Dad's grandfather, Frederick PETZINGER married Amelia SNYDER OLMSTEAD in 1885 in Scranton. I tried to get a pedigree chart to upload, but so far it is not working. The short version is Dad's father was Conrad and his father was the Frederick I talk about here.
Amelia was the youngest daughter of John Snyder (Schneider) and Elizabeth Pearson. John Snyder was born about 1824 in Darmstadt, Germany (yes, Frederick Petzinger also came from the Darmstadt area, but I have no information that shows any previous Schneiders/Snyders involved with Petzingers in Germany) and came to America sometime before 1850. There are a few immigration records for John Schneider's immigrating from Germany during the 1840s, but I have not been able to identify if any are "our" John.
According to the 1850 census, John Snyder married Elizabeth PEARSON in 1849 and they were living in Providence Township, today a part of Scranton. He was a tailor in 1850 and in the middle 1860s as stated in the city directories, but the 1860 census shows him as a laborer. He and Elizabeth had seven children with the oldest born in 1852 and Amelia, the youngest, born in 1866. The 1870 census shows Elizabeth as a widow, so John died sometime between 1866 and 1868 (if he had died in 1869, it would have been recorded in the 1870 census). His death occurred too early for required recordkeeping and I have been unable to find any church or cemetery records for him. There were a couple of early Scranton cemeteries that closed with remains moved to other cemeteries, but records are spotty and John is not among the records that survived.
Elizabeth was born in 1829 somewhere in New Jersey, but as her birth precedes required record keeping, there are no birth certificates. There are a few New Jersey church records that could be hers, but I have been unable to confirm if any of them are "our" Elizabeth, so her parents are a total mystery. Whether she and John met in New Jersey and moved to Scranton or whether they met in Scranton after Elizabeth, and possibly her whole family, moved to Scranton from New Jersey I have not been able to determine. There are no marriage certificates from that time period. I also do not know the correct spelling of Pearson (Pierson?). Elizabeth never remarried and lived in Scranton until her death in 1887 from "exhaustion." She is buried in Dunmore Cemetery (just a couple of miles from downtown Scranton), but her grave is not marked, nor is the exact plot known. When I visited there and spoke with the office, they had her name and vital records information and that she was buried in the "old burying ground" portion of the cemetery where the specific plot information was lost. Interestingly, she is our ONLY relative at this time period who was born in the United States....all others were born in Europe, most in Germany. I would so like to find out her background. I have her death certificates and obituary, but no mention is made of her parents.
Other than John and Elizabeth's daughter, Amelia, who moved with her husband Frederick to Newark, all of the children apparently stayed in the Scranton area where they were fruitful and multiplied.
Amelia Snyder married George OLMSTEAD about 1883, but he died of typhoid in 1884. She then married Frederick PETZINGER in 1885. Their marriage was recorded in St. Paul's Lutheran Church records where the Schneider spelling was used. St. Paul's was the Petzinger's church, but I have been unable to find what church, if any, the Snyders were affiliated with. As John Snyder was from Germany, it is likely that the original name was Schneider and the German Lutheran St. Paul's church recorded it as the original German version of the name.
As mentioned in a previous post, Frederick died of a fall from a ladder in 1912 and Amelia continued to live in Newark and died in 1943 from a stroke and is buried in Woodland Cemetery in Newark.
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