Lost Wallet

I just got off the phone with the daughter of the man whose wallet was found in our house. According to the items in the wallet, his name was John C. Snider, Jr. (b. April 1917), and he lived in a house a block away. I looked up the address on the county website, and the house is owned by a woman whose last name is Snyder with an address in Georgetown (indicating it is a rental property). A directory search gave me a phone number for the address, which turned out to be a realty office, and I did my best to explain why I was calling to the woman who answered.

As soon as I told her the name of the wallet's owner, she said, "Oh my God, that's my dad!"

She grew up in this neighborhood and her family owned three different houses within a few blocks of one another -- one of which originally belonged to her grandparents. They still own two of them, which they rent out. She couldn't shed any light on how her father's wallet ended up in my house, but she thought my theory that it might have been found or stolen made sense. She did explain why her last name was spelled differently from her father's. Apparently, her paternal grandfather was very particular about his penmanship, and didn't like the way he wrote the letter 'Y', so he decided to spell his last name with an 'I' instead. (Back in those days, it was not unheard of.) Her father alternated between the two spellings, but she and her siblings went back to spelling it with a 'Y'. Mr. Snider/Snyder passed away in 1993. I emailed his daughter a photo of the wallet and contents. She was disappointed when I told her the drivers licenses didn't have any photos, but still curious to see all the items.