Abraham Snethen

THE BAREFOOT PREACHER

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Abraham Snethen was born on January 15, 1794 in his familys cabin in the hill country
of Bourbon County Kentucky. His father was William Snethen, the son of Abraham Snethen I,
the son of Jeremiah Snethen, the son of Joseph Snethen, Sr., who was the first Snethen.
Abrahams mother was Hannah Castro, a Spanish woman from Virginia.
Abes childhood was a tough one. His family were among the earliest settlers in the
Kentucky wilderness. Abe knew only buckskin clothing as a child. He never went to school and
lived in a cave for several years of his childhood. In 1809 when he was only fifteen years old, he
witnessed the hanging of a man and became opposed to capital punishment for the rest of his
life. In March, 1811 he experienced the great earthquake of that time and remembered all of
his neighbors being extremely superstitious about the event, believing the end of the world
might be at hand. That summer he got into a fight with another boy over the sharing of meat
from a bear they had killed together. Abe lost the sight in one of his eyes from that fight. The
other boy lost two fingers. In the autumn of that year, he walked forty miles to attend a
meeting being held by a Methodist preacher because he had a dispute with the preachers
grandson and meant to fight with him, but after hearing the preacher speak, he had a change of
heart and decided he wanted to stop fighting and try to be a better person. He kept walking
back and forth to religious meetings and thinking about good and evil and finally decided he
wanted to turn away from believing in ghosts, witchcraft and other superstitions and commit
his life to doing good. He experienced a personal conversion to a religious life while alone on a
mountaintop on one of these walks.
At one religious meeting he heard a Baptist preacher and a Methodist preacher argue
over whether baptism should be performed by sprinkling water on people or totally immersing
them. He was determined to find the truth of the matter, but to do so, he knew that he first
had to teach himself how to read so that he, himself, could look in the Bible for the answer.
Once he learned to read, he began telling others what he was learning, and by 1814, at the age
of twenty, he began making appointments to speak to groups of settlers about what he was
reading in the Bible. This same year, he decided he would travel to Cincinnati, Ohio to see and
hear for himself all the fabulous sights and sounds he had been told existed there and to listen
to the many different kinds of preachers who held meetings there. It was the first experience
he ever had of a real city. To prepare himself, he traded a pack of furs for enough cloth to make
a suit of clothes that was the first he ever owned made out of cloth rather than animal skin.
When he got to Cincinnati, he heard many different doctrines and saw many rituals such as
those of the rollers, jerkers, laughers, and shakers, but he decided he could not unite with any
of them. Of all the denominations he encountered, he liked the ones who called themselves
Christians the best, and he found himself disputing the most with those who called themselves
Methodists. He met a young woman named Lydie Richards and fell in love with her, even
though she was a Methodist. They were married on May 14, 1814 by a minister of the Christian
denomination, and Lydie soon converted her membership from the Methodist Church to the
Christian Church. Lydie and Abe moved to Montgomery County, Ohio and began the difficult
work of building their own farm and starting a family.
In 1815, Abe went back to his parents home in Kentucky and persuaded his father to
pack up the family and move to Ohio.
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On June 7, 1823 Abe received a letter of ordination from two elders of the Christian
Church and both he and Lydie were baptized by immersion. Abe always said that he preached
the Bible, and did not identify himself with any particular denomination. He said it was not
within his power to save souls or forgive sins, but only to help people discern for themselves
the right or wrong of any particular situation.
In 1831-33 Alexander Campbell, who, with his father, eventually became the founders
of the Disciples of Christ Church, came to the area of Ohio where Abe was living. In its
beginning, the Disciples of Christ Church aspired to be a non-denominational church based only
on scriptures. There was a lot of discussion during this period between Mr. Campbell and Abe
and other preachers and ministers in the territory about the tyranny of doctrines within
denominations and the liberty that was required for a person to find his or her true faith.
In 1835 Abe sold his farm in Ohio and moved to White County, Indiana. He and Lydie
were among the first settlers to reach as far west as the Tippecanoe River. By this time he and
Lydie had eleven children and would have one more on the way. In 1849, the family moved
again to Cass County in Illinois. In the winter of 1859-60, Abe made a trip to Winterset, Iowa to
visit a church that was being organized in that area. On the way home, he stopped in
Pleasantville, Iowa where he likely visited his cousin, John Henry Snethen, and his family.
Abe spent the years of the Civil War at his home in Illinois. He was sixty-six years old
when that war began. On October 24, 1868 Lydie died. In February, 1870, Abe moved to Kansas
to live with one of his daughters and helped organize a church in that area. His grandson was
already a preacher there, and the following year he was visited by one of his sons, who had also
become a preacher, and he very much enjoyed sitting in the pulpit of the new church with his
son and grandson and preaching with them.
In May, 1875, the daughter Abe was living with in Kansas died, so he returned to Indiana
for a while to live with his brother, but then in the Spring of 1876 he visited North Dakota and
stayed with his oldest son who had settled in that territory. On the way, he stopped in Elvira,
Minnesota to visit his youngest daughter, and then in December, he returned to Minnesota
where he died on January 1, 1877 just a few days before what would have been his eighty-third
birthday. He is buried in a cemetery in Sleepy Eye, Minnesota, which is kind of ironic since he
lived most of his life with only one eye.
Abraham Snethen intended to write an autobiography of his life, which at the time of
his death existed as just a collection of notes and stories which were organized by his daughter-
in-law and then edited by an Elder of the Christian Church. His autobiography was finally
published in book form by the Christian Publishing Association of Dayton, Ohio in 1909.

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