DR DeWitt Clinton Snyder's first wife, May
A cablegram from Mr. Robert
Whyte of London, brings us the painful tiding of the death of this faithful
missionary, at Leopoldville, Stanley Pool, Africa, on the 27th of
May, 1896
She was a native of
Baltimore, Md., where her father, Mr. Charles Higinbotham, was a businessman
respected for his integrity and Christian character. In her 15th year her parents
removed to Brooklyn, N.Y, and there, two years afterwards, she was married to
Captain Thompson, commander of a vessel, which became her home for many
successive years.
It was thus, as a sea
captain's wife, sailing over many seas and seeing many lands, that she obtained
the extensive acquaintance with almost all parts of the world, which proved to
be a providential training for her subsequent missionary
career.
On account of the failing health of her parents, Capt. Thompson retired from a sea-faring life and entered into business in New York City. A three fold bereavement soon followed, in the death of both parents and her husband. This heavy sorrow was the means of Mrs. Thompson's conversion; for although her husband was a godly man, she herself had not hitherto been a Christian. Her husband having lost his property in business, Mrs. Thompson became a librarian in a circulating library in Brooklyn. Whilst filling this position (in connection with which she had taken course in professional nursing in the city hospital), she met Mr. DeWitt Clinton Snyder, a young druggist, and son of an established Dutch Reformed Minister in New York, to whom she was married in April, 1885. A few weeks later Dr. and Mrs. .Snyder removed to Tampa, Fl where the were living at the time of their appointment to Africa, in June 1892.
Just after the death of Mr.
Lapsley, Mrs. Snyder stated that she had been interested in missions all her
life, and that for years she and her husband had desires to go to Africa. They sailed from New York August
31st 1892.
Mrs. Snyder was exceedingly
bright and attractive, with engaging manners and much personal magnetism. But valuable as were her natural gifts,
the chief charm of her life was its spiritual element, which suffused her whole
life with its glow. The high order
of her faith, her patience, tireless zeal, self-abnegation and Christian
devotion, have been abundantly manifest in her work in the heart of the Dark
Continent, in the midst of low degraded tribes of savages. Her life and death are a shining
illustration of the fact that the days of heroes and heroines on the mission
field are not past.
