One question that I have been working through for a long time is how did the Southards end up on the Cherry Hill Farm in Page County? I think that I now have an answer.
Based on the history of the Southard / Suthard families, the John Snyder property was adjacent to the “dower Mary Southard” property.If you are driving from the Marksville Road intersection, the Snyder farm was the first one, Southards were past that farm, the Aleshire property was on the left (to the east) and the Gray’s property was on the right and beyond the Southard properties.
Mary Southard was the wife of Lewis Southard. Lewis and Mary were the parents of William Henry Southard 1818-1849 and his wife Sally. It is presumed that both parents died young because William H. Southard and his siblings were raised by Lewis and Mary Southard – his grandparents. Lewis and Mary were both present on the 1870 Census at 82 and 79 years old.
The “dower” property belonged to Mary Southard after the death of Lewis. The children of William Henry Southard – which would be John Henry Southard 1841-1877, Joshua Calvin Southard 1844-1900 (my maternal great grandfather), Clarinda Southard 1846-1866, and Elizabeth “Betty” Southard Jenkins b1847 – all were living on the Mary Southard property prior to the 1870 Census.
Being the next-door neighbor to John Snyder, this would not have been a difficult stretch to think that they have visited or spent time there. On the 1870 Census, there is a Thomas Southard living at the Cherry Hill Farm property with the Snyders. The residents on that census were John Snyder 81, James M. Dovel 35, Clarissa 37, James P. Snyder 42, Mary Comer 39, Emma 6, and Thomas Southard 19. Thomas would have been a cousin to Joshua Calvin Southard.
On the 1870 Census, Joshua Calvin Southard, Eliza Jane Parks Southard, and my great grandmother Lula Ann Southard Roudabush were all living in Marksville but not on the Cherry Hill Farm – which corrects my assumption that my great grandmother was born on the farm.
Old man Snyder was too old to properly take care of the farm, and his son James P. Snyder had plenty of money available after the 1849 California Gold Rush to support the farm and considerable help.
It is not a far stretch to see that JC Southard, his wife and young child could have discussed working on the farm in return for room and board, and Eliza Jane Southard was listed as keeping house on the census that James P. Snyder paid them for.
Is it a glorious bit of history? No – considering that they were managing the farm for Snyder, but apparently there was enough of a close bond there that Snyder willed Eliza the farm when he died in 1911.