Elizabeth Ray
Elizabeth Ray was born on 20 June 1832. Her birthplace is given two ways. The 1855 New York census says Connecticut, and the 1865 census says Dutchess County, New York. The federal censuses of 1860 and 1880 say only New York. Her maiden name comes from the death certificate of her son Abraham, which gives "Maiden name of mother: Elizabeth Ray". Her parents are not known.
She married Jacob Snyder, sixteen years her senior. Their first son, John Henry, was born in December 1848, when she was sixteen. She bore nine children over eighteen years, all of them boys: John Henry, Charles William, LeRoy, Egbert Silvernail, Wellington, Nelson Howard, James Harvey, Abraham Lincoln and James Hoagland. James Harvey died as an infant. The other eight lived to be men.
In 1855 she was keeping a large house at Cochecton, Sullivan County: her husband, four small sons, a string of young working men who boarded with them, and Newton Ray, 25, born in Connecticut, who was very probably her brother. By 1860 the family had moved to Prattsville in Greene County. During the war her husband went to the Union army and came home without a leg. She had her eighth son in November 1863, while the war was still being fought, and he was named Abraham Lincoln.
The family moved back into Sullivan County, to Fremont by 1875 and to Liberty by 1880. Her last child, James, was born in 1866. She died on 13 March 1897 at Stevensville, the Liberty hamlet now called Swan Lake, aged 64. She is buried in the Swan Lake Cemetery under a stone that reads "MOTHER / ELIZABETH / WIFE OF / JACOB SNYDER / JUNE 20, 1832 / MAR. 13, 1897". Jacob outlived her by nine years and was buried beside her.
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Cite: Heirology, "Elizabeth Ray (1832-1897)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/elizabeth-ray-1832-1897-64bafe.