1. References

Nicholas Sneathen Called “my Silver Trumpet” by Rev. Francis Asbury,^[1] the father of American Methodism, Nicholas Sneathen, who actually spelled his name “Snethen,” was born to Barak Snethen and Ann Weeks on November 15, 1769 on Long Island, New York in a community then called Fresh Pond in the area where Glen Cove now sits. Barak Snethen was an officer in the English Colonial Army during the French and Indian War and was present at the climax of that conflict in Montreal when the French surrendered their claims in North America to the English.

Sneathen grew up to become avidly democratic, much in favor of American expansionism and anti-slavery.^[1]

Nicholas Snethen helped his father and grandfather in various family businesses during his youth, which was spent under the Articles of Confederation. At various times, his family operated a schooner, ferrying people and goods around New York harbor, farming operations on both Long Island and Staten Island, and milling services in New Jersey. He attended a country school and was instructed in religious matters by his mother, who proceeded from a prominent Quaker family, and also from his father, who proceeded from a family that followed the Dutch Reformed Church's traditions.

Sneathen first professed religion to a Bishop in the Episcopal Church at age 18 in the same year in which the U.S. Constitution was adopted, but he soon converted to Methodism, a new denomination that started in England and was just taking hold in America. After working hard to acquire some additional book learning and reading, writing and speaking skills that had been overlooked in his earlier schooling and serving as the first Methodist class leader in the Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Brooklyn, New York., he was accepted into the Methodist Ministry in September, 1794 at the age of 25. He was immediately assigned to ever more remote, northerly outposts a year at a time, first in Connecticut, then Vermont and finally Maine, before returning home to New York where one of his friends reported years later that after nearly four years in the saddle roaming from farm to farm and community to community he returned a far more vigorous and healthy man than he had been when he left.

From 1798-1800 Snethen ministered in Charleston, SC and was ordained an Elder at a regional Methodist conference in that city in 1800 at the age of thirty-one. He was selected to travel with Rev. Asbury to the General (National) Conference of Methodists in Baltimore that same year. He stayed in the Baltimore area for a while and there met his future wife, Miss Susannah Hood Worthington. They were married in 1804 and moved to New York that year where Mr. Snethen served as senior preacher. In 1806, the couple moved back to a farm his wife inherited in Linganore, MD, and from this base Mr. Snethen preached in Baltimore, MD and in Georgetown and Alexandria, VA. In 1811 just prior to the outbreak of war with Great Britain, he was asked to serve as Chaplain to the US House of Representatives. During this assignment, he became acquainted with Henry Clay of Kentucky and John Randolph of Virginia.

From at least 1800 onward, the Methodist Church in America was divided over the question of how much authority the congregants should have to select their own preachers, and how much authority preachers should have to select their own assignments, rather than leaving the authority to make these decisions solely in the power of the church's bishops. Mr. Snethen always took the Republican side, favoring power over these decisions being vested in the laity and ministers rather than the bishops. Eventually the Methodist Church divided over this issue, one side becoming the Methodist Episcopal Church and the other the Methodist Protestant Church. Mr. Snethen was one of the founding fathers of the Methodist Protestant Church.

Although his views on lay representation were opposed to those of Bishop Asbury, the two men remained on good terms. Rev. Snethen delivered a stirring eulogy of Bishop Asbury following the latter's death in 1816. That same year, Snethen placed his name in candidacy for a seat in the U S House of Representatives from the Third District of the State of Maryland on the Federalist ticket, but lost the election.

In 1829, financial reversals and moral compulsions led Snethen and his wife to sell their farm in Maryland and set free the slaves who lived on it. They moved to Merom, Indiana, a little town along the Wabash River that forms the western boundary of that state. A year and a half later both Snethen's wife and one of his daughters were dead, probably from milk sickness caused by snakeroot poisoning, the same disease that killed Nancy Hanks, the mother of Abe Lincoln not far away in Spencer County, Indiana twelve years earlier.

After his wife's death, Snethen returned to itinerant preaching for the Methodist Protestant Church and traveled extensively throughout the remaining years of his life. He went back to New York for a time and lived in Louisville, KY and Cincinnati, OH for extended periods. In 1844 he was called to preside over a new school named in his honor in the community of Iowa City, IA, the Snethen Seminary. He visited the community in 1844 and officiated as Chaplain to the Iowa State Territorial Legislature during its session that year. The next year while on his way back to Iowa from Cincinnati to assume his duties as headmaster of the new school, he stopped to visit two of his daughters in Princeton, IN and was suddenly stricken with a severe illness. He died in Princeton on May 30, 1845 at the age of 75 and was buried next to his wife and three of their children in the town cemetery.

References

• A Concise History of the Methodist Protestant Church from Its Origin: Embracing the Circumstances of the SUSPENSION of the Northern and Western Conferences in 1858, the Entire Career of the Methodist Church, and the REUNION of the Two Branches in 1877. With Biographical Sketches of Several Leading Ministers of the Denomination. By ANCEL H. BASSETT, WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY WILLIAM COLLIER, D.D. Published in Pittsburgh by the Press of Charles A Scott and by James Robison of Springfield, Ohio in 1877.
• History of Methodist Reform: Synoptical of General Methodism 1703 to 1898 With Special and Comprehensive Reference To Its Most Salient Exhibition In the History of the Methodist Protestant Church: By EDWARD J. DRINKHOUSE, M.D., D.D. (Eighteen Years Editor of “The Methodist Protestant”): Volume I. Published by the Board of Publication of the Methodist Protestant Church: Wm. J. C. Dulany, Agent, Baltimore, MD. & F. W. Pierpont, Agent, Pittsburgh, PA. 1899.
• Sermons of the Late Nicholas Snethen, Minister of the Gospel in the Methodist Protestant Church. Written by Himself in the Sixty-Ninth Year of His Age. Edited by Worthington G. Snethen, Counsellor at Law. Second Edition. Washington, D.C. Published by Ulysses Ward, 1846.
• Old Sands Street Methodist Episcopal Church of Brooklyn, N. Y. An Illustrated Centennial Record, Historical and Biographical. By Rev. Edwin Warriner, Corresponding Secretary of the New York East Conference Historical Society. With An Introduction by The Rev. Albert S. Hunt, D. D. Published for the Author by Phillips & Hunt, New York, 1885.
• IOWA CITY A Contribution to the Early history of Iowa. By Benjamin F. Shambaugh, M. A. Published by the State Historical Society of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, 1893.
• Annals of the American Pulpit: Methodist: Commemorative Notices of Distinguished Clergymen of the Methodist Denomination in the United States from Its Commencement until the Close of the Year 1855 with an Historical Introduction by William Buell Sprague. Entered According To An Act of Congress in the Year 1856 By Robert Carter & Brothers In the District Court of the United States For the Southern District of New York.
• Pelletreau, William S., Abstracts of Wills on File in the Surrogate's Office, City of New York, published as Collections of the New York Historical Society (Vol. XIII, 1784–86 and Letters of Administration 1785, published 1904), page 251 (will of Deborah Snethen). See also www.the.wardells@gte.net by Pat and Walter Wardell, Englewood, FL.
• The Papers of Alexander Hamilton, Volume 12 by Harold C. Syrett, page 55.
• The Black Code of the District of Columbia, in Force September 1, 1848 by Worthington G. Snethen. Published for the A. & F. Anti-Slavery Society by William Harned, 61 John St., New York, 1848.
• No Party Now: Politics in the Civil War North by Adam I. Smith.
• The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Volume 7 by Abraham Lincoln. Owned by Foreman M. Lebold, Chicago, IL. Page 75.

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