John Wesley Snyder

John Wesley Snyder​ (Texas pioneer rancher, farmer, and businessman)
Born	June 21, 1837​ Yazoo County, Mississippi, USA​ Resident of Georgetown and Austin, Texas
Died	April 15, 1922 (aged 84)​ Grosbeck, Limestone County, Texas​ Resting place: Odd Fellows Cemetery in Georgetown, Texas
Spouse	Catherine Jane Coffee Snyder​ Three children, including: Laura S. Chessher (1870-1908) ​ Dudley F. Snyder (1880-1956)​
Religion	Methodist ​

For the former mayor of Alexandria, Louisiana, see John K. Snyder.

​John Wesley Snyder (June 21, 1837 – April 15, 1922) was a pioneer rancher, farmer, and businessman from principally Georgetown in Williamson County, near the state capital of Austin, Texas.

Background[edit]

Snyder was the second of four children born to Pennsylvania native Charles W. Snyder and the former Kentuckian Susan Hale (1816–1892), later Susan Wulfjen,^[1] in Yazoo County in west central Mississippi. Charles Snyder died in 1840, and the three-year-old moved with his mother to Missouri.^[2]

In 1856, Snyder and a brother, Dudley Hiram Snyder (1833–1921), came to Texas as partners in an apple orchard and horse-trading business situated between Georgetown and Round Rock in Travis and Williamson counties.^[2]​ ​ Dudley Snyder had gone to work at the age of seven. At fourteen, he was earning $3 per week splitting rails. In 1854, he was acquitted of murder in a case of self-defense. Thereafter, he committed himself to leading an exemplary life, and his family never again spoke of the trouble that he had faced in his early years.^[3] Dudley Snyder was a devout member of the Methodist Church.^[4] He was the founder of the board of Georgetown High School.

Pioneer cattleman[edit]

With the outbreak of the American Civil War, both brothers enlisted in the Confederate Army. Dudley reached the rank of colonel^[3] and served as a conscription officer in Williamson County. He moved herds across the Mississippi River to deliver beef to the Confederacy.^[4] The Snyders sold and shipped cattle to the Confederacy's Trans-Mississippi Department. After the hostilities ceased, John Wesley sold cotton in Brownsville, Texas, and Matamoros, Tamaulipas, Mexico. He married the former Catherine Jane Coffee (1844–1928),^[1] the daughter of John T. Coffee of Georgetown. The couple had eight children.^[2] Dudley Snyder married the former Mary Oatts of Round Rock and was the father of nine children.^[4]

In 1868, the Snyder Brothers cattle enterprise began gathering herds and moving the cattle overland to northern markets. In 1869, John Wesley Snyder headed a drive from Llano County in the Texas Hill Country via the Chisholm Trail to Abilene, Kansas. In 1870, he took a herd to Schuyler in Colfax County, in eastern Nebraska. In 1878, he began a nine-year management of the John Wesley Iliff estate in Colorado and also invested in rangelands in Wyoming. After the 1887 blizzard on the Great Plains, the Snyder brothers focused their efforts on their Texas holdings, including the Renderbrook operation in Mitchell County near Colorado City, Texas as well as vast acreages in Lamb and Hockley counties about Littlefield and Levelland, respectively. By 1891, they had sold these lands and moved their families to Georgetown, where John Wesley constructed a house which still stands. There they operated their San Gabriel horse farm.^[2] In November 1892, the Snyders formed the Texas Livestock Association. The two were business partners throughout their adult lives.^[3]

According to manuscripts at the University of Texas at Austin, Dudley Snyder also operated large cattle ranches in Cooke, Stonewall, and Hartley counties, one of which encompassed 130,000 acres. He was a builder of the short-line railroad from Granger in Williamson County to Austin which was subsequently purchased by the Missouri, Kansas, and Texas Railway Company. He died at his home in Georgetown in 1921, a year before the passing of his younger brother John Wesley.^[4]​

Later years[edit]

John Wesley Snyder subsequently sold his land to the new private Southwestern University in Georgetown and relocated to Austin, where he spent his later years. After more than a half century of livestock and other agricultural business, Snyder died at the age of eighty-four in Groesbeck in Limestone County in East Texas. He is interred at the family plot at Odd Fellows Cemetery in Georgetown.^[1] The Southwestern University Fine Arts Building is located at the site of the former John Wesley Snyder home in Georgetown.^[2]

References[edit]

Bibliography[edit]

• Gus L. Ford, ed., Texas Cattle Brands (Dallas, Texas: Cockrell, 1936).​
  
• Richard C. Hopping, "The Ellwoods: Barbed Wire and Ranches," Museum Journal 6 (1962).​
  
• J. Marvin Hunter (1880-1957), Trail Drivers of Texas, 2 vols. (San Antonio, Texas: Jackson Printing, 1920, 1923; 4th ed.) and ([[Austin: University of Texas Press, 1985).​
  
• Clara Stearns Scarbrough, Land of Good Water: A Williamson County History (Georgetown, Texas: Williamson County Sun Publishers, 1973).​
  
• Snyder Family Papers, Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, named for former Governor Dolph Briscoe of Uvalde, at the University of Texas at Austin.​

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