Ancestors

Jacob Snider

Jacob Snider farmed on Back Creek, west of North Mountain, in northern Virginia. When he took up land there it lay in Frederick County. In 1772 that part of Frederick became Berkeley County, which is now in West Virginia. A Snider family newsletter puts his birth about 1732. A lineage form of the Daughters of the American Revolution puts it about 1737, in "supposed Switzerland." Neither date comes from a record, and his parents are not known.

A survey was made for him on 5 October 1770, for land "on the West side of the North mountain between that and back creek." It calls him "Jacob Snider of Frederick County," and the grant was issued in 1789. In 1779 he had 54 more acres surveyed, "adjoining ... his own land on the drains of Back Creek." That grant came in 1787. On 17 May 1774 he and "Margaret his wife" acknowledged a deed together in the Berkeley County court. Over the years he also bought land from a man named Kennedy, from Alexander Wheat and, in Pennsylvania, from Jacob Studebaker.

In October 1780, during the Revolution, the state of Virginia gave Jacob Snider and Frederick Frise a certificate. It acknowledged "Six Bushels of wheat for the use and on account of the State of Virginia ... for the use of the Army." Such certificates were the state's receipts for supplies taken for the army, to be paid later. The DAR form adds that he was recommended as a lieutenant on 18 September 1781.

He made his will on 28 November 1787, "in perfect health in body and mind." He named his sons David and Abraham as executors. The witnesses were Jacob Siler, Jacob Stuckey and Thomas Sharp. They proved it in the Berkeley County court on 15 June 1790, so Jacob had died by then.

The appraisers listed his goods on 10 August 1790. There were horses and cattle, twenty six sheep, twenty five hogs and a wagon. There was a "Loom and tackling," there were "Books," and there were "Smith Tools." There were walnut and pine planks and twelve flour barrels. The inventory went back to the court on 21 September 1790.

His sons were David, Joseph, Abraham, John, Jacob, Daniel, George and William. Three daughters are known from family records. Margaret married Simon Stuckey, Mary married Jacob Studebaker, and a third daughter married John Hendricks. That third daughter was very probably Elizabeth, born in 1765, the wife of John Henricks. The DAR form and a genealogical query of the 1930s both name her husband but not her. The Bedford County records put John Hendricks beside the Sniders year after year, and in 1796 the widow Margaret sold him land.

Several of the children went north into Pennsylvania. A historian of the Church of the Brethren wrote that "four brothers and two sisters emigrated from Berkeley County ... in the 1780's to lands inherited from their father, one Jacob Snider, and located in Croyles Valley, now Snake Spring Valley." That valley is in Bedford County. Their families made up "the major part of the early membership of the Snake Spring Congregation." The Brethren were German Baptists, often called Dunkards for their baptism by immersion.

If Jacob Snider is in your family, start your own tree.

Cite: Heirology, "Jacob Snider", https://heirology.com/ancestors/jacob-snider-d2d61e.