries the date of my birth. Since the event was not sufficiently important to warrant any tampering with the evidence, I have never questioned it. Unlike most people who have the temerity to write about themselves, I can recall very little about my early years. In fact, my earliest recollection is of riding in a train across seemingly endless plains of Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta in the summer of 1913.I can remember having nothing else to do but look out the train windows at the empty scene hour after hour. I have since realized why that 4-day trip left its mark on a lively 3-1/2 year old boy. There is more to say about this Canadian detour, but first I'd like to dispose of Chicago - a place that I think of only with the most extreme distaste. After giving up the Alberta venture in 1914 or 1915 my parents returned to Chicago and sometime after moved to Oak Park, a suburb a few miles to the west. From there they moved on to another suburb called Maywood, where the family - then consisting of five children - resided until the summer of 1920. I don't know where I started school, but I attended at one or more of these places through the 5th grade. My classroom education up to this point of departure left only one small dent in my memory: a teacher making me hold out my hands while she cracked my knuckles with a heavy ruler. I don't know what I did to bring this on, but I suspect that the punishment fit the crime much better than it does in similar situations these days. [There appears to be a page missing here] 3. One of the most vivid memories that I carry with me from that long ago summer at John Lee's cottage is of a fishing adventure at a nearby river bridge known to us as "Lee's Bridge". The neighboring farm boy who had become our friend dropped by the cottage one morning and asked Howard and me to join him in an attempt to catch a huge pike that supposedly resided in a deep hole under the bridge. We had been appropriately indoctrinated for such a venture by stories about monstrous fish in the Tippicanoe that had, when speared with a pitchfork, easily broken off the pitchfork handle and swum away to break more handles another day, so we agreed to participate - as observers. When we arrived at the bridge our friend caught a big frog at the riverbank, then hooked it through the nose to the line that he produced from his pocket. Back on the bridge he laid down at the side, head and shoulders over the edge, and lowered the frog into the water 12 or 15 feet below. To follow the action we took prone positions beside him, leaning cautiously out over the edge far enough to keep our eyes on the swimming frog. After a seemingly endless wait, a dark object began to emerge from the depths below us and slowly approached the frog. We could make it out now - it was the monster fish! With a sudden surge it grabbed the bait and started swimming upstream as fast as our friend could play out the line. About forty feet away, and near enough to the surface that we could see him clearly, it stopped, still holding the frog. Its head and feet were sticking out of opposite sides of the fish's mouth. Our friend waited for the fish to swallow his victim and kept on waiting, telling us that he didn't dare pull on the line because that would make the fish let go. For a while the suspense was overwhelming, but then we got tired and the wooden blocks of which the bridge floor was made got harder. Besides, the sun was melting the tar used to seal the blocks and our bib overalls were beginning to stick to it. Finally our friend ran out of patience and slowly began to retrieve his line. Our quarry promptly responded by spitting out the frog and disappearing into the depths of the hole under the bridge, leaving three barefoot argonauts almost, but not quite, empty-handed. 4. The scene outside the classroom left a few more impressions. In Maywood the school that my brother, Howard, and I attended was near a Jewish neighborhood and our route to and from school coincided with that of several Jewish students. For reason that escape me now, there was continuous hostility between us, the bigger boys regularly bullying the smaller ones and occasionally provoking fights. Unfortunately, several of the most belligerent Jewish boys were on our route and they made life miserable for us most of the time, despite assurances from our parents that if we would mind our own business nothing would happen. With or without provocation the harassment went on. We recruited a cousin, Daniel Senour, who was my age and went to the same school, but the teasing and threatening continued. One day, after this had been going on for months, I learned a lesson that has since proved useful. As we headed home, two of the biggest bullies were on our heels trying to scare us into making a break for home. We knew that if we did break and run we would be the laughing stock of the school from then on, so we tried to put on the usual brave front. Finally one of them pushed me. A wave of fear and panic struck. I wheeled and flailed blindly at him with both fists. One hit something soft and blood gushed from his nose. Simultaneously the victim started bawling like a scared calf and headed for home on the dead run. At school the next day my impromptu attack brought a reprimand from the teacher for bullying the Jewish boys! Our erstwhile enemies treated us with considerable circumspection from then on. That was the end of hostilities for the time being, but they were renewed on a wider scale that summer. During World War I "hate Germany" and "hate the Kaiser" campaigns were whipped into a fevered pitch by the government and the newspapers, and they were promoted among children by the widespread sale of toy guns, hand grenades and other paraphernalia of war, as well as the showing of numerous war movies - which were seen by innumerable kids because they only cost a nickel. With this kind of encouragement every self-respecting neighborhood had at least one "war" going on between groups of kids who always identified themselves as Americans and the other side as Germans. Vacant lots were scarred with trenches and dugouts, and fresh digging was always a sign that renewed trench warfare was about to take place. We were no exception. And naturally the Jewish kids were assigned... [The remainder of my copy of page 4 is off the sheet] 5., 6. & 7.... and carried manufactured wooden facsimiles of the Springfield rifle equipped with a wooden bayonet. The rest were armed with homemade rifles, swords made of lath, or various other implements calculated to rout the enemy. During the summer and after school until the war ended, skirmishes of varying intensity took place as a substitute for baseball, kick-the-can and other normal street activities. There were few casualties and no concessions of defeat, despite all the sound and fury generated by this protracted warfare. Only one battle has survived the past 63 years. It took place one day as we were hard at work on our fortifications and oblivious to the approaching "Germans". Their surprise attack was pursued with so much enthusiasm that the 5 or 6 of us were soon put to rout and seeking refuge in our basement. When they tried to follow, Howard grabbed a hatchet from our father's workbench and turned on the enemy, swinging wildly at all who hesitated. Noting their consternation and Howard's zeal in swinging the hatchet, we took the offensive and chased them to one of the boys' home. My participation in this counter-attack came to an abrupt end when I stood at the foot of the front porch and dared one of the enemy to come down. He responded by pitching a flatiron over the side of the six-foot porch. It struck a solid but glancing blow on my head, producing enough blood, noise and tears to quench all belligerence on both sides and disperse all the combatants. I can remember no sympathy from my mother when she treated my wound. The summer of 1918 was to be our last in the Chicago area. Big changes lay ahead, induced by circumstances about which I can do little more than speculate. For my mother there was the wear-and-tear of having five children (one of them a cripple) in seven years, attempting to work in order to either get away from the house or to supplement family income, and a husband who had little sympathy for her neurosis or a disposition that wouldn't let anyone rest on his oars or assumptions. My father, having been forced to forsake his Canadian dream had resigned himself to the security of riding mail trains long enough to raise his family and he undoubtedly was looking for a way to break the monotony. Having been a farm boy, seeing his children on city streets must not have appealed to him either. In any event, when a family friend - a young bachelor photographer named Chester Hisler - told of a certain cabin on the Tippicanoe River in Indiana that could be rented my parents arranged to take it for the summer of 1919. It was near Etna Green and Atwood and belonged to a farmer named John Lee who lived nearby. Grandma Baker, about whom I shall write more elsewhere, calmly adjusted herself to all circumstances, so when the cabin became available she either volunteered or was drafted to carry out the plan for using it. She would take care of Howy, Bob and me for the summer. My father drove us the 100 or so miles in the family Model T, thus launching our Hoosier boyhoods. Our new home was not a particularly prepossessing structure. It looked like a short boxcar with a lean-to screened porch on one side, but it sat on an enchanted spot beside the Tippicanoe in the shade of oak and hickorynut trees. The river was so clear that the clean gravel bottom could be seen in all but the deepest places, and it offered some of the best small-mouthed bass, pickerel, goggle-eye, and sunfish fishing in that part of the country. Grandma and a neighboring farm boy taught Howard and me how to fish, and with their help we did occasionally manage to fill the frying pan. We especially liked to wade the river for clams because success was less contingent... [The remainder of my copy of page 6 is off the sheet] ...eagerly probe the gravel bottom with our toes until we had gathered a peck or more, then patiently open and examine them in hopes of finding pearls. By the end of the summer we did find and collect about a dozen tiny "pearls", the largest no bigger than the head of a match and practically worthless. For a number of years the small bottle containing those trophies was a family memento of that summer. Except for strips of trees and uncultivated land on both sides of the river, the countryside was farmland interspersed with small woodlots. Our previous contacts with farm life had been too brief and restricted to give us firm feelings about it, but now, as we explored the surrounding fields, meadows and timbered places along the river and made the acquaintance of their wild and domesticated inhabitants, a new world opened up - a world we liked and wouldn't give up easily. Grandma Baker's rein on our activities was strict but gentle, letting us seek adventure without the accustomed threat of retribution, so our searches took us as far as courage and curiosity allowed. When the summer came to an end, the return to Maywood and school was like a prison sentence, and like a prison sentence it has dropped out of my memory. All I remember is that not long after, there was talk of moving away from Chicago and into the country. The search for a suitable place began and sometime during that winter it was announced that we would be going back to Indiana in the spring, this time to stay. The only names and faces that I remember from those days are those of my cousin, Dan Senour; a classmate, Clarence Watts and his younger brother, Sterling; Jim Guy, who later became a close friend in Indiana; and Leon Sweetland. Leon I remember well because he was older, bigger, huskier, and a zealous foe of anybody who bothered us younger kids. He also was from an exotic place called Helena, Montana. He was our hero, but then - sometime before the conflicts described above - he moved away, I never knew where. Then one summer day long afterward while I was interviewing people at the Town Hall in Estes Park, a husky, graying man came to my desk for information about his social security record. He introduced himself as Sweetland. That rang no bells, but as we talked the name kept coming back - I had heard it somewhere before. Finally the first name came to me. I told him that the only other Sweetland I had ever known was named Leon." That's me," he replied. We visited until my next caller came... [The remainder of my copy of page 5 is off the sheet] ...leave in the fall. We never did. When I tried to reach him on my next work trip he was gone, leaving no forwarding address. On the way home, driving down Thompson Canyon I pondered the whims of fate and speculated on some of the strange chance meetings that have occurred among men. 8. One of the most common regrets among older people, I suspect, is their failure to learn more about their family while there were living members familiar with some of its history. Indifference of this kind being more or less universal among the less than middle-aged, is seldom criticized or corrected as it should be, so most of us grow old with a poor perspective of where we came from. Too late, I made a few half-hearted attempts to fill the gaps, but most of what I know comes from memory. The immediate family that I grew up with was composed of my father, Montus Cecil Snyder; my mother, Eva Bae Baker; my brothers, Howard Nathan, Robert John and Alfred Gordon; and my sister, Kathryn Louise. The next closest in the circle were our grandparents on my mother's side, Nathan McClellan Baker and (Helen) Thurza Walker Baker, who lived near us throughout my childhood, except for brief interludes, and until I left home permanently at age 22. Grandpa Baker was born in March 1861 on a farm beside the Tippicanoe River near Talma in Fulton County, Indiana, not far from where he would spend the last 13 or 14 years of his life. Somewhat more distant in miles and affection were my father's parents, John Oliver Snyder and Ida Rupel Snyder. They lived on their farm 4 miles north and 1/2 mile west of Plymouth, Indiana, or near there their entire lives. My mother had one sister, Alta, and a brother, Guy. Aunt Alta Senour had two children, Daniel and Florence, and for a few years while we all lived near Chicago our families were quite close. Uncle Guy was a bachelor and we knew him only as our "rich" uncle who lived in Cleveland, Ohio, and always came to visit us at Christmas, bringing expensive presents. My father had two brothers, Clyde and Oscar, and two sisters, Essie and Ruth, none of whom were very close - mostly because of my mother's unrelenting animosity toward the whole Snyder family. Clyde had a brood of about eleven children in Minnesota, but I have met only two of these cousins - Cecil and Harold. Oscar married a woman by the name of Minnie, but had no children; Aunt Ruth never married; and Aunt Essie married a North Dakota farmer named August Rechtenbaugh, who fathered my cousin, Bill. In addition to the above, there were a few more distant relatives that I knew briefly. Chief among them was "Uncle" Willie Wilson, who was Grandpa Baker's half-brother. He had only one eye and was accused by my grandfather of being a little on the retarded side. If true... [The remainder of my copy of page 8 is off the sheet] 9....remember Grandpa telling about another brother or half-brother putting his finger on the chopping block and daring one of the other brothers to chop it off, with the latter proceeding to do just that. One fall early in the Crystal Lake years a branch of the Snyder family held its annual family reunion at the picnic area in the grove at our place. The reunion dinner was spread on the long outdoor tables under huge sycamore trees and it attracted what seemed to me to be a huge crowd. I remember having to attend and being introduced to dozens of remote relatives none of whom I was ever to meet again. 10. A project that I occasionally thought about after I passed middle-age was to return to Canada and visit the homestead north of Athabaska Landing where my family lived (as nearly as I can figure it) from the summer of 1913 to the summer of 1915. While I was recuperating from a lung infection that hospitalized me for several days in January 1973 I began to think seriously about making such a trip and started to lay the plans. My only knowledge of the location of the homestead was a fuzzy recollection that it was about a day's travel by horse and buckboard out of Athabaska Landing in a northerly direction. I had read or heard somewhere that much of the northern fringe of the areas homesteaded in Canada before 1930 had been abandoned and had reverted to "bush" or had been consolidated into large holdings with few residents remaining. Without exact information on the location of our place, the search would be a needle-in-the-haystack proposition, so some research was in order. During the next six months I wrote letters to government offices in Ottawa and the provincial capital in Edmonton. 11. After I retired in 1968 and had more freedom for travel I began to think seriously about making a "sentimental journey" back to the homestead in Canada where my family lived from the summer of 1913 to the summer of 1915 (as nearly as I can figure it). Finally, as I was recuperating from a lung infection that hospitalized me for several days in January 1973, I got down to making plans and doing the research needed for finding the place. Correspondence with the Canadian government in Ottawa, the Provincial government at Edmondton, Alberta, and others during the summer produced a record of homestead filings by my grandparents (Baker) and my uncle, Guy Baker, but nothing on my parents. Information given by "Aunt Bess" (Senour) Murtaugh (still living in California), who had visited my family in Canada, enabled me to pin down the exact location of the family homesteads. RESEARCH: Greeley city directories found at the Greeley Public Library, Greeley, CO: 1957 Snyder Donald B (Marguerite) Dist Mgr Social Security Admin 613 20th St Snyder Karen O student [This is a typical entry in the Greeley city directories for Donald Snyder during the period 1948 thru 1976] Mishawaka city directories found at the Mishawaka Public Library, Mishawaka, IN: 1927 Snyder Donald B student r705 S Main 1929 Snyder Donald r2217 Lincoln way E 1931 Snyder Donald r122 Niles av.