Snyder's Chapel - Fountain County INGenWeb Project

Waynetown Aug 8 – Last services at Snyder’s Chapel, United Brethren Church will probably beheld next Sunday. Members use the word “probably” for it is too hard for them to say definitely that Snyder’s Chapel will be closed permanently on that date, with the furnishings left intact in the building. The church will be represented in some way, probably finally, at the annual conference later in August at University Heights, Indianapolis. Snyder’s Chapel is being closed because of lack of resident membership, there now being but four families in regular attendance.  In 1834 John Snyder left Pennsylvania and settled at High Point near Waynetown, then named Middletown. As soon as he had erected a pioneer home, he held services in it. In the spring of 1837 the Rev. Elijah T. Cook, who had been appointed to the Coal Creek circuit, which extended over the western part of Montgomery County and eastern Fountain county, organized the Snyder church in the home of John Snyder. Also, about a mile from the present site of the church, was the Snyder camp-meeting ground, maintained from 1840-1850.  By that time the congregation had grown until it became a problem to hold services in the Snyder home, so for $100, John Snyder purchased from the Methodists a frame church building and had it moved across the road onto a lot about ½ mile north of the present church. The building was completed and occupied in the spring of 1857. For a quarter of a century or more that building served as a church until it was demolished in a windstorm in the 80s. After the destruction of the church building, services were held in the College Grove one-room school house. The present church building was built in 1891 and was dedicated on March 13, 1892.