William Knight Makemson (1836-1919) was the great-uncle of Winifred Doney, my great-grandmother and wife to Sam Doney (for more see my book Hellbent for California). Born 1836, Makemson was originally from Illinois, but moved to Texas in 1847 as one of the first settlers of Williamson County, Texas. He served in the Civil War, was a Sheriff of Williamson county, an attorney during the Hoo Doo (Mason County) War, and was lieutenant governor of Texas. Makemson was also a writer and local historian. He published and edited a newspaper, the Georgetown Watchman, in the 1860s and 1870s, and in 1904 wrote and published First Settlement and Organization of Williamson County, a short county history. He was a founder of the Williamson County Old Settlers Association and served as its president; he was also active in Confederate veterans' groups, the Masonic fraternity the Odd Fellows, and the Old School Presbyterian Church. In 1879 he was the Independent Order of Odd Fellows Grand Master of Texas. He was a director of the Georgetown and Granger Railroad.
His sister, Sophronia Makemson (1848-1899), married his friend and Civil War companion, Archibald Robert "Archie" Hart (1826-1900). Their daughter, Willie (1877-1978), married Fernando Schieffer (1877-1949), who served in the Army in the Spanish American War, and were Winifred's parents. Winifred (Schieffer) Doney (1910-2009) was originally married to Clyde Hargis (1910-1999), a Naval Veteran of the Pacific campaign in WWII. They had one son, Clyde. Winifred divorced Hargis, and married Sam Dewitt Doney in 1939, who later adopted Clyde, renaming him Clyde Dewitt Doney. Clyde Dewitt, a US Army Veteran, married Pauline (Peschka) in Texas. Pauline is the daughter of Eddie and Olene (Sunday) Peschke. Olene's father, Thomas Jefferson Sunday was a special Texas Ranger and (according to family story) a deputy with the Travis County (Texas) Sheriff's Office. He was rumored to be one of the first deputies to engage in the "new" form of travel, airplane, during the Prohibition Era, flying over the Texas Hill Country to help locate illegal stills. Eddie's great-grandfather, Johann Traugott Wandtke, was a German-born carpenter. After traveling to the US, landing in Galveston, Texas, he traveled to Round Top. There he built the first pipe organ in Texas, in the 1860s, for the Bethlehem Lutheran church, which is still in use today. Wandke put them together with hand-turned wooden screws. He made the pipes from hand-planed wood. His organs are typically about ten feet high and six feet wide. Most of the wood in them is local cedar. They still perfume rooms with a delicate cedar smell. The rumor is he would tune the organ by playing a note on his piano at home, then walking across town, humming the note, until he could get to the church and tune the organ to the proper note. He would then return home and repeat the process for each key. Johann's daughter, Christane, married Wendelin Peschka in 1857, having 6 children, including Emil, in 1866. Emil was Eddie's father. I am in possession of a pocket watch that belonged to Christane, rumored to have been given to her as a wedding gift, though it is unknown if it was given to her by Wendelin or Johann. Johann is buried in the cemetary of the Bethlehem Lutheran church in Round Top. Clyde and Pauline eventually moved to Colorado, where Clyde worked in the aerospace industry before leaving to pursue his dream of being a sculptor. He created a vast number of bronze sculptures, including two monuments, one located at Santa Rita Park in Durango, Colorado, and the other at the Cal Farley Boys Ranch, near Amarillo, Texas. Clyde and Pauline had three children, Donna, Jeanilynn and Mark. Pauline passed in 2014, followed by Clyde in 2017. Jeanilynn met and married Michael Snyder in Durango, resulting in me. Michael was (briefly) a deputy sheriff for La Plata County, Colorado, before he left law enforcement to work in private security. They divorced in 1979, and she later met Andrew Jabsen, whom she would marry in 1983 and be with until her passing in 2021. This story, combined with the information below about the Snyder family, is a brief history of my family and how my books, among other things, came to be.
Letter written by W.K. Makemson to Ethel Makemson Perry dated April 17, 1913 at Georgetown, Texas. “As to the genesis of the family on my mother’s side I can only recall and perhaps never heard more than viz—My mother was a daughter of James and Martha Knight nee Seals. They were married in Pennsylvania. Grandmother was quite young at the time, perhaps only 16 years of age. It must have been in 1797 or 8 their oldest child, my uncle Dr. William Knight (Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. Eubanks, and Mrs. Foster’s father) was born in 1799. Grandfather was of English descent and born and reared somewhere in Delaware. I know I remember he would tell me when I was a child some very interesting stories about catching sturgeon – very large fish—in one of the rivers in the state of Delerware, as he always called it. He never said Delaware, always spoke of it as “the state of Dilirrare”; he had a kinsman much older than he was, by the name of Little Knight, so I have heard him say—he and grandmother were married in a fort or block house in Pennsylvania. The people of the neighborhood were forted up for protection from the Indians. Grandfather Knight was connected in some way with the American Army in the War of 1812. I think he was connected with the transportation department and had charge of a strong of 40 or 50 pack horses; nearly all Army supplies were carried at that time on. Pack animals he was at, in, or near several battles—the Thames and Raisins—if my memory serves me – I remember of hearing him speak of General William Henry Harrison and, I think from the way he spoke of him he was personally acquainted with him. This is about all I know of him. He came to Texas when we did and died over on Brushy Creek about four miles below where Round Rock is now situated, in December 1847 (We arrived here around the 25th of November 1847) He was 77 years old when he died which would make him about 20 or 21 years of age when he married. Grandmother died in Danville, Illinois in 1844 and is buried (or was) in the old graveyard there. I was at her grave in 1880. This graveyard then almost in the heart of the city. I understand the remains of the people buried there—there were 1500 or 2000 – have been disinterred, by the order of the city authorities, and removed and reinterred in Oak Hill Cemetery and the ground cut up into lots and is now a solid residence section of the city. Grandmothers maiden name was Seals. She was a daughter (only child) of John Seals and Martha Seals, formerly Martha Smalley. John Seals was killed by the Indians in Pennsylvania when grandmother was 5 or 6 months old—he was a native Scotchman—came to America after he was grown. Family tradition says his true name was Bruce a lineal descendant of the Robert Bruce tribe of Scotland and for some reason to me unexplained he assumed the name of Seals when he came to America and that is said to be the reason the Scotch name David Ruthoven, Edwin Ruthoven, Bruce and Willie have been kept up in our family. Grandmother Knights mother as above stated was the widow Smalley when she and John were married. Her husband Smalley was also killed by the Indians near where Seals was killed and the youngest child Wm. Being the 6 year old was captured and carried off by the Indians and kept in captivity by them 12 or 18 years. When he was restored to his people under a treaty with the government some 10 years after that, when on some government expedition, as an interpreter he was recaptured by the Indians, all the expedition being killed but himself, and was kept a prisoner two years when he escaped for them. This was up somewhere on the lakes not far from the place “Green Bay” – his mothers grandmother was a French woman, a native of France it is said, and I guess it is true, she was a sister of Stephen Girrard—the tradition on that point is that her father and mother died in France when she was 5 or 6 months old; leaving three children, herself, her brother Jessie, then only about 2 or 3 years old, and Stephen—that after the Revolutionary War, Stephen came to America—having sold their property and invested it in a ship. He brought his brother Jessie and his sister Martha with him, and left them with a family in Philadelphia and perhaps left some money for their support—he going off on a voyage to the Indies and was gone several years, meantime his brother and sister had been turned out as paupers by the family they were left with, the money he left for their support being exhausted. When he returned he disowned them and they the boy Jess and the girl Martha changed their name from Girrard to Jarrett and the name Gerrard was ever after taboo in the family. I remember very well when quite a child father brought me from town a small geography and I found a picture of Girrard College in it, and showed it to grandmother Knight as soon as she saw it, she became furious, slapped my jaws and told me never to mention that name to her again, I went off howling like a hit pup – told mother about it and I never could understand why grandmother got so mad, until a few years before mother died, I ask her again for the hundredth time perhaps, what made grandmother so mad about the picture in the geography, and she told me what I have written about their family feud. My ancestors on both sides of the house were strange breed of people, and especially on the Knight side they were of deep and implacable prejudice unrelenting as the old one himself and had a very high estimate of their tribal blood and ancestry."
Snyder Heritage
Left to right -- Back Row: Joseph Snyder, Walt Drake, Lawrence Snyder, Isaac "Ike" Huff, ? Hamburg, Henry W Brown, unknown, John Segebrecht, JMV "Joe" Sloniker. Middle Row: Martin Hanzlik, Bill Church, unknown, Phillip Dolen Front Row: Eugene Dake, Rufus Griffa.
The Snyder family poses for a photo circa 1925, when George Snyder, lower left, was superintendent of Fort Lewis, then a high school south of Hesperus. His wife, Harriet “Daisy” Snyder, is standing behind him and his son Clarence is third from the left in the top row. Joseph Snyder, and his wife, Anna (Kubick), parents of George, are also pictured in the front row.
Joseph Snyder, 1847-1926, was a Union Veteran of the Civil War. Originally from Bohemia, he moved to the US in 1854. Pictured here (back left) in a veterans reunion, he had one son, George, in 1875. They moved to Colorado, living in Durango in 1920.
His son, George (1875-1934), married Harriett Harrison, and had 7 sons, including my great-grandfather, Clarence. George was the superintendent of an Indian school located in Hesperus, Colorado, which was later moved into Durango, becoming Fort. Lewis College. He died in 1934 after an injury received moving a piece of classroom equipment at the college became infected. He was laid to rest at the Greenmount Cemetery in Durango. Harriet followed a year later.
Clarence (1903-1995) was originally born in Wisconsin, but moved to Colorado with the family in 1920. He married Trulie Frazier (1901-1992), and had three children, Donovan, Bernadine and Alice. He is observed in two, four generation picture on the left, the first taken in 1978, then next in 1985. Clarence was laid to rest at the Snyder family plot at Green Mount cemetery in Durango, with his parents, several siblings, wife and other family.
Donovan and Emma Margot (Fory) at their weeding in Manheim, Germany, March 29, 1949
Donovan Earl and Emma Margot (Fory) met while he was serving in the US Army after WWII. They were married and had their first child, Donovan Clarence, while living in Germany. They came to the US, where Margot was naturalized in 1950. While living in Colorado they had three more children, Thomas, Michael and Deborah. Donovan Clarence and his wife, Diane, had two children, Saren and Hart, and adopted Adam. Michael had one child, me. Deborah had two children, Millicent (Meyer) Davidovich, and Rebekah Garcia.
Margot was the daughter of Adolf and and Rosa (Fischer), born in Mannheim, Baden-Wurttemburg, Germany in 1928. Her father, Adolph, was born in Scranton, Pennsylvania, in 1891 to Adolf and Matilda. The returned to Germany about 1896. Adolph, the younger, had duel US/German citizenship before being enlisted in the Kaiser's Army in WWI, causing him to lose his US citizenship. He died in Germany in 1957. Margot had two brothers, Adolph and Phillip, who were both killed in WWII, Phillip from injuries sustained in Europe, Adolph fighting on the Russian front. She had four sisters, Liselotte Burbach, Gisele McCool, Waltraut Otis and Rosa Kolb.
Liselotte "Lota" and Hugo Burbach
Rosa Fory
Donovan (front left), and Margot (front right) with son, Donovan (back left) and his wife Diane (back left). Also pictured are Steven Davidovich and Millicent Davidovich (daughter of Deborah Snyder). July 15, 2000
Donovan Snyder (front center) with Margot behind him. Back row (left to right) Aidan (my son), Me, Dana Snyder (Hart's wife), Devin Davidovich (Millicent's son), Margot and Millicent. Front row (left to right): Ashtyn Snyder (my youngest daughter), Lilly Snyder (Hart's Daughter), Donovan, Payton Snyder (my older daughter), Hart Snyder and his son Evan. This picture was taken August 2017, just weeks before Donovan passed away.
Donovan was a US Army veteran, worked at Ft. Lewis College, owned his own business, and was a radio personality, beyond being a husband, father, grandfather and great-grandfather. He is sorely missed. He was laid to rest at Green Mount Cemetery in Durango.
In memory of all of those who have given the ultimate sacrifice, and all of those who have lived their life in service, even if death came after hours.