Snyder Commnuity
Plainview, Hale County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Born in Illinois, Mennonite minister and farmer Peter B. Snyder (1864-1948) was living in Minnesota when a search for inexpensive land led him to Texas. In 1906, he bought property in Hale County from John H. Buntin and urged other Mennonites to join his colony. Snyder and his family traveled by train to Plainview in 1907. They lived briefly in tents before erecting a house in 1908. Among the first Mennonites to settle this farming community were the families of The Rev. Andrew Brenneman, John and Joseph Hartzler, Joe Guengerich, The Rev. Jonas Kreider, Milton H. Near, and Ferdinand Rastetter. The colonists built a one-room schoolhouse on land donated by H. R. and Alevia Newcomer. Settlers of all faiths attended the school sessions, worship services, and social events held in the building. Although Snyder planted a peach orchard near his home and sank an irrigation well after 1911, life was harsh. Dust storms, prairie fires, hail, and the severe droughts of 1915 and 1916 discouraged the colonists. Most, including Peter Snyder, left by the mid-1920s to seek better conditions elsewhere. Only the Rastetter Family remained without interruption in this locality. The Snyder School merged with Midway Rural School in 1921 and with the Plainview School District in 1947. (1977)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Mennonite minister and farmer Peter B. Snyder, hunting cheap land, bought property in Hale County in 1906 and urged fellow Mennonites to join him, and by 1907–08 families were arriving by train and raising houses after first camping in tents. They built a one-room schoolhouse open to all faiths for lessons, worship, and socials. But dust storms, prairie fires, hail, and the brutal droughts of 1915–16 broke the colony, and most—including Snyder—had left by the mid-1920s.
Why it matters
It records both the hope and the heartbreak of religious-immigrant colonization on the High Plains, where faith and community often could not overcome the land's harshness.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · Peter B. Snyder
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Nils Akeson
Hale Center, TX
Swedish-born Nils Akeson came to the thinly settled Texas Panhandle from Iowa in the late 1880s and helped found the town of Hale Center as an officer of its townsite company. He rode for the legendary XIT Ranch, served as postmaster, opened the town's first store, and helped bring the Santa Fe Railroad through in 1909. As mayor, land developer, and school trustee, he shaped nearly every institution of the young town.
Roots of the Catholic Faith in West Texas
Floydada, TX
The Catholic faith first reached this stretch of the South Plains with Coronado's 1540s search for the fabled cities of gold, when his men camped in nearby Blanco Canyon. Over the centuries the region passed through Mexican and then American church jurisdictions, and by the early 1900s priests were ministering to a growing flock of settlers and immigrants drawn by cheap land. Waves of newcomers from Mexico — during the Revolution and later through the Bracero labor program — fueled decades of church-building, culminating in the creation of the Diocese of Lubbock in 1983.
Site of Estacado
Lorenzo, TX
In 1879 a colony of English Quakers led by Isaac Paris Cox settled the high plains of West Texas, founding a town first called Marietta for Cox's wife Mary. Renamed Estacado when Crosby County was organized in 1886, the idealistic religious colony struggled against the harsh, isolated conditions of the Llano Estacado and had disintegrated by 1893, with remaining families relocating to Galveston County by 1895.
Estacado Cemetery
Lorenzo, TX
In 1878 Paris Cox, an Indiana Quaker, crossed the Llano Estacado with buffalo hunters and saw a place for a colony; he went home to advertise cheap farmland and drew settlers to the high plains. The community—first called Maryetta for his wife, then renamed Estacado—became the first county seat of Crosby County and even built a courthouse before the seat moved away in the 1890s. This cemetery holds Cox and many of the pioneers who first broke the sod of the Staked Plains.