This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: LOY, SINNETT, SLANE, LINDEMANN Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/an/Eex.2ACIB/239.1 Message Board Post: Dear Bob: Samuel Loy was my great great grandfather. He settled in the Verde Valley in 1876 after coming there over the Santa Fe Trail and whatever passed as an extension of that trail into Prescott at that time. The Verde Valley first began to open to large numbers of settlers in 1875 and 1876 as a result I suspect of General Crook's success in the Apache Wars just prior to that. Before the Apache left for the White Mountains over Crooks Trail (now paved south of Camp Verde) there had been a small community of settlers at Camp Verde in the shadow of the walls of Fort Verde and there was a rough road up Rattlesnake Canyon where I-17 climbs the rim that if you followed it far enough would get you to Santa Fe. General Crook's success did not remove all of the Apache from the area as there were former scouts and whatever remained of the iindiginous people the Apache had all but wiped out and they remained in the Valley. Quite a few of the Apache also retunred over the years and now ! live largely along the Verde. Samuel Loy with his wife (Jane), and children (James, John, William, Mary and Harriet) settled and farmed north of Camp Verde in what is now called Middle Verde (Just a mile or two north of I-17 as it crosses the Verde River) This area and Cottonwood another four miles further north were largely settled by people moving on from central Missouri although there were some other places including exotic points of origin like that of the Munds (Oregon) and the people of the growing copper mining camp of Jerome who as often as not had corssed one ocean or another to get there. At that time, there was a small rush to mine gold in the Black Hills behind Jerome and Samuel and his sons in addition to farming, ran a small business hauling hay and other supplies to Fort Verde and perhaps to the miners. In those days, the Verde River and Oak Creek were rather swampy with pools and areas of standing water along the streams. The mosquitos responsible for malaria were not uncommon and Jane Loy at some point contracted malaria which eventually (1896) killed her. I do not know if anyone remembers whether that was the reason but sometime around the late 1870's or early 1880's Samuel and his family began to spend summers far from Middle Verde or Lower Oak Creek (now Cornville where son William had set up) and began to homestead small farms where they stayed in summer to escape the heat and perhaps what they considered bad health conditions. I have heard they stayed near the Thompson settlement in Indian Gardens Oak Creek Canyon and perhaps other places. At some time early in the 1880's Samuel set up a small place just to the east of what is now Loy Butte at what is now called the Hancock Ranch (or was when last I drove by some years ago). There was a spring nearby that appare! ntly the Indians had used in centuries past and the area was fairly heavily populated with abandoned Pueblo Dwellings from the period when the Sinagua, Anasazi, Hohokam and Mogollon cultures flourished (don't quote me, they probably did not all flourish at just the same time). The area beyond Boynton Canyon (betwen Sedona and Loy Canyon) is still largely federal land except for one or two small ranches or developments and it was extrememly isolated in those days. There were quite a few more bears than people along that part of the rim. It is said that the rough pioneer lifestyle they engaged in in the summer ruined at least one marriage of Samuel's son James who had become a lawyer and been chosen county attorney. His wife was aparently not of a pioneering disposition. Samuel was already not a young man when he came to Arizona and in a few years he tired of roughing it and sold the place and went to live with his son William (my great great grandfather). The custom of spending sumnmers in the cooler high country continued to my day but for a different reason. Samuel's youngest daughter Harriet married James Munds who set up a ranch at Munds Park (across from Pinewood on I-17 15 miles south of Flagstaff) Munds shot and killed himself accidentally in the 1890's sometime when he tried to pick up a rifle without dismounting after he had opened the gate to the yard at his ranch. I think it was a head wound and would not have made much difference anyway but the next door neighbor, Dr. Myron Carrier was at Oak Creek and it took him many hours to arrive too late to do any good. Harriet survived James by about 50 years and her brother John Loy settled at Munds Park (6300 feet up in the mountains) and raised potatoes and other things (largely th! ey say to supply the stills of the miners at Jerome with raw materials). He began to run a few cattle on the side. He also got together with George Babbitt who was a forbear of the recent secretary of the Interior and built the Schnebly Hill road down the cliff (so he could get his produce to Jerome. Schnebly Hill itself was named for the old postmaster of Sedona who had a car and would drive people up the road to about what is called Bear Wallow where they could get spectacular views of the towering cliffs - it is the same road today so you still can. Bear Wallow was so named because Dr. Carrier was said to have shot a bear there- The postmaster's wife was named Sedona - a variant of "Sidonia" a name favored by the Germans and Swiss of some parts as is attested by the fact that her son Ellsworth told me it was properly pronounced "Seedona" and not "Sehdona". Anyway, pronunication aside, the town was named for her, the hill for him, Munds Park for James Munds and John L! oy, apparently a modest sort, contented himself with raising and selling his potatoes) After John and Harriet died, some of Harriet's heirs sold Munds Park and it was owned by a rancher until my grandfather and great uncle (William sons Edward and Lindsay who were already ranchers at a place called Robbers Roost - named after prior occupants) bought it back in the 1950's since which time we ranched at one level or another until the 1990's. In spring we would round the cattle up starting at Red Rock Crossing south of Sedona where they wintered and move them to Munds Park. One or two of the buidlings in which Samuel lived and worked in his last years remain at Cornville but the family never really went back to Loy Canyon or Loy Butte. You can get there now by jeep tour from Sedona fairly easily though there is nothing that I know of from the Loy era to see. Samuel Loy himself was born in Hampshire County Virginia (now West Virginia) in 1821 son of Jacob (1786-1876) and Mary Slane Loy. Jacob moved soon after to Columbus Ohio where he farmed. Jacobs eldest son James Loy had moved to Missouri by the 1840's where he was a cooper in Glasgow on the Missouri River (I assume he was making barrels for the flat boats that went up and down that river to the Mississippi). Samuel Loy joined the Gold Rush and lived in California for 2 or 3 years and it is likley that he was with James in Missouri when he set out for reasons I will mention. He made it to California without any trouble but found that he was better suited to farming than mining so he raised food to feed the miners and aparently in 2 years did quite well. It is said that he bought passage back around the Cape Horn to New York and came back - somehwere I heard by train -to Ohio to see his father and mother. He then went back to Glasgow Missouri where he married Jane Sinnet! t of neighboring Chariton. That is why I think he may have been living there before. They crossed the Missouri River to Saline County and apparently raised horses and farmed tobacco in Cambridge twp from 1854-1876. Samuel was briefly a slave owner and his slaves appear to have been slaves that were originally with the Sinnetts and followed Jane when she married. Family legend has it that Samuel released the slaves when Lincoln said they should be released because though he was a slave holder he was pro-union. Then some of the slaves came back after a period and worked the farm anyway. In any case, in 1876 things were not working out and with the death of at least one of his parents in Ohio and hard times in Missouri, he collected his horses and took the family to Arizona as I related above. Jacob Loy, Samuel's father, was son of Daniel Loy of Hampshire County Virginia. Daniel Loy was born in Brecknock Twp Berks Cy Pennsylvania son of Johannes Ley (John Loy in English language records) and Maria Elizabetha (almost certainly Maria Elizabetha Lindemann). John Loy and his family settled in Frederick County Virginia in about 1774. Daniel married Christina Muhlschlagel, daughter of a German immigrant schoolteacher, and moved to join that family in Hampshire County in about 1790. Both Maria Elizabetha and Johannes Ley came to America on the Loyal Judith in November 1741 and appear to have lived for a while in Germantown where Maria's father probablky plied his old trade as a weaver. It is probable that Johannes was indentured to Maria's father Justus inasmuch as the couple surfaces 8 years after their arrival in America in Brecknock's Twp judging by the date of their first daughter's birth they had been married about a year. Seven years was a fairly standard term for indenture for passage and among Gemans apparently marriage of the indenturer's daughter to the indenturee was not uncommon. The proof of this relationship is circusmtantial at present (Justus Lindemann had a daughter Maria Elizabetha born the right year whose marriage to another person has never been found and Maria Elizabetha Loy and a known Lindemann daughter, Catherine, provided each other with the largest number of cross sponsorships at each other's children's christenings in Brec! knock Twp which is a strong indication of a sibling or other close relationship.) Mary Slane wasdaughter of James Slane (descendant of a Scotch Irish immigrant who appears to have been more Irish than Scot) and Margaret Largent whose forbears were Huguenaut. Jane Sinnett's mother, Mary Kile, was a Pennsylvania German and her father, William Sinnett, was half German and half Irish (His father Patrick Sinnett - married Catherine Hevener- was a member of a unit called the Kings Waiters in Dublin, Ireland -whatever that was- and he stowed away aboard a ship and was indentured to a nice Swiss born farmer in the wilds of West Virginia on his arrival. He was conscripted to fight in Lord Dunmore's war against the Indians in the Ohio valley in 1774 and served under George Washington at Yorktown in 1781 - regarding which, in his pension application he claimed to have fired the last fatal shot against the English before the cessation of hostilities at the surrender.) I suspect that is more than you ever wanted to know about Sam Loy who pioneered the Sedona, Arizona, area but there it is. Best Regards Grady Loy Yokohama Japan