Descendants of Samuel Snodgrass (1754-1844)
Samuel Snodgrass was born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania in 1754, enlisted as a Private in the Revolutionary War, and died in Ohio in 1844. Samuel married Elizabeth Adair, and one of their sons, Samuel, (1774-1851) was to follow in his father’s footsteps, serving his country in the War of 1812, and attaining the rank of Colonel.
Col. Snodgrass married Mary Elizabeth McKinney (1785-1854), and came to western Pennsylvania about 1810, settling in what was then Plum Township. The couple had five children: Matthew, Ann, Elizabeth, Mary and John Linn. From the beginning, the Snodgrass’ helped to build the sprit of the community. It is said that when the nearby Johnston homestead was burned down in an Indian raid, it was the Snodgrass’ who took the Johnstons in, providing food and clothing to see their neighbors through the winter. The Snodgrass’ were also among the first families to donate land to the new cemetery being laid out for the Crossroads Church congregation in the 1850s. Col. Samuel and Mary, along with other family members, are buried in that cemetery.
Samuel and Mary’s children were to grow up and raise their own families in the area including Matthew (b.1811) and his wife Ann, who were to work the family farm, located on the southern side of Northern Pike across from the Old Stone Church.
One of their children, James King Snodgrass (1855-1936) was to marry Anne McGinley (1855-1938) the daughter of another of Monroeville’s pioneering families. At one point, the Snodgrass family was to operate a stone quarry on their land; it is said that many of the early gravestones in the cemetery came from the nearby Snodgrass quarry.
In time, the Snodgrass family farm would become the site of one of Monroeville’s early housing developments – the Caruso Plan.
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Sources:
19th Century Genealogical and personal histories of the Greater Monroeville area, unpublished paper. Paul Damon, 1986. Archives of the Monroeville Historical Society.
Patriot Index, Daughters of the American Revolution.
Hamlet to Highways: A History of Monroeville. Marilyn Chandler, privately published, 1988.