Dedication of Bender, Jennings and Associated Families
Dedication of these manuscripts

¶ This website has been dedicated to my children, grandchildren and all of their many cousins.  It is not now and never has been intended to be merely a cold calculated scholastic research project to enhance a resume or to bring honor to the writer.

¶ My five children have insisted that we maintain the same rural family traditions that they enjoyed in the homes of their now deceased grandparents.  The girls have expressed a desire that their children and grandchildren be raised in a similar atmosphere.  Even though my son lives in another state, a great distance from our home, we know he will be home for the holidays and/or for any deaths or weddings in the family, if at all possible. These family members tell me they don't want to hear just the dull facts or documentation I am authenticating but they want it in manuscript form so they can read it when I am done.  My granddaughter is now working on genealogy as a 4 H project to add to her father's side of the family that I have not researched.  There will be pages that will never be shown on the Internet that will include living relatives. Those pages are available for family members only.

¶ The Internet pages are the result of forty years of combined research with many others contributing data. This site is meant to be a collection of those family histories, stories and sometimes fables of  both families of my husband and I.   My relatives and my husband's relatives bequeathed the family papers to me back to our great grandparents so much of the Iowa history documentation is original or a photocopy of the original is in my possession.  Family dinners and family reunions are still maintained although many families are discontinuing these family oriented activities. Family photos are being added as time permits. We have a few eccentric members that make it all the more interesting.

¶ Included are manuscripts and papers including cemetery records, documentation, photos, sources, and narrative that cannot be found in ordinary gedcoms. Unrelated families of same name are sometimes included to help to separate families in the same locality.  This is a work in progress that is as yet incomplete so please be patient as it develops.  Corrections occasionally have to be made when new material surfaces.  Links to documents, etc. will be added as time permits.

¶ Links from the first document of each surname to subsequent pages. Links at bottom of individual pages will link to subsequent chapters, especially on Jarrard and Snider manuscripts.  I am adding family papers that I or my associates have thoroughly researched from southeastern Iowa backward to Maryland, Pennsylvania,Virginia, and West Virginia in the hopes it will help others in their research. Most likely, I would have no further information on remote lineages. Some speculation remains as there is in all family trees when documentation has been destroyed by courthouse fires and other ravages of time.  If anyone has documentation to contradict what is contained here, I welcome your correspondence and assistence in verification.

¶ Due to the loss of court records and difficulty in locating the very early records, there is no claim to scholarly proof of our ancestry.  We did the best we could with what we could locate.  Family traditions are always interesting but can never be construed as absolute proof.  Older folks memories fade, distant relatives take on a near relationship, and some story tellers just like to make a good story better.  Typos and errors in interpretation are inevitable.  For related genealogists, we urge you  whenever possible to go to the original source and not take the printed word as gospel.

¶ For reasons of privacy, only the older data is presented here.  Subsequent generations are withheld as long as the individuals are still living or dates and places of current residence have been deleted if they are mentioned.