Charles Lynn Snyder
Charles Lynn Snyder was born at Equinunk, Wayne County, Pennsylvania, on 3 March 1928. He was the younger of two sons of Abraham Lincoln Snyder and Kathryn Lepulica. His brother George Harvey was nearly seven years older. His father was sixty-four when he was born and had a grown family from an earlier marriage, a half-sister Edna and a half-brother Charles who had died the year before Lynn arrived.
The 1930 census found the family in Manchester Township: A. Lynn Snyder, 68, his wife Katie, Harvey, 8, and Lynn, 2. The boy carried his father's everyday name, and father and son were both called Lynn.
In November 1932 his father set out in a canoe across the Delaware River from Lordville, New York, and did not come back. The canoe was found overturned eight miles downstream. The body was not recovered until 26 January 1933. Lynn was four years old.
His mother remarried. By the 1940 census Lynn, 12, and Harvey were living in Equinunk in the household of Jacob Hoke, with their mother listed as his wife. That census also records that the household had been living in rural Pike County, Pennsylvania, in 1935. Jacob Hoke was the stepfather he grew up with, and his mother was Kathryn Hoke for the rest of her life.
He registered for the draft at Equinunk on 4 March 1946, the day after his eighteenth birthday. The person who would always know his address was "Catherine Hoke", his mother. He served in the Army. His bronze government marker reads "PFC US ARMY / WORLD WAR II KOREA", It credits him with service in both World War II and Korea.
On 19 April 1950 the census taker found him, 22 and single, living with his brother George and George's wife Jessica in Manchester Township. His occupation was given in one word: woodsman. Eleven weeks later, on 3 July 1950, he married Margaret Jean Young at Smithsburg, Maryland. She was the daughter of Coe F. Young and Dorothy Layton of Braman and Equinunk, and had been valedictorian of the Hancock Central High School class of 1949.
The couple made their home in and around Equinunk for more than fifty years. They had a daughter and a son. For twenty-two years, until he retired in 1985, Lynn was a supervisor and buyer for Bard Parker in Hancock, New York, a maker of surgical blades and instruments. He was a charter member of the Equinunk Fire Company and served it as treasurer, as fire chief and on its board of directors.
His obituary described him as "a skilled woodsman and carpenter who loved hunting on is hundred acres and cutting his own firewood". He owned a MASH jeep, the Army field vehicle, and taught his grandchildren to drive it. He also taught them "to shoot" and "to pay attention to the world around them."
With Margaret he travelled to many parts of the United States and Canada, visited England and Scotland, and took a Caribbean cruise. Her obituary says they had the most fun on vacations in Maine and in winters spent in Florida. Deer camp was a family fixture, where Margaret's chili was famous.
In 2003 they left Equinunk for a small house in Honesdale. Lynn died there, at home, on Friday 2 July 2004, aged 76. It was the day before their fifty-fourth wedding anniversary. A graveside service was held the following Monday at Hillcrest Cemetery, Galilee, Wayne County, and memorial gifts were asked for the Equinunk Volunteer Fire Company. Margaret lived another sixteen years and was buried beside him in 2020 under a shared stone.
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Cite: Heirology, "Charles Lynn Snyder (1928-2004)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/charles-lynn-snyder-1928-2004-2710ef.