| 12. | Benjamin SNOW was born in 1754 in Plymouth, New Hampshire; and died. Notes:
As we have seen before. Benjamin Snow was born at Plymouth. New Hampshire, in the year 1754, twenty-two years before Thomas Jefferson drafted the Declaration of Independence, and married Elizabeth Payson in 1783 at St. Johns, Nova Scotia, before the framing of the Constitution. His two oldest children were born there, and between the years of 1786 and 1789 he moved from St. Johns to Plymouth, New Hampshire. From this place he moved to Bath, New Hampshire, between. 1789 and 1792, and in this latter town he died some time in 1817, shortly after the close of the War of 1812, at the age of 63 years. His wife moved with her family to Atkinson, Maine, in 1822, and there she died and was buried twenty years later, on November 15, 1842, at the age of 89 years.
In speaking of the pioneer journeys of Benjamin's family, obviously it will not be possible to detail all the shifts and moves of the recent generations, and consequently we shall confine ourselves, in dealing with this subject, to the children of Benjamin only, and simply indicate the places or States wherein they settled and from which their children went forth. Without the aid of a record, the memories of the Snows of recent generations do not. in many instances, run back in recollection of their ancestors much farther than to Benjamin's children, and so in telling of the moves and settlements of Benjamin's children, we are relating the facts that to a large extent determined the birth places or present residences of the younger generations.
A hard, rebellious soil, and a cold, bleak winter climate, constituted the obstructions and barriers which the Snow family surmounted or brushed aside in the early period of its growth. The reports of the rich land further to the west, in Ohio. Indiana, Illinois, and the "prairie" States, seemed to promise greater creature comforts and physical prosperity than the farmers of New England could wring from the obstinate stony soil of their native farms, and the long, dismal, freezing winters proved to be "the last straw that broke the back" of their resolution to linger where their fathers were born and reared, and many of them took Horace Greeley's advice and "moved west to grow up with the country."
Whether Benjamin's family was more susceptible to the rigours of the New England climate than others, we do not know, but the letters of his children contain frequent mention of the torment of coughs and colds, and kindred ills, and the spectres of pneumonia and tuberculosis seemed to prey upon their minds not a little.
Benjamin married Elizabeth PAYSON in 1783 in St. Johns, Nova Scotia. Elizabeth died on 15 Nov 1842. [Group Sheet] [Family Chart]
|
1859 - Yes, date unknown