In 1804, Timothy Hopkins was the first settler in the area that would later become Snyderville and subsequently Snyder. Hopkins married Nancy Kerr in Williamsville in the first marriage on record in Erie County. As newlyweds, they moved to a log cabin on a farm on the 4301 Main Street location of Amherst Central High School. The Schenck family moved to Amherst at the corner of Main Street and Harlem Road in 1821. Abraham Snyder arrived from Pennsylvania in 1823 and moved to a spacious frame house in the late 1830s. His son Michael rose to prominence. John Schenck, Michael Snyder's cousin, built the hamlet's first house and later built the first store in 1837, which was the year the hamlet was first established.