John Snider, Jr.

Two men named John Snider, a father and his son, crossed the plains in the early 1850's.  John Sr. was fifty years old; John Jr. was 22.  In 1850, Appleton Harmon, who was headed eastward on a Church mission, encountered on 3 June, a John Snider and his traveling companion Amos Davis who were heading toward the Salt Lake Valley.  Elder Harmon wrote a letter to his wife who had remained in Salt Lake City and asked Snider and Davis to deliver it.  This John Snider was probably John Snider Jr. for he was back in Nauvoo, Illinois in time to be included in the 1850 Illinois census on 12 November together with John Sr.  Two trips across the plains in one summer would have been hard on a twenty-two-year-old but even harder on John Snider Sr.  In the obituary of John Sr., written by Apostle John Taylor, there is no mention of an, 1850 plains crossing, only his 1851 journey.