Ancestors

Ansel Snow

Ansel Snow was born at Bridgewater, Massachusetts, on 4 May 1784. The History of Kalamazoo County, printed in 1880, gives the date and tells his life. "Arrived at manhood, he moved to Oswego Co., N.Y., and bought a farm near what is now the city of Oswego." His home was at New Haven in that county, where his children were born from about 1815.

He married Arbelia Wilmarth, who was born in Massachusetts on 27 May 1795. Her mother was Mercy Snow of North Bridgewater. Their children were Permelia, Hannah, Mercy Ann, Cordelia, Orson, Orrin and Orla.

At some point he worked in the lumber woods of Canada, and it cost him. The county history says "Mr. Snow could not do hard labor, having lost his health in the lumber woods of Canada. This was a great disadvantage."

In the autumn of 1836 he went out to Michigan alone and bought land from the government: eighty acres in Oshtemo township and one hundred and twenty acres in Kalamazoo township. In February 1837 he sold the New York farm and "started with his wife and seven children for Michigan. They came with sleighs, arriving in Kalamazoo, March 16, 1837." They were four weeks on the road, "and found good sleighing all the way. The farm was all new, and there were no buildings; a log house soon went up, and into it the family moved, feeling that they then had a home all their own." With hired help and his sons' work he improved the land.

In 1840 he sold the Kalamazoo land and moved onto the Oshtemo farm, near land later owned by Alpheus Snow. His daughter Hannah married Solomon Forbes in 1837 and died in 1845. In 1860 the census found him at Oshtemo, seventy six, born in Massachusetts, with Arbelia and their youngest son Orla. He died on the farm on 15 October 1864, aged eighty. "Mr. Snow is spoken of by his old neighbors as a man whose life was above reproach, and whose death was a loss to the community." He is buried at Grand Prairie Cemetery.

Who his parents were is not known. Mitchell's history of Bridgewater lists no Ansel born in 1784. Two years after his death his widow and two of his sons moved to Macon County, Missouri.

If Ansel Snow is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Ansel Snow (1784-1864)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/ansel-snow-1784-1864-c39e7e.