By Sarah Timmerman Israel

The Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman Family Reunion held their annual reunion at the historic Snells Bush Church on Sunday August 5, 2007. It was a beautiful day for the reunion and almost 100 members gathered for the church service at 11: am. Unfortunately our attendance was low probably because of the high gas prices and also for the many members getting older making it harder to travel long distances. The members who came found good fellowship with cousins that they had not seen in awhile.

Clark Tooley, a certified Lay Minister, was joined by his wife Irene Tooley; also a certified Lay Minister conducted the worship service. Both attend the Dolgeville United Methodist Church and have been members there for over 50 years. The Tooley's have lived in the area a long time and have two adult children with four grandchildren.

The church service was a traditional one as the Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman Family Reunion is required each year to conduct a church service in our historic church to keep the title of "St Paul's Dutch Reformed Church" as stated by the "Montgomery Classis" (overseer of the Dutch Reform Church in the local area). Mr. Tooley conducted an interesting service which included the traditional family reunion hymn--- "Faith of our Fathers". Mr. Tooley's sermon was entitled "Blessed is this Nation". He spoke about how our forefathers who wrote the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution put religion into the documents and how we should keep this information in our daily lives. It was an interesting concept. Mrs. Tooley led the children's service, which was very nice. Our guest soloist was Louis Dunderdale who sang the song entitled "God of Our Father's " as a special selection and also "My Tribute" for the offertory selection. Millie Walrath was his accompanist on the piano. Nancy Schuyler our organist also was inspirational on the old pump organ, which is over 100 years old. We appreciate and thank the soloist and piano and organist for this inspiring musical presentation at our reunion service. The hymns sung were "Faith of our Fathers", "Let there be peace on Earth", and the closing hymn was "God Bless America". The scripture readings were Colossian 3:1-11, and Psalm 33: 8-15.

The evening before the reunion, Saturday night at 6 pm, we held our annual ice cream social. The ice cream was donated by Stewart's ice cream store, which included all the various toppings. It was delicious and we will plan to have the ice c ream social next year. Hannaford grocery store also was kind to donate paper products. We had a nice gathering of the locals who enjoyed the ice cream sundaes. The children had fun running around and eating ice cream.

After the church service on Sunday a short business meeting was held. Work has been done on the steeple-the rails around the steeple have been replaced and now we are ready to get the bell tower painted before winter sets in. Next year we would like to fix some of the windowsills and repaint or touch up the interior of the sanctuary that needs some paint. The cemeteries are being worked on. The upper cemetery needs some of the stones replaced that have been broken or unreadable over the years. The lower cemetery still needs work. There was a work crew this past spring and they found out how hard it is to clean the stones. (They worked on two stones for 4 hours). The fence is put on hold for a while to rethink what to do--- should we put a new fence up or should we keep what we have now, as this is part of the cemetery as it was. Donations and work crews are needed for more work on the cemeteries. President Nancy Timmerman Cioch was reelected as president, and Sue Snell Williams was also reelected as vice president. We had two Board of Directors openings to fill. Karen Snell Curtis and Brandt Rostohar were elected to fill these posts. Wendy Timmerman Marchese was not present but is doing a wonderful job as wedding coordinator as we have country weddings during the summer months. We already have appointments for the coming year for weddings at our historic church. Historian Sarah Timmerman Israel and Nancy Timmerman Cioch have been working on updating the mailing list. We are trying to keep it up to date and trying to send our newsletters out on e-mail to cut the cost of mailings. Please contact us to receive the newsletter on e-mail instead of by regular mail. The reunion lost an important working member- Carolyn Timmerman Sidenius who worked on the genealogy and published some of our genealogy books. Sarah and Nancy are working hard to fill this gap in the genealogy of the Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman family reunion.

After the meeting everyone enjoyed a catered luncheon and we thank Mrs. Petkovsek for the wonderful luncheon. The book room was a busy place selling genealogy books on the SZT family. These books not only report the genealogy lines but also give a history of the family and make excellent gifts for the younger generation... There was some memorabilia of old photos of the Snell family and some members found photos of their grandparents in the photos. There were also photos of family events' genealogy charts, cemetery maps; as well as old maps of the Town of Manheim and of course our Snell-Zimmerman Patent dated 1755 with the seal of King George II of England.

Donations are always needed for the maintenance of the church. Please contact us for more information, as our contact information is located on our web site. We also thank our web masters, Ray Kuehne and Bill Boller for keeping our web site going and up -to date.

The Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman Family Reunion maintains a web site at ---www.szt-genealogy.org and our mailing address is -----S-Z-T Family Reunion Inc. P O Box 623, Little Falls, New York 13365