This site is focused on the Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman family of the Mohawk Valley, New York State. The immigrant ancestors of this extended family came from the Palatine (Pfalz) area of Germany and settled in the Mohawk Valley in the early 18th century. Our goal is to include all known descendants (and ancestors) of these immigrants.
Despite the tripartite name of Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman, we are actually concerned with two (not three) immigrant families. In his excellent book on the Zimmerman Family, David Kendall Martin states that, "the original spelling of the name was Zimmerman [and] when that name was introduced into the semi-literate, English and Dutch speaking broth of eighteenth century New York, the German pronunciation was often written down by non-Germans as Timmerman." In 1755, a land deed that came to be known as the Snell-Zimmerman Patent, in the present Town of Manheim, Herkimer County, was issued to Jacob Zimmerman and Johan Jost Snell. We are interested in the descendants of these two immigrants.
The 18th century Dutch Reformed St. Paul’s church near Little Falls, Herkimer County, New York, (known as the Snell’s Bush Church), was built by these immigrants. The Snell-Zimmerman-Timmerman Reunion, Inc, was established in 1943 to preserve this church and associated cemeteries. Genealogy was not among SZT’s original objectives. However, in the process of enrolling members, information about their lineage was requested and preserved. This information became a valuable genealogical resource that was used in the excellent SZT publications authored by David Kendall Martin and Carolyn Timmerman Sidenius. Each of their books covers a part of the extensive and interrelated Snell-Timmerman-Zimmerman family, with a degree of necessary overlap. (See the description of the SZT Publications and how to purchase a copy.)
With the advent of computers and genealogy software, some SZT members began to transfer their portion of this SZT pedigree to personal computer files. However, no one undertook the challenge of combining all of the available data into one integrated file. In 1997, such a project was proposed and begun by a few volunteers. This site was established primarily to share the data as it becomes available.
The creation of this site and the posting of data from SZT publications has been done with SZT approval. We also acknowledge the contribution of additional data by family members whose personal lines of descent were not included in the SZT publications. These supplementary data are posted with the permission of the contributors, who are referenced on each record.
The SZT volunteers who maintain this site and database welcome corrections and suggestions. We especially welcome additional volunteers. If the data you would like to see is not here yet, you could hasten its arrival by offering to do some of the necessary work.
This database and website was the inspiration of Ray Kuehne - Bill Boller agreed to help with some of the technical matters. If you wonder how Ray and Bill fit into the SZT family, look us up in the database. You will find that we are each married to SZT descendants. Bill’s wife is a Timmerman and a direct descendant of Lt. Henry Timmerman and of the immigrant Johan Jost Snell (among others). Ray’s wife is a direct descendant of three of the sons of the immigrant Jacob Timmerman, namely Lt. Henry, Lawrence, and George, plus the above Johan Jost Snell (among others). This probably explains why we need to use computers to keep track of our wives’ genealogy.
Bill and Ray have never met in person. We live more than 2000 miles apart. Our collaboration and friendship developed through e-mail and this SZT project. We hope this site will foster many similar friendships.
Thanks to our volunteers: We wish to express our appreciation to a small band of volunteers, past and present, who sacrificed numerous hours on the golf course, etc., to assist with the extraction of this data. May you be rewarded with the discovery of a cache of new data on one of your most difficult lines of research.
