Cynthia Amanda “Laydes” (Snider) Simms, 1879–1967

Born on 14 June 1879, Cynthia was called “Little Lady” or “Laydes” because she was the only girl born to Julius M. Snider and Sara Jane Wilson among seven brothers. On 20 November 1899, Cynthia married George Franklin Simms in Cape Girardeau County, Missouri. They had three children.

The 1900 federal census for Cape Girardeau shows George and Laydes living with George’s sister, Mary, and her husband, Andrew. By 1910, George had been married to Laydes for ten years and he owned a photo shop. Living with them were two children and Julius M. and Sarah J. Snider, Laydes’ parents. After her husband, George, died in 1920 while she still had young children to raise, Laydes worked as a seamstress to provide for the family.

Around 1950, when her grandchildren were young, Laydes accompanied them downtown where they entered a crowded elevator. Laydes pulled the hat pin from her hat, reached around the man directly in front of her, and planted the pin firmly in the rear of the man standing nearest the door. Her grandson Jack remembers the hat pin being used in a similar situation to move people along at the VP Parade on the downtown streets.

In the summer, Grandma Laydes would visit the home of her daughter Helen and her husband Walter Broleman on Yaeger Road in St. Louis County and the family would all pick blackberries, enough to fill washtubs and make homemade jelly.

Years later, Laydes had a stroke and became paranoid seeing little men. She lived with her daughter, Lucille, but when Lucille was working, she couldn’t leave Laydes home alone, so she moved in with Helen and Walter in a little garage with her three grandkids! By the early 1960s, she was battling senility and crippled from osteoarthritis and it became impossible for Lucille to take care of her. At that time she went to the City Hospital for care because the family didn’t have money for a better place.

Laydes died on 4 November 1967 with burial at Memorial Park Cemetery in north St. Louis County after her wake at Hoffmeister Colonial Mortuary.

Written by Judy Broleman
June 2020

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