SLC to dedicate a plaque honoring its early minister
The service will commemorate Snyder’s legacy and his foundational role in bringing the Lutheran faith to early communities in Tuscarawas, Holmes and Coshocton counties.
In the final years of Moravian missionary David Zeisberger’s life, he was joined in Tuscarawas County by a young Lutheran minister named Abraham Snyder, newly graduated from the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg.
In January 1815, Snyder answered a call to ministry and settled in New Philadelphia as the town’s first resident Lutheran pastor. Within five years he began traveling west through the county to share his faith with German Protestant settlers establishing homesteads in Sugar Creek and Auburn townships.
Around 1820, atop a ridge 3 miles south of the newly established village of Shanesville, Snyder held the first official Christian service in Western Tuscarawas County. At the time the area was still remote and unsettled. Guards reportedly stood watch outside the simple cabin on David Seltonright’s property where services were held, due to the presence of Native American hunting parties in Pleasant Valley.
The following year, Snyder conducted the first Christian service in Shanesville, now part of Sugarcreek. Over the next decade, he established Lutheran congregations in both Shanesville and New Bedford and oversaw the construction of the first dedicated Lutheran church building in Shanesville — a log chapel located in what is now the town cemetery. It would later become his final resting place. Snyder died in 1834 at the age of 54.
In 2007 the congregation Snyder founded — Shanesville Lutheran Church — commemorated its 175th anniversary by installing a new headstone for him in the Shanesville First Reformed Cemetery. His original gravestone was preserved and placed beside the church building near the town square, constructed in 1850 and extensively remodeled in 1914. In 2024 a new plaque was added to the cemetery telling the story of the town’s founding minister.
The public is invited to attend a dedication service in Snyder’s honor Saturday, June 14 at 2 p.m. at Shanesville Cemetery on Hillcrest Drive. The service will commemorate Snyder’s legacy and his foundational role in bringing the Lutheran faith to early communities in Tuscarawas, Holmes and Coshocton counties.
The Rev. Dr. Laura Barbins, bishop of the Northeastern Ohio Lutheran Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, will lead the service. Glen Hammel of the Shanesville Historical Society will present a brief history of Snyder and the early Lutheran church in the region.
Light refreshments will be served in the church social hall following the service. In the event of inclement weather, the dedication will take place in the church sanctuary.