Nicholas Snethen

US HOUSE CHAPLAIN 1811-1812

Nicholas Snethen was born November 15, 1769 in Glen Cove, New York to Barak Snethen and his wife Ann Weeks. Barak belonged to the same generation as George Washington and, like Washington, served as an officer in the British Colonial Army during the French and Indian War. Barak was present at the capture of Montreal. After the war, Barak returned to Glen Cove, entered business and started a family. Besides a farm in Glen Cove, he operated a schooner ferrying cargo and passengers around the New York City area and a granary and milling business on Staten Island. Interestingly, in the autumn of 1788, Barak Snethen was represented by Alexander Hamilton as the defendant in a lawsuit. Opposing counsel was none other than Aaron Burr. Hamilton and Snethen lost that case and had to pay Burr 25 pounds in legal fees.

Nothing is known for certain how Nicholas Snethen and his family passed the years of the Revolutionary War. New York City, of course, was occupied by the British during most of the war so things would no doubt have been tense. Nicholas was just a boy of seven when the war erupted. Nicholas grew up helping as much as he could with the family businesses.

As a young man, Nicholas fell under the spell of local preachers and decided he wanted to become one, himself. He was drawn to what then was the new denomination of Methodism. In 1793 he became one of the first, if not the first, class leader in the Old Sands Street Church in Brooklyn. In September, 1794 he was officially admitted as an itinerant preacher by the Methodist Church. He spent the next four years honing his skills as a minister by riding a circuit through Connecticut, Vermont and Maine, preaching and ministering to the local populations.

In 1798, Nicholas was sent to serve a congregation in Charleston, South Carolina. It was his first experience living in a state that sanctioned slavery. In January, 1800 a national conference of Methodism was held in Charleston. Nicholas was ordained an Elder in the church on that occasion and was elected Secretary of the national Methodist organization. He was chosen to travel with Rev Asbury, the leading figure of Methodism in the United States at that time. Nicholas came out in opposition to slavery and in favor a republican form of government within the church organization at this conference. He felt church members should select their own ministers rather than have them appointed by bishops or other higher authorities. Neither issue was addressed to his satisfaction at the time. Following the conference, he was transferred to a church in Baltimore.

In the autumn of 1800, Nicholas was taken ill with Yellow fever while on church business in Philadelphia and came near dying, but recovered. Sometime in the summer of 1801, while in Baltimore, he met Miss Susannah Hood Worthington, the woman who would eventually become his wife. He was then 31 years old. In the autumn of 1801 he traveled to Eastern

Tennessee, then to Georgia, back to Baltimore and on to Staten Island. In August of 1802, Nicholas fell from his horse and suffered a severe injury while on a trip back out to the western countryside, but was able to continue his journey and re-unite with Rev Asbury once again in South Carolina and then return to Baltimore. He continued traveling widely on church business for the next two years, but after his marriage to Susan in the spring of 1804, they settled in New York City for two years where Nicholas served as senior pastor.

Susan inherited a farm in Fredericks County Maryland from her family and in 1806 she and Nicholas moved there and started a family. Nicholas decided to focus the majority of his attention on farming and only continue preaching as a part time occupation. The farm came with a labor force of slaves. At first Nicholas sought to free them, but the laws of Maryland made that almost impossible, so he continued with them for the time being.

By March, 1809 Nicholas found the call to preaching too strong to resist and returned full time to that profession. He continued living on the farm, but traveled between churches in the Fells Point neighborhood of Baltimore; Georgetown in Washington, D.C.; Alexandria, Virginia; and Liberty, Maryland, all of which were within a days ride of his home. On November 4, 1811 Nicholas was installed as the official chaplain of the United States House of Representatives and served in that capacity until November 2, 1812. He was serving as chaplain on June 18, 1812 when the United States declared war on Great Britain. In another national conference of Methodists in 1812, Nicholas again came out in favor of a republican form of governance within the church and famously stated that he would not attend another conference unless he was sent there by a vote of all those who would be governed by its decisions. He never did.

In March, 1816 Rev Asbury died, and Nicholas returned to a more settled life with his family on his Maryland farm. He became involved in local politics at this time as a Federalist and was nominated for a seat in Congress. At a public debate between Nicholas and his opponent, Nicholas spoke first and gave a rousing speech that seemed to carry his audience away and leave his opponent with no counter argument. Instead of offering criticism or disagreement, his opponent stood up and complimented Nicholas and said that, Mr. Snethen is too eloquent a man in the house of God to be spared from that work to go to Congress. His statement was no doubt shrewd but so honestly and kindly said that the whole crowd applauded in agreement, and even Nicholas, himself, joined in the laughter and merriment that followed. Nicholas lost the election.

After Rev Asburys death, the Methodist church divided itself in two over the issue of republicanism and whether the people should elect their own ministers or whether they should

be appointed by bishops as in the Catholic and Episcopalian traditions. The republican branch called itself the Methodist Protestant Church. Nicholas was one of the founding leaders of this branch, and for the next twelve years he continued living on his farm in Maryland, preaching to local congregations, presiding over meetings on the organization and administration of the new church, and writing for various publications of the church.

Unfortunately, the devotion of so much of his time to church business left him with insufficient time to attend to the needs of his farm and by the beginning of 1829, he began to experience financial difficulties that resulted in the need to sell the farm in Maryland, but on the bright side, in the process of doing so, he was able to free all of its slaves. Nicholas and his family decided to move out west. In the spring of 1830, they packed their belongings and moved to a new farm over 700 miles away along the Wabash River near the town of Merom, Indiana. Tragedy struck almost immediately. In the autumn, both Susan and one of their daughters died, almost certainly of milk sickness which was a common, but little understood scourge of the area at that time. It was the same disease in the same location at about the same time that killed Abraham Lincolns mother. In his grief, Nicholas decided to return to itinerant preaching among the settlers of the frontier. He was now sixty years old.

For the next fifteen years, until the end of his life, Nicholas traveled as a preacher taking a particular interest in the education of young ministers and participating in the founding of several schools for that purpose. He spent most of his time in Cincinnati, Ohio, but had two married daughters in Princeton, Indiana; a son in Louisville, Kentucky; and another son in St. Louis, Missouri. In the winter of 1838 he gathered his favorite sermons into a book which was published after his death. At a conference in 1843 he was asked and agreed to serve as the principal of a new school for young ministers that was being formed in Iowa City, Iowa and would be called the Snethen Seminary. He visited the site of the new school in Iowa City in the summer of 1844 and while there officiated as chaplain at the first meeting of the Iowa Territorial Legislature. During the winter of 1844-45 he returned to Cincinnati and commenced work on the lectures he intended to deliver at the new school. In the spring, on the way back to Iowa City, he stopped in Princeton to visit his daughters. While there he suddenly became ill and died on May 30, 1845. He was buried there in the local cemetery next to his wife and daughter that he had lost so tragically fifteen years before.

Rev Asbury called Nicholas Snethen his Silver Trumpet on account of the fact that he announced the Methodist faith to so many for so long with such success. His legacy was one of saved souls, freed slaves, and the right of everyone to vote for those who rule over them, even in church.