Rhoda Barnes (Snell)

Born November 21, 1815 in Sackville, New Brunswick, Canada to John Barnes and Hannah Dixon. Married Cyrus Snell on March 13, 1832 in Sackville. Rhoda's father and maternal grandparents, Charles Dixon or Dickson and Rhoda Emerson, joined the LDS Church in the mid-1830s and moved to Kirtland, Ohio in October 1837. The Cyrus and Rhoda Snell family probably joined the Mormon Church about the same time, as they named their son Cyrus Alma Snell in 1838; the man's name "Alma" comes from the Book of Mormon. Their children were:

1. George Washington Snell (born August 3, 1833; died November 19, 1835 in Sackville)
2. John Wesley Snell (born October 5, 1834 in Waldo, ME; died September 10, 1911 in Spanish Fork, UT)
3. George Dixon Snell (born March 18, 1836 in Sackville, Canada; died May 12, 1911 in Salt Lake City)
4. Cyrus Alma Snell (born June 11, 1838 in Sackville; died August 5, 1863 in Spanish Fork)
5. Rufus Phillips Snell (born May 27, 1840 in Sackville; died September 9, 1917 in Cowley, WY)
6. William Smardus Snell (born December 26, 1842 in Sackville; died April 30, 1889 in Spanish Fork, UT)
7. Lucy Hannah Snell (born February 8, 1846 in Sackville; died June 4, 1851 in Lowell, MA)

Cyrus and his family are listed in the 1850 Census of Lowell (p. 105) and his occupation is given as "Clothier", so he was probably in Lowell because of the cotton mills and Rhoda seems to have taken in boarders from the mills:

• Cyrus Snell, 40, Clothier, NH
• Rhoda Snell, 34, New Brunswick (NB)
• John Snell, 15, ME
• George D Snell, 14, NB
• Cyrus A Snell, 12, NB
• Rufus P Snell, 10, NB
• Wm S Snell, 7, NB
• Lucy H. Snell, 3, NB
• (plus 8 young women and one young man, all from New Brunswick; 25 year-old Julia Ann Barnes, also of Sackville, was one of these, but what her relation to Rhoda was is unknown)

The Snells migrated to Utah in 1854 in the small, independent Cyrus Snell Company, arriving in Salt Lake on August 27, 1854. They brought with them in their wagon company a nine year old Danish girl named Nicolena Marie Bertelsen [see biography and abstract for details], a Danish convert to the church, so she could care for Rhoda, who was very ill at the time of the journey. Nicolena's parents had converted to Mormonism and remained in Denmark while they sent each of their children to Utah alone, one by one, trusting their care to returning missionaries.

Rhoda Barnes Snell died October 26, 1900 in Spanish Fork, Utah.

General genealogical and biographical sources:

• ancestry.com (pay site)
• earlylds.com (free site)
• familysearch.org (free site)

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