A Wilson Family Tree
Notes for Elizabeth Snyder
Several family sources list John A. Snyder and Elizabeth Hepler as the parents for Elizabeth Snyder, wife of William Kanouse (for example, World Family Tree Vol. 1 Tree 3935 and Vol. 45 Tree 2098). The younger Elizabeth is listed in the 1850 census (10 years old) in the household of Adam and Elizabeth Snyder (ages 54 and 64). A page from the family bible of William Kanouse and Elizabeth Snyder lists birth and death dates for John A. Snyder and "Elizabeth Snyder nee Hepler"; it does not specifically say that these were Elizabeth Snyder's parents, but it seems like a natural assumption. On the other hand, Elizabeth Hepler would have been 55 years old at the time of Elizabeth Snyder's birth (56 if born in 1784), which is probably too old to be having a child. It also seems unlikely that Elizabeth Hepler Snyder would have named a daughter Elizabeth, since she already had a daughter named Elizabeth with Henry Faus. Other sources (for example, the Snyder/Soules Ancestry World Tree web site) have Elizabeth Snyder as a daughter of Josiah Snyder and his wife Elizabeth. This seems more plausible, especially given that one of Elizabeth Snyder's children was named Josiah Snyder Kanouse. If this is right then Elizabeth Snyder and William Kanouse were half-first cousins because Elizabeth Hepler was also his grandmother. In fact, Elizabeth and William would both have thought of Adam and Elizabeth as grandparents, and they had died just a couple of years before William and Elizabeth married. Maybe that's why their information was in the bible. It’s too bad William and Elizabeth didn’t name their parents in their bible. (Or maybe they did, and I'm missing some pages?)
Another tantalizing bit of information is that, in an interview transcript from 1977 at http://www.snydersinfo.com/LeonaSnyder.pdf, Leona D. Snyder, then 88 years old, talked about her aunts and uncles, the children of Josiah and Elizabeth Snyder. She said there were seven girls in the family, and she named six of them: Rachel, Catherine, Hanna, Angaline (Angeline), Jane (Sarah Jane), and Becky (Rebecca). She couldn’t remember the name of the other one: “it was the one that was in the South, I can’t remember.” Was this Elizabeth? I don’t know for sure, but Elizabeth, with her husband William Kanouse, did move south. In the 1880 census, they were in Adams County, Iowa, and later they moved to Kansas and then Oklahoma. Additional support for this is that John B. Arnold recently sent me a family genealogy ("A Connecticut Arnold Memoriam") written by his father, John Wesley Arnold, a grandson of Sarah Jane Snyder. In it, he has a few pages of information about the Snyder family that he says he got from Leona Snyder on 1 Aug 1967. It does, indeed, include Elizabeth as the second-oldest daughter of Josiah Snyder—plus including an eighth daughter, Julia Ann, who died way back in 1863 and didn’t have any children (as far as I know). The children listed forJosiah are the same ones that George Snyder listed in the Snyder/Soules Ancestry World Tree web site. Some of George’s information probably originated with his great-aunt Leona. This shows that Leona Snyder, who was born in 1889, knew Elizabeth as one of her aunts, and knew that she married William Kanouse and had sons named John and Jay (other information that was in the genealogy). To me, this makes it seem nearly certain that Elizabeth Snyder was a daughter of Josiah Snyder and Elizabeth Smith.
Another small piece of evidence is that a short obituary for Elizabeth Smith Snyder in the Evangelical Messenger (11 Dec 1894, p. 795) says that she had 13 children, six of whom survived her, which would fit with Elizabeth Snyder Kanouse being one of her children.
Another possibility is that Elizabeth Snyder was an orphan who was raised by the Snyders. This doesn't seem very likely to me at this point, but see ElizabethHepler.pdf (in the Reports section of my web site).
WFT 10 # 1142 lists another child, Michael Kanouse, but since other souces do not have him I have dropped him from my listing. WFT 10 # 1142 also lists a daughter, Ida Ferguson, but a note (I think part of a letter from Patsy [Kanouse] Dotson to Glen & Rosie Gathright, dated 11 Aug 1995) says that Ida was adopted; born to a family friend who was unwed. She died at about the age of two. The letter from Patsy Dotson to Glen & Rosie Gathright also says that she and Rosie's grandmother (Elizabeth Snyder Kanouse) are buried in the same cemetery as Jay and William Kanouse, but she is not listed in Find A Grave, so I wonder if it is true.
I requested a death certificate for her, but the State of Oklahoma was unable to find one for me.
Note: Some of the information in these pages is uncertain. Please let me know of errors or omissions using the email link above. ...Mike Wilson
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