Ancestor Archives: Sarah "Sallie" Snyder (circa 1807 - circa 1851)

 

by Rocky Macy

Sarah “Sallie” SNYDER was born around 1807 to Barksdale and Sarah “Sally” (HANSARD) (PALMORE/PALMER) SNYDER in the Commonwealth of Virginia.   She married Thomas MEADOR  on December 30, 1823 in Breckenridge County, Kentucky, and she passed away in Breckenridge County around 1851.
 
(When Sarah’s mother, who was also named Sarah and called “Sally,” married Barksdale SNYDER in Amherst County, Virginia, on February 12, 1800, she was the widow of a man named Pledge PALMORE and had eight children.  She was listed in the Virginia marriage register as Mrs. Sarah Palmer.  The elder Sarah went on to have five additional children by Barksdale SNYDER, the next to the youngest being Sarah who became Mrs. Thomas MEADOR.)
 
Sarah “Sallie” (SNYDER) MEADOR was my g-g-g-grandmother.
 
 Sallie MEADOR was the mother of at least seven children:  Elihu (1824-1892), Sarah (1827-1892), Taylor (1831-1861), Mary Jane (1834-1897), Theodocia “Docia” Mary (1836-1861), Thomas (born 1842), and William (1842-1860). According to the 1830 census of Breckenridge County, Kentucky, there were two free, white girls in the family under the age of five.  One would have been Sarah, and the other probably was a child who died young.
 
Of the seven known MEADOR children:  Elihu married Anna Elizabeth LAMB, Sarah married Stephen McCOY, Taylor married Elizabeth ADKISSON. Mary Jane married Charles MACY, and Docia married Jesse MACY.  There is currently no known record of the two youngest boys, Thomas and William, ever being married.
 
Women, unless they were heads of households, were not listed by name on the US Census forms until 1850.  The 1850 US Census for District 1 of Breckenridge County, Kentucky, lists the family of “Thomas Meadows” (aged 44) as containing his wife, Sarah (aged 43), and five children:  Taylor (19), Mary (17), Docia (14), William (8), and Thomas (8).  Also included in the household was Sallie’s mother “Sally SNIDER” (87).
 
That was Sallie’s only appearance by name on the US Census because she passed away sometime between when that census was taken and when Thomas, her husband, took his second wife in 1852.
 
While Sallie lived what was undoubtedly a hard life and died young (approximately aged 45) after giving birth to seven or eight children, she does appear to have lived in better circumstances than some of her neighbors.   During the first two years of their marriage, she and Thomas had a six-room brick house built on a hilltop a mile outside of Hardinsburg.   The house had a detached kitchen, which was customary at the time.  The fine old house stood for more than a century and became a cultural landmark in the area.  It reportedly burned to the ground in 1942.
 
Sarah “Sallie” SNYDER MEADOR passed away sometime between the visit of the census taker in 1850 and Thomas MEADOR’s second marriage in 1852.  She is believed to be buried in the family cemetery that was located behind the house where she and Thomas raised their family.
 
Sallie’s life was no doubt hard, and relatively short, but she left a legacy that now has stretched more than two centuries from the time of her birth.  Many of us today owe our very existence to the strength and stamina of hardy pioneers like her, people who were focused not only on survival, but on bettering their situations as well – and by those measures, Sallie’s life was well lived.