My Genealogy Hound

Hiram Snyder, farmer and stock raiser, was born in Dauphin County, Penn., in 1832. He is the fourth of seven children of John and Elizabeth (Cortsnitz) Snyder, natives of the same county, and born in 1806. They were married about 1826, and in 1851 came to this county. They settled in Liberty Township six years later, where the father died in 1883. The mother still survives him. The father’s employment was farming and shoe-making. George, the grandfather, was also a native of Dauphin County, and was the son of George Snyder, Sr., a German. Our subject was reared in his native county until the age of nineteen, with ordinary school advantages, and then came to this county with his parents, and married Minerva, a daughter of T. Shaw, a pioneer of Putnam County. They had seven children and those living are John W., Samuel T., George B., and Eliza (the wife of Justice Perigo, of Clark County). The wife of Mr. Snyder died in 1864, and the following year he married Mrs. Elizabeth Wright, a daughter of George Burchett. Their children are Hester and Mollie, twins, Ouda, Ella, Phoebe, Cornelius, Talcut R., Ida, Richard M., Henry and Emerella. After a time in Putnam County he came to Adair County, where he has since lived, excepting eighteen months in the former county. He has been on his present farm since 1866. He first bought forty acres on credit, and began with two ponies and a wagon, but now owns an estate of 120 acres and two other tracts of eighty acres each. He purchased the first self-raking reaper, the second mower, and now has the first and only self-binding harvester on the prairie. Besides rearing fifteen children of his own, four step-children have also received his care. He deals in Shorthorn cattle, and also ships a great deal of stock. He has served as justice of the peace for one term. In 1861 he enlisted in the Home Guards, and served until the close of the war. He was reared a Democrat, but since the war has been a Republican.