Tucked away in a family Bible for many years, was a wonderful story of the life of John Alfred Snook, who at the age of 87, wrote a descriptive account of growing up in Snyder County, Pennsylvania. A neighbor saw the story, shared by Snook’s daughter, and received permission to copy the account, which was then sent to the Pennsylvania Historical Society in Philadelphia.

In later years, John Snook moved to Elkhart Indiana, and spent forty-eight years working for the railroad. This story centers on his early years and the hardships he faced growing up in a single-parent home near Penns Creek, Snyder County. 

“My father died in December 1857, the year I was born, May 29, 1857. My mother was left with five children and in poor circumstances. The oldest child was about thirteen years old. My father was by trade a cooper making barrels for the distilleries in the different towns. My mother and father both rest in the Lutheran Cemetery in Penn's Creek where many of the relatives are buried and a great many also rest in the Evangelical cemetery in the same town. My father was a Holland Dutchman and my mother was English, coming from England when quite small with a family who settled in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania among the Pennsylvania Dutch. Her maiden name was Adams, and it is an established fact that she was the great-great-granddaughter of President John Adams. We have always been proud of the fact. My father's grave, having nq headstone, except a small slab with his initials, and the records of births having been burned in a Court House fire many years ago, I have never been able to secure the exact date his death.

My mother experienced a life of trial and hardships in raising her family, very often there was not too much to eat and wear. In a few years, she sold the old house and bought eight acres, two of which were in chestnut timber, located a mile farther east, thinking that there she could provide better for the children. As there was several acres of cleared land and a little fruit, she built a small barn and bought a cow, a few pigs, and chickens all of which (made) the going a little easier. There was already a log house of three rooms, a cellar kitchen, and a garret. She worked on the surrounding farms at whatever work was to be had, such as raking hay, planting corn, pulling flax and spinning it, and cleaning house, all backbreaking work. All the farm(ing) was done by hand as there was no machinery at that time, In those days among the Dutch, everyone worked, men, women, and children. In our neighborhood, everyone spoke Pennsylvania Dutch Dialect. I went with mother to the farms, doing such work as was to do. Mother got fifty cents a day for long days, and I got nothing to twenty-five cents, whatever the folks were pleased to give mother for my valuable services, but I got my eats, and that was something, Mary, the oldest sister stayed at home and cared for the younger ones. In a few years she (went) to go to work and the next younger one took charge. While at home, myself and my younger sister, Sallie, hustled around the country picking blackberries, raspberries, and huckleberries. with which perhaps a pound of butter, we packed up to New Berlin two and one-half miles, and traded them to the store for brown sugar, the only kind there was then, and matches, and very seldom coffee, the cheapest grade McLaughlin’s, and ground it ourselves in a little box grinder. But oftener we had no coffee, we used rye or wheat and ground it ourselves.

In the fall, a gunny sack apiece, we gathered sumac, this was dried in the loft of the small barn and when we had about a ton, we had it hauled to the tannery and sold it. The usual price, as I remember it, was about twenty dollars a ton. This money we used to buy our shoes for the year. We marched off across the hill to Mr. Wetzel’s shoemaker shop, where we were measured for cow-hide shoes, and in due time a brand-new pair of shoes was produced for each of us. If at the end of the next year someone’s shoes became too small, they were passed down to the next smaller and that one didn’t get themselves shoes that year. When there was the job of gathering leaves for bedding for the cow and pigs, these were carried home in bags. Then in the fall came chestnut hunting in the woods the squirrels got most of them, but our harvest came from the big trees in the fields. In good seasons we had several bushels, all but a few of them had to be sold.”

Snook went on to discuss his education and being hired out to neighbors at an early age.

“We went to Sunday school in the old one-room schoolhouse at the creek, One Sunday, a big boy, Bill Spangler, with a felon on his finger was there, (A felon is a fingertip abscess deep in the palm side of the finger. It usually is caused by bacterial infection), and while we were waiting outside, I had a small stick, and by accident, hit the felon. I took down the road and Bill took after me—good ways after. I could run those days, and I am glad he didn't catch me—or else. I waited until after school had taken up and then went home in a roundabout way. Suffice it to say, I kept out of Bill’s way for a long time. He was the same fellow that taught me to swim in a rather abrupt way in Tuscawara Creek. Sans clothes he took me on his back and swan out into twelve feet of water, dumped me off, and told me “Now swim". I got out all right and needed no more lessons.

Terms of school were three months and many days we couldn't get to get to school on account of deep snows. I received most of my schooling in the above school. One winter we had a lady teacher, Miss Gast, (and) for some reason several of us boys deserved a whipping, so she said. I wouldn't take it and left school and wouldn't go back. Mother threatened to give me a licking but finally reconsidered. On New Year's Day we were all to school early and barred the teacher out until he agreed to treat us all with apples, chestnuts and the like. One winter when brother George was home from Dry Valley where he worked during the summer, he whittled from a stick of white pine, wood chains of from fifteen to twenty links. He was an expert with a jackknife. Christmas those days was not a very gay event in our family, but I shall never forget when Mary came home for the day and gave me my first store suspenders, and was I tickled. Before that mother had knit them from wool yarn. Sally and I and a schoolmate, Jack Filbert, in the last winter that I went to school at Tuscarawa, we were the top spellers in that community. We not (only) spelled down the rest of our school, but also the neighboring schools, as well as their teachers. This boy Gilbert.was a poor adopted boy and later became a distinguished lawyer.

Well now for the big salaries when between nine and ten years old, mother hired me to a Mr. Meiser for three dollars a month with the privilege of having a horse to ride home (three miles) every other Sunday afternoon. The second summer I was hired to a Mr. Benfer for four dollars a month and my washing. That was some boost, wasn’t it? At that place I did no farm work but hauled lime from the Dry Valley lime kiln to the farm of Mr. Benfer and surrounding farms. That was a daily trip of nine miles and back, six days a week. Those who know what unslacked lime is, will know that after working in it a while, the fingers and toes will get sore from the action of the lime, and it becomes difficult to walk or to open or close the fingers. I had to get up at four o'clock and bring in the horses from the pasture, feed them, clean them off and harness them. I had a big team weighing sixteen hundred pounds each and 1 had to stand on a box to get the harness on them, then eat breakfast and away to lime kilns. If I had good luck and got there ahead of most of the teams, I would get home about two or three o'clock, if not and I had to wait for my load, it might be five or six o'clock and nothing to eat for me and the team till I got home, then unload, clean the lime off the team, eat, go to bed and do it all over the next day. An incident worth mentioning occurred when I made my first trip to the lime kiln. I did not know the route. Mr. Benfer with another team went ahead, we had to ford Penn's Creek as there was no bridge at that crossing. Below the crossing was a grist mill and our crossing was about a quarter mile above the dam that furnished the power to run the mill. As it was still dark when we arrived at the crossing, I had to be guided by the white tailboard of Mr. Benfer’s wagon box. I tried to follow him but kept going downstream. Finally, I got in so deep that the water ran into the wagon box. Mr. Benfer yelled at me, and I turned upstream and got across alright.

That winter I got a little schooling. My sister Mary at that time was working in the Joe Durst family near Mifflinburg. They wanted a boy to raise until he was twenty-one years old, at which time he was to have a good suit of clothes and a two-year-old colt. So, mother took me there. You got a beating for the least wrong thing you did. The last one I got was with a horsewhip, and I carried the wales on my back for a long time. He used this whip on his daughter too. When Mary found this out, she complained to mother, and she had me taken away from there. I had been there nearly three years. This place was situated on the Turnpike that ran between Lewisburg and Bellefonte, was a sixty-mile-long toll road. It was very wide and paved with limestone all the way. Pedestrians went free. A charge of from two to ten cents was made for conveyances depending on the number of horses. There was an immense (amount) of travel, hauling flour and other material from Bellefonte to the canal at Lewisburg with four and six-horse teams. Later the Penn. Railroad built the Bald Eagle branch through the Valley and that stopped the heavy teaming. I next hired to a Mr.Meily near the Salem church for the summer and this was one of the hilliest farms in the country. An accident there came near being the end of me. In haying time, in a hill field, Mr. Meily was pitching, and I was on the wagon loading it. When we had a load, I turned down the hill and Meily applied the brake, but the pin came out of the lever, and of course the brake didn't hold, and the team was unable to hold the load, and we went down the hill on the jump. When we turned into the road, the load overturned I went with it. The fence on the opposite side of the road saved me from getting hurt except for a few bruises. There was some damage to the wagon and one horse was seriously hurt. The previous winter the horses had the Epizootic (outbreak of disease) and there was no sleighing that winter.

In the (?) the two Noll sisters, spinsters, living nearby, asked me to come to their place to care for their two cows, chickens, and pigs. They gave me my board and I attended school at the Pike Schoolhouse. The teacher was Jim Lepley, a short, fat fellow and a fine and good teacher. One day he wanted to go to a funeral and asked the scholars to be on their good behavior and appointed Billy Ream and myself to hear the classes. Well, I don't think any of the pupils gained much knowledge that afternoon, but they behaved fairly well everything considered. While at the Noll place one of the cows, in a hurry to get out of the barn for water, hit her horn against the jamb of the door and broke it off and was I scared. I told the girls of the matter and the Veterinarian, Mr. Bohr, smeared it with tar and wrapped it up and in time it healed as good as new.

In the spring I hired to Charles McFall near Vicksburg, and they were a fine family. In September I cut my knee badly with a scythe. The wound required thirteen stitches to close it. Two doctors from Lewisburg sewed it up without giving me an anesthetic. This accident laid me up until late in the fall. Mrs. McFall was just fine and took care of me until I was able to be moved. While I was laid up a friend made me a pair of crude crutches. I was lying upstairs and wanted to get down and use those crutches, so I tried it and fell to the bottom of the stairs. That broke the wound open again. Then my sister's husband, John Lindenmuth, who with his wife and two small children, lived on a farm near Mazeppa, took me to their home where I took care of my two little nieces, one of whom, Mrs. Calvin Stahl, passed away many years ago. The other, Mrs. William Miller, is still living with her daughter, Mrs. Dennis Hendricks, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania, .and is now seventy-three years old. That winter I started to school in Mazeppa. There 1 got a hard wailing from the teacher, Joe Kleckner for a thing I was not to blame, and the other fellow who was to blame was too yellow to take it. Two of the scholars, Percy and Theodore Schroder, were sent to get two whips. They brought the whips but rin6ed them with a knife. At the first blow, they went to pieces. They were told to get two more and see that they were complete. Well then it happened, and when it was over, I packed my books and went home and never went back. And so, my two little nieces got more attention.

A little later when a new baby came to the Kleckner’s home I partially got even with him for the beating I got. A baby's cradle was stored in the Lindermuth home which Kleckner wanted and came one evening to get. They got the cradle and put it in the wagon and then went into the house. The Schroder boys were there that evening, spending the evening with me, so we took the cradle from the wagon and took it a half a mile down the lane and lodged it in the top of a big hickory tree. I never heard if Joe got it or not.

On the farm, there was a big maple grove and in the Spring, they made a lot of maple sugar and syrup. The next spring I hired to Joe Deifferderfer who lived nearby and that was another fine family. I had the use of a gun and traps and shot, and trapped hawks, owls, muskrats, and minks, on all of which the County paid a bounty and I sold the muskrat and mink hides. I also trapped for an otter that made its home in the bank of Spruce Creek, but he was too wise for me, I never got him. There I also set a wing net for fish and caught lots of trout and other fish until someone further up the Creek cut my net full of holes, one night. At this place, I got my first suit of clothes that I paid for with my own money. They were paid for with the money I got from the hides I sold. I shall always remember that suit of clothes. It was a heavy "salt and pepper "material and I had it made to measure, and Oh Boy, was it hot in the summer? The farm was near the Mountains and many deer came through the farm that year, going into the woods along Spruce Creek and several came into the barnyard and fed with the cattle.

The next year I hired to Frank Frederick near Vicksburg. He had just married and started farming on a rented farm belonging to his father. He bought an entirely new outfit, including teams. These were, of course, new to all of us. In haying time when I was raking hay with one horse in a platform dump rake the horse ran away, being frightened by a locomotive on the railroad which ran through the farm. It threw me out onto the wheel of the rake, breaking three ribs which laid me up for six weeks. That summer I was earning the stupendous wage of twelve dollars a month, which,by the way, was the highest pay I ever got in Pennsylvania, but remember I was only seventeen years old. In the meantime, mother sold the little home as the children were all gone from home. She came to Mifflinburg to keep house for a Mr. Cornelious, a distant relative, a widower, so I went to her, and she took care of me until I was able to travel. My brother, George had come to Michigan and Indiana some years before this and had written me to come west as the wages were some higher and the farm work was not quite as hard, so I concluded to do so and late in July in 1974, I landed in Elkhart with eighteen dollars in my pocket, not very many clothes and no job. The panic of 1873, under the Grant Administration, had just ended and everything had gone to smash, and jobs were mighty scarce and at small pay. Up to this time and until I was nineteen years old, I was never able to afford an overcoat, as all of my earnings were turned over to my mother who was sorely in need of it. At first, I lived with my brother who married Rebecca Walker in 1875, and he had just commenced farming on a rented farm in Cleveland Township, Elkhart County, near the Cleveland Center school house.”

For several years, Snook worked on area farms. One year, he worked for a Niles, Michigan man, taking stereopticon shows in several states. Other jobs included herding cattle, and hauling wood, corn, and other products to mills.

Snook eventually landed a job full time on the railroad, as mentioned at the beginning of this story. In 1877, he met a girl (Amelia) who had been brought to Indiana from Freeburg Pennsylvania, by her parents (the Kantz family). They were married in a Lutheran parsonage on September 4^th, 1879. They were married for fifty-seven years and had several children.

John Snook closed his life story by stating, “Well here I am at the sunset of life and in poor health, waiting for the last call.” He died December 9^th, 1950, at the age of ninety-three.