Mr. and Mrs. Levi Snavely happily recalled 73 years of married life when the three score and 13th milestone was reached Sunday [01/08/1933]. They enjoyed the comfort and pleasures of their home, 601 Seventh avenue, as they have for 33 years in that house, and were visited by their six children who live in and near Sterling, and by grandchildren and great-grandchildren. There are few if any other couples living in this section who have such a wedding anniversary.

Both Mr. and Mrs. Snavely enjoy very good health, Mr. Snavely being a daily visitor down town, whether good or bad weather. He walks the 12 to 14 blocks down town and then walks back, and is a familiar sight to many. Mrs. Snavely remains at home but is able to do her own housework to a large extent and is the spokesman for the family, as Mr. Snavely is quite deaf. Mr. Snavely’s birthday will be Jan. 23, having been born on that date in 1837, at Lebanon, Pa. and Mrs. Snavely was born Nov. 27, 1841, in Lancaster county, Pa.

Mrs. Snavely has lived here longer than her husband. She was the daughter (Annie) of Mr. and Mrs. Ezra Landis, Pennsylvanians, who came west about 1850, when she was not quite nine years of age. Her parents and four children came on the steamboat “Mayflower” from Pittsburgh to Chicago and came from Chicago to Sterling in a wagon drawn by horses, Mrs. Snavely told the Gazette reporter. They immediately occupied a very rough log cabin in the northeast part of Sterling, which was a great hardship to her mother, as she had always lived in a substantial frame house.

Mr. Landis purchased land at Science Ridge and was one of the first settlers there, the John Hess and Henry Bressler families having come out with them on the journey from Pennsylvania, and were their neighbors here. All had come from the east as land was so high there and so cheap here. There were very few people in this section in 1850 and neighbors were far apart. Sterling was a very small town, roads were rough and in winter especially bad.

Mr. Snavely’s parents came here from Pennsylvania to Sterling in 1855 and joined the embryo settlement now known as Science Ridge. All were of Swiss Mennonite stock. Mr. and Mrs. Jacob Snavley were the parents of Levi. They built a substantial home and large corn barn at Science Ridge, and as more of their Pennsylvania co-religionists came and settled, held their first Mennonite services in the Snavely barn loft. Later on Mr. Snavely gave the land for the present Science Ridge church and churchyard, and he and other men erected the first meeting house there. As the families and children neighbored Levi Snavely and Annie Landis mated and were married at the home of the bride’s parents, Mr. and Mrs. Henry Landis, two miles north of Sterling on the Freeport road by Rev. J. Cobby, a local preacher of the Methodist church, who also taught the old school in that neighborhood. Mrs. Snavely said it was a bright sunny day but the snow was deep and cold. After their marriage Mr. and Mrs. Snavely began housekeeping on a farm on which they lived seven years, then moved to the Freeport road farm now occupied by Henry Snavely and family. From there they moved to Sterling in 1899, and purchased the then new house, 601 Seventh avenue, from J. C. Meiser, who had built it three years previously.

Ten children were born to Mr. and Mrs. Snavely. One child died at the age of five years, and another at three, and the latest one to die was Mrs. Erza (Emma) LeFevre, who died two years ago. Living children are Mrs. Harry (Alice) Book of South Dakota; Henry, Jacob, Irvin B. and Dr. J. L. Snavely of Sterling, and Mrs. Harry E. (Mabel) Myers, who with her family lives with her parents. There are about 20 grandchildren and several great-grandchildren.

Mrs. Snavely is now a member of the Church of the Brethren, and Mr. Snavely is a member of the Presbyterian church, to which bodies they became attached after they moved away from the neighborhood of their old church.

All of the Pennsylvanians spoke German when the came to Whiteside county, and their preaching was always in German for many years, but the children had been taught English in school. One reason for all becoming English speaking was their hired men spoke English.

Mrs. Snavely recalls many customs prevailing during her girlhood days. Family life was ideal. Sons and daughters all worked. The girls learned housekeeping, cooking, baking, sewing and other duties at an early age. The wheat and corn raised on the farm were taken to either Wilson’s mill on the Buffalo, nine miles north of Sterling, and ground, or else to Ben Bressler’s mill on the Elkhorn, not far from the Dr. Pennington farm. Wheat, corn, oats and hay were raised. There were but crude hand implements for farmers in the ’50s. At harvest time the men would sometimes pass a jug of whisky from man to man for a drink, but there was never any drunkenness, so far as Mrs. Snavley could tell. The women could not always rely on their cows coming home. Farms were on the prairies and had no fences. The cattle and other stock roamed in the timber. Milch cows had bells strapped to their necks, and went a long way off, so they had to be sent after and driven home. Cream was turned into butter and buttermilk in dash churns at first, then in box or barrel churns, turned by a crank. Bread was baked, both wheaten and corn bread. Corn was cooked in various ways. The women, during the fresh fruit season, also made apfelschnitz and pershingschnitz, dried apples and dried peaches, from which to make stewed fruit and pie filler. All the food the farmers had come from off their farm. Very little was bought at stores.

From the homes the people could daily see the stages, drawn by four horses going back and forth between points east and west, from Chicago and Freeport and Rockford to Rock Island and Moline. In the years immediately before the Civil War the cholera and typhoid fever were terrible and entire families sometimes succumbed to it. Early day physicians were Drs. Galt, Wallace and Anthony. They rode about on horses and had saddlebags in which to carry medicines and instruments. Dr. Galt had the drug store in Sterling then. There was also a Dr. Benton.

Rev. H. K. Hostetter, local Methodist preacher and Bible class teacher, as a young man used to go out in the Science Ridge neighborhood, and do painting. Mrs. Snavely recalled that one time he was painting the interior of their house and the weather became intensely cold. He had no overcoat, so Mr. Snavely loaned him his heavy woolen blanket shawl, of the type men wore during the Civil war days instead of overcoats.

Mr. Snavely is the last of his family, but Mrs. Snavely has four brothers and four sisters living in and near Sterling now. They are Henry, Emmanuel, Fremont and Reuben Landis, and Mesdames Sam (Barbara) Martin, John (Maggie) Stauffer, Abraham (Marie) Rutt and Henry (Emma) Hein.

Biography