Snyder, Michael

SNYDER, BURK, DOW, WOOD

Posted By: Gary Norris (email)
Date: 1/29/2013 at 08:46:09

The History of Poweshiek County, Iowa
Des Moines: Union Hist. Co., 1880.

SNYDER, MICHAEL—Grinnell Twp—pg 926-7. It is no small matter to attain success on American soil, especially when taking into consideration the disadvantages of overcoming foreign birth and learning the use of a new language in a strange land. These were the impediments bravely met and overcome by Mr. Michael Snyder, who was left an orphan at the age of thirteen years in a strange land, and penniless. He was born in Luxembourgh, in the year 1833, and came to this country in 1846 with his parents, who, soon after their arrival on the American continent, died. Coming to Iowa, Mr. Snyder settled in Cascade, where he spent twelve years as a laborer, after which he entered the mercantile business, and spent sixteen years in that line very successfully, in Cascade. He was married to Miss Mary Burk in 1858, a native of Ohio, who died in 1870, and by whom he had five children, three now living: Edwin E. (the eldest, now station agent at Montezuma), Emily (now being educated in Heidelberg, Germany) and Louise (attending school at home). In 1871 he married Mrs. C.E. Dow, who has one adopted daughter, Kate V. (now Mrs. A.B. Wood, of Ewart). With property enough to satisfy an ordinary ambition, and a desire to be brought into contact with enterprise and the best of schools and railroads (there being no railroad at Cascade) he removed to Grinnell in 1874. Here he has been no idler, nor palsied by that caution which makes dull monotony in business. The first enterprise was to make a convenient, attractive and pleasant home, which he did, as will be revealed by a visit to his residence in the west part of the city. The scheme of the G.& M.R.R. was inaugurated, and he advanced his money and time, and at one time had the largest sum in the road, and was president of the corporation, but has recently sold out his interest to ex-Governor Merrill, of Des Moines. Then a hotel was wanted at the railway junction—now the Chapin House—a model establishment, into which he threw his whole energies, until completed and well under operation. The city and county would have a savings bank, and to this Mr. S. made the largest local subscription, and is now a director, and also one of the executive committee, as well as an officer of the First National Bank. To the erection of the new stone church he gave his time as one of the building committee, and, we believe, was one of the most liberal donors toward its erection. This is the orphan, grown up to be a self-made man, honest, energetic, sagacious, and to whom society becomes a debtor, as this city has, even after his brief residence, when being better known, he will find a larger field for his enterprise and be even more highly esteemed by a community that asks not where a man was born, but whether he is alive, rather than a leech, or a cipher on the wrong side of the numerals.