Simon Says

Piecing together family constellations from documents pre-dating the 1850 census can be challenging. As mentioned yesterday, for those families with strong church ties, baptismal and other sacramental records provide some assistance in naming children and connecting them to the proper parents. But there is another resource, in many cases: the patriarch’s last will and testament.

For Nicholas Snider, settling in Perry County, Ohio, in the early years of both the state and the county, there was also a land record—implying the need for an instrument which passed along that possession to heirs. Thankfully, in Nicholas’ case, the will does name his children as heirs—and in one case, provides me with a married name for the daughter for whom I’d previously not had any descendant records.

While the land described in the will does not match up with the patent record for Nicholas’ original purchase—a puzzle to save for another day—thankfully (again) the names mentioned in the will do align with the names of the children already in my research database.

Evidently, the youngest son of Nicholas and Elizabeth became the new owner of the family farm, perhaps something in Nicholas’ plans all along, as his first—and evidently other—Ohio land purchase was jointly acquired with his eldest son.

That youngest son, Conrad, was required in turn to disburse set sums of money to each of the other children based on a schedule outlined in the will. Nicholas’ still-single daughter Catherine was to receive the sum of four hundred dollars on the anniversary of his death. Two years following his death, that same amount of money was to be split between his sons Jacob—by then married, with a large family of his own—and Joseph. Two hundred dollars would eventually also go to another son, Lewis, the next year. And on the final year of disbursements, three hundred dollars would be received by his daughter Mary—the added sesquicentennial-plus bonus for us researchers, in reading this will, being that we receive record of that same daughter’s married identity as Mrs. Elder.

There is one more name to be mentioned in Nicholas Snider’s will: that of his son Simon. On the bottom of the same page detailing the schedule of disbursements from Nicholas’ estate, he concludes with these final instructions: “I do hereby appoint my Son Simon Snider as my Executor….”

At some point in the year 1856, Nicholas Snider finished his course and Simon Snider assumed the role his father had appointed for him, ordering the settlement of the estate. Nicholas was buried on March 26, 1856, in Somerset, Ohio, in the Holy Trinity Cemetery. And thanks to the property he once had purchased in the early years of Ohio statehood, the required records outlining his wishes in how that property was to be disposed also served to provide future generations with a record of his family constellation.