There just don't seem to be many Sneestons. But I suppose that can be both a blessing and a curse, can't it? So. I've been doing my best to make sense of the Mary Hiscox Sneeston Mutch family Bible that my grandmother has. And, sadly, my part of the Sneeston tree just...ends.
The earliest date in the Bible is of the birth of William Sneeston on 5 Feb 1805, in nowhere-in-particular, England. Also recorded is William's marriage to Mary Hiscox in Milton, Prince Edward Island by the Rev'd C. Lloyd in the year 1854. It seems that the Rev. Lloyd was tied to St. John's Anglican Church in Milton, PEI at the time, but where William had been for the previous fifty years, I'm not sure. Mary Hiscox was born on 20 Nov, 1824--nineteen years her husband's junior--in North River, PEI.
It seems that the couple settled in Charlottetown. There are five Sneeston children listed in the bible, born one after the other, that seem to belong to Willam and Mary. The PEI archives also has an online baptismal index (alert! needs confirmation!) that gives William and Mary these five children and no others; all five were baptised at St. Paul's Anglican Church in Charlottetown (the first two by our Rev. Lloyd, who had apparently moved and was rector there from 1854-1857).
The children of William Sneeston and Mary Hiscox were:
1. Jane Thedosia Sneeston, who was born on 6 Aug 1855, baptised 30 Sept 1855, and died on 25 Feb 1861. She was only five years old. I know nothing else about her.
2. Elizabeth Sarah Sneeston was born 22 Jul 1857 and baptised just a few weeks later on 16 Aug. At least I know that she lived to adulthood; she's unmarried and living with her mother at the time of the 1891 census and is probably an unmarried boarder in 1901. I haven't found her in 1911. In fact, I can't find any Sneestons in Canada in 1911.
3. Annie Caroline Sneeston was born 9 Nov 1859 and baptised on 18 Dec 1859. She's my great-great-grandmother. She married Robert Burns Dewar and had a huge brood of children (twelve that I know of). But that's a story for another day; all her children were Dewars. (Her oldest son, however, was named John Sneeston Dewar.)
4. William Hutchinson Sneeston was born on 10 Jun 1861 and baptised on 5 Jan 1862. The census taken in April of 1881 shows a nineteen-year-old William living outside of the family home and working as a machinist.
By the end of that year, however, William had immigrated to the US. Now, the bible records that he married Annie Lee Van Wyhe on 2 Jul 1888 in Waltham, Massachusetts (and, just four months later, William's big sister Annie would name a daughter Annie Lee). Although there are no 1890 census returns for Massachusetts due to a fire, by 1900 he and Annie were settled in Somerville, Mass, where William worked as a machinist and a foreman. I have found William and Annie on the 1900 and the 1910 census returns and Annie is listed as having no children. When William died on 29 May 1928, it seems that was the end of his line of Sneestons.
5. John Major Pollard Sneeston was born on 10 Nov 1863, baptised 26 Oct 1864, and died at age fifteen on 17 Nov 1878 at French Fort. And that's all I know about him.
William, the father of these five, died on 23 Nov 1866. He's buried at the Old Protestant Burying Grounds at the corner of Elm and University in Charlottetown. There's a picture of his stone online and his little daughter Jane may be buried nearby. Within five months, Mary would be remarried to George Mutch, a barkeeper; she was to outlive William by more than forty years.
So that's my little line of Sneestons, neatly wrapped up at one end, anyway. As for William's ancestry, I've seen his parents listed as Robert and Thedosia Sneeston, but I haven't asked how or why yet. He may have been born in Newark upon Trent, Nottingham, England. Also: there is one other family of Sneestons on PEI in 1881. Headed up by Robert Sneeston, born about 1838 in England, and Mary Ann, born about ten years later, they had seven more little Sneestons. Robert may be William's son by an earlier marriage. By 1891, however, that family is gone from PEI.