Valerie Snyder of Northampton is not directly related to Peter Rhoads (1737-1814), the patriot leader who first proclaimed the Declaration of Independence in Allentown on July 8, 1776. But her late husband was. And as a passionate genealogist she got him involved in the pursuit of his roots. Asked how she did so, she says simply, “It was me.”
Snyder talks of her research at the Lehigh County Historical Society and local cemeteries like a historical detective chasing the past. The result in 2015 was a large volume titled Snyder-Greschott Family History. “I just thought, what with the (America 250) anniversary coming, people should be interested,” she says.
It is hard to imagine what July 8, 1776, was like in Allentown. It was called Northampton but as early as the 1760s even the ever-accurate Moravian diary keeper in Bethlehem would call it ‘‘Mr. Allen’s little town.’’ The founder was William Allen, a Philadelphia merchant who had given up that business twenty years before as too risky and began to purchase large tracts of land to sell or rent to the vast number of immigrants arriving from the German states.
The crowd that gathered that day to hear Peter Rhoads couldn’t have been large. Allentown’s exact population at the time was probably somewhere less than 150. Early attempts to populate the place in the 1760s had been slowed by a conflict with Native Americans on the outskirts of the village. Zion’s Reformed Church on Hamilton Street, completed in 1773, was among the largest buildings. Its previous home, a log structure behind it, was used by a Lutheran congregation.
Judge Rhoads’ stone home stood at what would become 7th and Linden streets. David Deshler occupied a property at the corner of 7th and Walnut that included a home, store and tavern. Both men had Swiss roots…