Person:John Snoddy (1)

This article is for Captain John Snoddy who settled on the Clinch River, at Castle's Woods, and married Margaret, daughter of Person:John Walker (81) and Ann Houston.

John Snoddy appears in Southwest Virginia by 1774, when he is listed on the roster of Moore's Fort (Blue Spot 13), in Castle's Woods. From the DOB's of his children he probably married Margaret in 1775. The marriage was probably prompted by his decision to move west to the new lands of Kentucky.

Snoddy would later testify that

"I came to Kentucky with Daniel Boone in the year 1775 and came by the blue lick crost Silver Creek and went up Harts Fork and soon on to what is now Bonnesbourgh."[sic]^[1]

The couple would not stay here long. With the outbreak of the Revolution and Indian hostilities in 1776, they apparently returned to the Castles Woods area. Hamilton, (1978) writes:

Captain John Snoddy...was a militia captain on the Clinch until his removal to Kentucky around 1780...Snoddy at one time owned Moore's Fort at Castlewood, which he sold prior to his removal to Kentucky to Frederick Fraley. He...died in Madison Co., Ky. in 1814.' ^[2]

Moore's Fort had been established during Dunmore's War of 1774, on the land of John and William Moore in Castle's Woods. The Moore's are said to have been Snoddy's brothers-in-law, and went with him in 1775 to Kentucky. On his return, Snoddy purchased the land from them, and thus became the owner of Moore's Fort. From 1776 to about 1780 Snoddy served as a militia Captain, and is commonly mentioned in the Revolutionary War pension applications of men who served under him. Some state that he was at the Battle of King's Mountain. Certainly others from the area served at King's Mountain. Source:Moss, 1990, in his review of King's Mountain participants, found no direct evidence for his service there. Since Snoddy is frequently mentioned in pension records of solidiers from this time period, had he served at King's Mountain it seems likely that he would have been identified in that context by one of these soldiers.

In anycase, Hamilton has him returning to Kentucky about 1780, selling his Moore's Fort property to Frederick Fraley of Castle's Woods. The first record we have for him in kentucky is when a 1000 acre parcel is surveyed for him on Drowning Creek in what was then Lincoln County, but would soon (1786) become Madison County. ^[3] This property is described as lying within the Drowning Creek watershed; adjacent land records show that it was somewhere between Drowning Creek and Dreaming Lick Creek, both north flowing tributaries of the Kentucky River, in the general vicinity of Boonesboro:

John Snoddy's land probably lay between Drowning Creek (Green Line) and Dreaming Creek (blue Line), just outside of Boonesboro, where Snoddy had initially come in 1775.

In 1786 he is shown as living in Madison County, when he is identified as a member of the "Commission of the Peace" at the Counties creation:

At the house of George Adams in the county of Madison, on Tuesday, the twenty-second of August, in the year of our Lord, one thousand seven hundred and eighty-six: A commission of the peace, and of Oyer and Terminer, from his Excellency, Patrick Henry, Governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia, directed to George Adams, John Snoddy, Christopher Irvine, Daniel Gass, James Barnett, John Bowles, James Thompson, Archibald Woods, Nicholas George, and Joseph Kennedy, gentlemen, constituting them Justices of the Peace, and of Oyer and Terminer, in and for the said county of Madison, was produced and read. Whereupon, the said John Snoddy and Christopher Irvine, administered the oath of fidelity to the Commonwealth, and the oath of a Justice of the Peace, and of Oyer and Terminer, to George Adams, Gent., who then administered the said oaths to the said John Snoddy, Christopher Irvine, Daniel Gass, James Barnett, John Bowles, Archibald Woods, Nicholas George and Joseph Kennedy, Gents., and thereupon a court was held, for the said county of Madison. Present all the said gentlemen. ( First entry in Madison County Records.) ^[4]

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