I didn’t hear much about him growing up, or if I did, I wasn’t wise enough to listen. But after my aunt Sweetie’s funeral in 1984, on a plane from Lubbock to Austin with a connection through Dallas, I sat next to a relative I’m pretty sure I only met for the first time that day, Edwin Z. In that hour long flight he told me a lot about D.H., but the thing that really caught my ear was the story of how D.H., as a teenager, had killed his step-father who had been beating his mother and brother with a chain. And how it was to escape the scene of that history he was spurred to Texas from Tennessee. Something about that story solidified an atavistic connection that I’d been sensing since the early 70s, but couldn’t lay my hands on. It gave me a foothold in my family which I had needed to find. I’d been around D.H.s grandson, my uncle Dick, his wife Nell and their kids Richard and Mary Nell all my life on many, many visits to their ranch west of Clayton, New Mexico. It was there that all kinds of stuff went down that had a lot to do with nurturing an independent streak in myself I felt pretty comfortable with. There also that I was fortunate to mix it up with cousins Ann and John, Diana, my sister Lynn, and all their kids and relations, later on my sons Max and Utah…pretty much the anchor site for family stuff for me, even though I was also around all the cousins in Lubbock, Texas; Española, New Mexico; and Astoria, Oregon. Snyder page as an attempt to track a strange wind that can be heard if you want to. It’ll be a place for myth-making and storytelling too. Anyone can join, but if you are family or if I think you might dig this sort of stuff, I’ll invite you in. It’s really for anyone that knows that life is for love and that observation is action. --- Hills Snyder
It Happened in Barry County Back in 1853
by Emory Melton
In the 1888 bound edition of Goodspeed’s History of Barry County, on Page 71 there appears under the title of "Civil and Military Murders,"a single obscure sentence stating that in 1853 "Dudley H. Snyder murdered Charles Wolfger." In a 1978 edition of ‘The Cowboys" from the current Old West series of Time-Life books, on page 58, appears a photograph of one Dudley H. Snyder with a short commentary which noted that Snyder after the Civil War was considered one of the leading cattle men of the west. Could this be one and the same person? Dusty records in the Barry and Newton County Court Houses and records kept by three Texas Universities in their archives prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that it is the same man. Dudley Hiram Snyder, the eldest son of Charles W. Snyder (a native of Pennsylvania) and Susan Hail Snyder, was born in Yazoo County, Mississippi, in 1833 and died in Georgetown, Texas, September 12, 1921. He had two younger brothers, John W. and Tom, along with a younger sister, Lizzie. The parents continued to live in Mississippi until the death of the father about 1840. Some two years thereafter, in March of 1842, the young widow married John Wulfjen (Goodspeed’s History is incorrect in referring to him as "Charles Wolfger’) in Mississippi and the newlywed couple and her four children moved to Arkansas. Her father, Dr. Thomas Hale, a medical doctor, some ten years later moved from Mississippi to Round Rock, Williamson County, Texas. After the Wulfjens moved to Arkansas, their first child, J. Durham Wulfjen, was born in 1845 in Johnson County; the next, Charles W.; after him, Mary Janet then Sarah E.; and finally Albert, on September 20, 1850. Shortly after the birth of the last child the family, consisting of the father and mother, the four Snyder children and the five Wulfjen children, moved to Barry County. They settled south of Cassville in what is now the Pasley Community. On July 11, 1853, John E. Wulfjen bought, for $100.00, an 80 acre tract described as the East half of the Southwest Quarter of Section 18, Township 22, Range 27 (located one-half mile south of the Corinth Cemetery). The eleven members of the family lived in a small log house on the property. The family came to Barry County from Arkansas about 1850 and remained here for some eight years before moving on to Texas. Late in the fall, probably about the first of November, John E. Wulfjen was murdered. The old court records have long since been lost and the exact date and circumstances are unknown, but the list of witnesses (who were all close neighbors) would indicate that the death occurred at or near the home. The 20-year-old stepson, Dudley Hiram Snyder, was indicted for the murder of his stepfather by a Barry County grand jury. He was held in the jail at Cassville until November 18, 1853, when, after his attorney took a change of venue to Newton County, the circuit judge ordered the sheriff, accompanied by two guards, to take him to Neosho. The witnesses, John Perkins, Elizabeth Perkins, Robert B. Perkins, William Perkins, Amanda Cornielson, Henry McCary and A. Thomason, all of whom were near neighbors, gave bond at Cassville to appear at the Circuit Court in Neosho on "the first Monday after the fourth Monday in April, 1854" for the trial. The first entry in the court records at Neosho by Circuit Judge C. Yancey is under date of June 7, 1854. After reciting the charge, the court entered the name of the jurors and the record reads as follows:
"Wm. Hatcher, Hugh Carter, Allen Wells, Abner Moore, Nathan J. Phillips, Jno. Saltsman, Joel Mccarty, William Dunegan, Robert Wheading, John Marcus, J. Murray and Miller Grase."
8 A.M. June 8 1854
"George F. Ray replaces Wm. Hatcher as a juror. Trial could not be completed this day."
8 A.M. June 9, 1854
"Trial still not finished."
7 A.M. June 10, 1854
"We, the jury, find the defendant not guilty in manner and form as he stands charged in the bill of indictment. J. Phillips, foreman.’
So far as the records are concerned, the cause of death is unknown, whether by gun, knife, beating or other means. There are indications that Dudley Snyder was acquitted by reason of self-defense. The story could very easily end at this point except for the illustrious career that Dudley Snyder later made for himself. Probate court records here show that Susan Wulfjen, the mother, asked the court to sell her land in 1858 on the grounds that she was leaving the state, and in 1859 the 80 acres was sold to Joseph G Peevey, who was then sheriff of Barry County. After his acquittal in Newton County, Dudley Snyder returned briefly to the family home, and in late summer purchased apples here which he hauled by wagon to Austin, Texas, and sold for a good profit. Over the next two or three years he repeated these trips. With his grandfather, Dr. Hale, already in Texas and the allure of the young and growing southwestern part of the country beckoning, Dudley was joined by his two brothers, John W. and Thomas S., for a permanent settlement in that area. G.T.T.
