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Abraham Snethen was born in 1794 in Kentucky and had a difficult childhood, growing up in poverty in the wilderness. He became opposed to capital punishment after witnessing a hanging at age 15. Despite never attending school, he taught himself to read from the Bible and began preaching to settlers at age 20. He traveled to Cincinnati in 1814 where he was exposed to many religious doctrines but felt the Christian denomination best aligned with his beliefs. Snethen preached as a non-denominational Christian for many years, discussing religious liberty with Alexander Campbell. He spent his later years living with and preaching alongside his family, before dying in Minnesota in 1877 at the age of 83.
Abraham Snethen was born in 1794 in Kentucky and had a difficult childhood, growing up in poverty in the wilderness. He became opposed to capital punishment after witnessing a hanging at age 15. Despite never attending school, he taught himself to read from the Bible and began preaching to settlers at age 20. He traveled to Cincinnati in 1814 where he was exposed to many religious doctrines but felt the Christian denomination best aligned with his beliefs. Snethen preached as a non-denominational Christian for many years, discussing religious liberty with Alexander Campbell. He spent his later years living with and preaching alongside his family, before dying in Minnesota in 1877 at the age of 83.
Abraham Snethen was born in 1794 in Kentucky and had a difficult childhood, growing up in poverty in the wilderness. He became opposed to capital punishment after witnessing a hanging at age 15. Despite never attending school, he taught himself to read from the Bible and began preaching to settlers at age 20. He traveled to Cincinnati in 1814 where he was exposed to many religious doctrines but felt the Christian denomination best aligned with his beliefs. Snethen preached as a non-denominational Christian for many years, discussing religious liberty with Alexander Campbell. He spent his later years living with and preaching alongside his family, before dying in Minnesota in 1877 at the age of 83.
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. 3
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.