Charles Wilbert Snow
Encyclopedia
Charles Wilbert Snow was an American
poet, educator and politician and, very briefly, the 75th Governor of Connecticut. He generally went by Wilbert or Bill Snow, formally C. Wilbert Snow.
. Bowdoin's President, William Dewitt Hyde personally intervened to get him the scholarship that permitted him to remain at Bowdoin where he was on the debate team and editor of The Quill, campus literary magazine.
He completed his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin in 1907 as one of the Commencement Speakers, receiving Phi Beta Kappa honors. Through a lucky break he obtained a one year replacement appointment teaching debate and public speaking at New York University
and enrolled at Columbia University
where he obtained his master's degree from in 1910, using Bowdoin's first Longfellow Fellowship. One of his fellow students was Carl Van Doren, to whom he introduced the works of Herman Melville
, then in total obscurity. Van Doren, in turn, became responsible for the national rediscovery of Melville. But Snow rebelled at the rigid academic degree progression and told Ashley Horace Thorndike
head of Columbia's English Department that the PhD "was a German invention designed to turn an art into a science." He never took his doctorate.
Snow returned to Bowdoin as temporary instructor of debating and English. From there it was on to Williams College
for another one year temporary appointment. One of his favorite students was James Phinney Baxter III
who shared Snow's disdain for the academic rigamarole and nearly got tossed out as a result. Some 25 years later, Baxter returned to Williams as President. At the end of that year he was hired to teach debate and English at Miami University
in Oxford, Ohio. Snow's political views were very far left for the period. It took the President of Miami only ten days to decide he talked "too plainly with undergraduates about politics and religion" and ask him to leave.
He was saved at that point by an invitation by a former Bowdoin friend to become an Eskimo teacher and reindeer agent in Alaska, which he did from 1911 to 1912. He spent the following six months campaigning for Woodrow Wilson
in Maine and then the next six giving lectures on Alaska. At that point he received an appointment to the faculty at the University of Utah
where he spent two stormy years because of his political views (opposing the reelection of Mormon Apostle Reed Smoot
as United States Senator) and support of Academic Freedom more generally. While at Utah, he induced future historian Bernard DeVoto
to transfer to Harvard University
. From there, after six months of writing, he went on to another temporary appointment to the faculty of Indiana University
.
With the opening of World War I, Snow enthusiastically signed up with the Army and eventually became an artillery captain at the Army's artillery training center at Louisville, Kentucky. He was never sent overseas and worked to get a quick release after the Armistice to accept a temporary position at Reed College
.
in Middletown, Connecticut
and managed to get Snow an offer to take charge of the debating program and teach freshman English. It nearly didn't happen when someone wrote President William Arnold Shanklin
that Snow was too far to the left of center for his aggressive support of the League of Nations
. Snow was called east by Shanklin, but "survived the interrogation."
With a new appointment firmly in hand, Snow married Jeannette Simmons and planned a delayed honeymoon in Europe for the summer of 1922. When they returned, he had a copy of James Joyce
's newly released Ulysses hidden in his luggage. Hidden because Ulysses had been "banned" in America ahead of its actual publication. Snow always asserted, with some logic because of the dates involved, that he had "smuggled the first copy of Ulysses into the United States."
While Snow "survived" at Wesleyan, the early years were a tough go for the same reason previous positions had; his leftist politics. The things that really saved him was Wesleyan having two presidents and two acting presidents during his first three years. That and the impression Snow made on students both as debating coach and as founder of The Cardinal, still Wesleyan's literary magazine. He was also aided with the administration by attracting two campus visits by his friend Carl Sandburg
(whom he always claimed to have "taught" the difference between poetry and the ballads Sandburg was already expert at) and by the publication of his first book of poetry, Maine Coast, which so impressed Acting President Stephen H. Olin that he said to the Wesleyan trustees "The man who wrote these poems cannot be evil." Ultimately Wesleyan's new President, James L. McConaughy
, who had been a friend of Snow's since they taught together at Williams, faced down the Chairman of the Board who threatened to resign if Snow wasn't fired for his stumping for Presidential Candidate Robert LaFollette, and eventually made peace.
On March 26, 1925, Snow was asked to be a speaker at a public dinner for the 50th birthday of poet Robert Frost
, whom he had never met before. The two became fast friends and Frost spent several long sojourns at Wesleyan, conversing with students around the dinner table and fireplace in Snow's home. One of these was Lawrence Thompson who later became Frost's principal biographer. Following Snow's retirement from Wesleyan in 1952, he was a Visiting Professor at Spelman
and Morehouse College
s and induced Frost to come South to work with the student there. Frost and Snow continued to meet regularly and to share private critiques of each others' poetry up until Frost's death in 1963, only a couple of weeks after their last meeting.
, retired Dean of Yale University
. In 1944 there was a move to nominate Snow for governor, but it came apart at the convention and he was nominated for lieutenant governor on a ticket headed by former Governor Robert Hurley
. Hurley lost badly to Wesleyan graduate Raymond E. Baldwin
, but Snow took the post of lieutenant governor. Two years later he took the gubernatorial nomination from Chester Bowles
and Thomas Dodd in a last minute surprise that left The Hartford Courant with a first page headline that read: "Bowles Nominated. The Professor Slinks Back to the Cloistered Halls of Wesleyan." He ended up losing to then Wesleyan President James L. McConaughy in an unusually gentlemanly race. Governor Baldwin had won the race for the U.S. Senate over former Governor Cross, and resigned as governor on December 27, 1946. That gave Snow thirteen days to serve as governor before McConaughey's inauguration on January 8, 1947. His last effort in state politics was a run for the U.S. Senate in 1950.
Snow served as educational commissioner and chairman of the Middletown Board of Education for over 30 years. An elementary school in Middletown is named for Wilbert Snow. He also played a major role in founding the Middlesex Community College. He died on September 28, 1977, aged 93.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
poet, educator and politician and, very briefly, the 75th Governor of Connecticut. He generally went by Wilbert or Bill Snow, formally C. Wilbert Snow.
Biography
Snow was born on White Head Island, located in St. George Township on Penobscot Bay, Maine, April 6, 1884. He grew up there and in neighboring Spruce Head Village. At the age of 14, he quit school to become a lobster fisherman and returned to school three years later, after moving to Thomaston, Maine. After graduation, he began teaching at a one-room elementary school and continued to do so after enrolling at Bowdoin CollegeBowdoin College
Bowdoin College , founded in 1794, is an elite private liberal arts college located in the coastal Maine town of Brunswick, Maine. As of 2011, U.S. News and World Report ranks Bowdoin 6th among liberal arts colleges in the United States. At times, it was ranked as high as 4th in the country. It is...
. Bowdoin's President, William Dewitt Hyde personally intervened to get him the scholarship that permitted him to remain at Bowdoin where he was on the debate team and editor of The Quill, campus literary magazine.
He completed his bachelor's degree from Bowdoin in 1907 as one of the Commencement Speakers, receiving Phi Beta Kappa honors. Through a lucky break he obtained a one year replacement appointment teaching debate and public speaking at New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
and enrolled at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
where he obtained his master's degree from in 1910, using Bowdoin's first Longfellow Fellowship. One of his fellow students was Carl Van Doren, to whom he introduced the works of Herman Melville
Herman Melville
Herman Melville was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. He is best known for his novel Moby-Dick and the posthumous novella Billy Budd....
, then in total obscurity. Van Doren, in turn, became responsible for the national rediscovery of Melville. But Snow rebelled at the rigid academic degree progression and told Ashley Horace Thorndike
Ashley Horace Thorndike
Ashley Horace Thorndike was an American educator and expert on William Shakespeare.He taught at Columbia University and wrote several notable textbooks, including Facts about Shakespeare, Tragedy, and English Comedy. He died of a heart attack in Manhattan as he was walking home from a club dinner...
head of Columbia's English Department that the PhD "was a German invention designed to turn an art into a science." He never took his doctorate.
Snow returned to Bowdoin as temporary instructor of debating and English. From there it was on to Williams College
Williams College
Williams College is a private liberal arts college located in Williamstown, Massachusetts, United States. It was established in 1793 with funds from the estate of Ephraim Williams. Originally a men's college, Williams became co-educational in 1970. Fraternities were also phased out during this...
for another one year temporary appointment. One of his favorite students was James Phinney Baxter III
James Phinney Baxter III
James Phinney Baxter III was an American historian, educator and academic. He won the 1947 Pulitzer Prize for history, for his book Scientists Against Time...
who shared Snow's disdain for the academic rigamarole and nearly got tossed out as a result. Some 25 years later, Baxter returned to Williams as President. At the end of that year he was hired to teach debate and English at Miami University
Miami University
Miami University is a coeducational public research university located in Oxford, Ohio, United States. Founded in 1809, it is the 10th oldest public university in the United States and the second oldest university in Ohio, founded four years after Ohio University. In its 2012 edition, U.S...
in Oxford, Ohio. Snow's political views were very far left for the period. It took the President of Miami only ten days to decide he talked "too plainly with undergraduates about politics and religion" and ask him to leave.
He was saved at that point by an invitation by a former Bowdoin friend to become an Eskimo teacher and reindeer agent in Alaska, which he did from 1911 to 1912. He spent the following six months campaigning for Woodrow Wilson
Woodrow Wilson
Thomas Woodrow Wilson was the 28th President of the United States, from 1913 to 1921. A leader of the Progressive Movement, he served as President of Princeton University from 1902 to 1910, and then as the Governor of New Jersey from 1911 to 1913...
in Maine and then the next six giving lectures on Alaska. At that point he received an appointment to the faculty at the University of Utah
University of Utah
The University of Utah, also known as the U or the U of U, is a public, coeducational research university in Salt Lake City, Utah, United States. The university was established in 1850 as the University of Deseret by the General Assembly of the provisional State of Deseret, making it Utah's oldest...
where he spent two stormy years because of his political views (opposing the reelection of Mormon Apostle Reed Smoot
Reed Smoot
Reed Owen Smoot was a native-born Utahn who was first elected to the United States Senate from Utah in 1903, and served as a Senator until 1933...
as United States Senator) and support of Academic Freedom more generally. While at Utah, he induced future historian Bernard DeVoto
Bernard DeVoto
Bernard Augustine DeVoto was an American historian and author who specialized in the history of the American West.- Life and work :He was born in Ogden, Utah...
to transfer to Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. From there, after six months of writing, he went on to another temporary appointment to the faculty of Indiana University
Indiana University
Indiana University is a multi-campus public university system in the state of Indiana, United States. Indiana University has a combined student body of more than 100,000 students, including approximately 42,000 students enrolled at the Indiana University Bloomington campus and approximately 37,000...
.
With the opening of World War I, Snow enthusiastically signed up with the Army and eventually became an artillery captain at the Army's artillery training center at Louisville, Kentucky. He was never sent overseas and worked to get a quick release after the Armistice to accept a temporary position at Reed College
Reed College
Reed College is a private, independent, liberal arts college located in southeast Portland, Oregon. Founded in 1908, Reed is a residential college with a campus located in Portland's Eastmoreland neighborhood, featuring architecture based on the Tudor-Gothic style, and a forested canyon wilderness...
.
Educator
Snow's friend Homer Woodbridge was then teaching at Wesleyan UniversityWesleyan University
Wesleyan University is a private liberal arts college founded in 1831 and located in Middletown, Connecticut. According to the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Wesleyan is the only Baccalaureate College in the nation that emphasizes undergraduate instruction in the arts and...
in Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown, Connecticut
Middletown is a city located in Middlesex County, Connecticut, along the Connecticut River, in the central part of the state, 16 miles south of Hartford. In 1650, it was incorporated as a town under its original Indian name, Mattabeseck. It received its present name in 1653. In 1784, the central...
and managed to get Snow an offer to take charge of the debating program and teach freshman English. It nearly didn't happen when someone wrote President William Arnold Shanklin
William Arnold Shanklin
William Arnold Shanklin was an American university president. He was born at Carrollton, Missouri, and was educated at Hamilton College and at Garrett Biblical Institute...
that Snow was too far to the left of center for his aggressive support of the League of Nations
League of Nations
The League of Nations was an intergovernmental organization founded as a result of the Paris Peace Conference that ended the First World War. It was the first permanent international organization whose principal mission was to maintain world peace...
. Snow was called east by Shanklin, but "survived the interrogation."
With a new appointment firmly in hand, Snow married Jeannette Simmons and planned a delayed honeymoon in Europe for the summer of 1922. When they returned, he had a copy of James Joyce
James Joyce
James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist and poet, considered to be one of the most influential writers in the modernist avant-garde of the early 20th century...
's newly released Ulysses hidden in his luggage. Hidden because Ulysses had been "banned" in America ahead of its actual publication. Snow always asserted, with some logic because of the dates involved, that he had "smuggled the first copy of Ulysses into the United States."
While Snow "survived" at Wesleyan, the early years were a tough go for the same reason previous positions had; his leftist politics. The things that really saved him was Wesleyan having two presidents and two acting presidents during his first three years. That and the impression Snow made on students both as debating coach and as founder of The Cardinal, still Wesleyan's literary magazine. He was also aided with the administration by attracting two campus visits by his friend Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg
Carl Sandburg was an American writer and editor, best known for his poetry. He won three Pulitzer Prizes, two for his poetry and another for a biography of Abraham Lincoln. H. L. Mencken called Carl Sandburg "indubitably an American in every pulse-beat."-Biography:Sandburg was born in Galesburg,...
(whom he always claimed to have "taught" the difference between poetry and the ballads Sandburg was already expert at) and by the publication of his first book of poetry, Maine Coast, which so impressed Acting President Stephen H. Olin that he said to the Wesleyan trustees "The man who wrote these poems cannot be evil." Ultimately Wesleyan's new President, James L. McConaughy
James L. McConaughy
James Lukens McConaughy was an American politician and the 76th Governor of Connecticut.- Birth and education :...
, who had been a friend of Snow's since they taught together at Williams, faced down the Chairman of the Board who threatened to resign if Snow wasn't fired for his stumping for Presidential Candidate Robert LaFollette, and eventually made peace.
On March 26, 1925, Snow was asked to be a speaker at a public dinner for the 50th birthday of poet Robert Frost
Robert Frost
Robert Lee Frost was an American poet. He is highly regarded for his realistic depictions of rural life and his command of American colloquial speech. His work frequently employed settings from rural life in New England in the early twentieth century, using them to examine complex social and...
, whom he had never met before. The two became fast friends and Frost spent several long sojourns at Wesleyan, conversing with students around the dinner table and fireplace in Snow's home. One of these was Lawrence Thompson who later became Frost's principal biographer. Following Snow's retirement from Wesleyan in 1952, he was a Visiting Professor at Spelman
Spelman College
Spelman College is a four-year liberal arts women's college located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. The college is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman was the first historically black female...
and Morehouse College
Morehouse College
Morehouse College is a private, all-male, liberal arts, historically black college located in Atlanta, Georgia. Along with Hampden-Sydney College and Wabash College, Morehouse is one of three remaining traditional men's colleges in the United States....
s and induced Frost to come South to work with the student there. Frost and Snow continued to meet regularly and to share private critiques of each others' poetry up until Frost's death in 1963, only a couple of weeks after their last meeting.
Politician
Soon after settling in Middletown, Snow became involved in local Democratic Party politics and eventually state politics as an ally of Governor Wilbur CrossWilbur Lucius Cross
Wilbur Lucius Cross, Ph. D. was an American educator and political figure who was the 71st Governor of Connecticut for eight years.-Biography:Born in 1862 in Mansfield, Connecticut, Cross graduated from Yale University Wilbur Lucius Cross, Ph. D. (April 10, 1862 – October 5, 1948) was an American...
, retired Dean of Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
. In 1944 there was a move to nominate Snow for governor, but it came apart at the convention and he was nominated for lieutenant governor on a ticket headed by former Governor Robert Hurley
Robert A. Hurley
Robert Augustine Hurley was an American politician and the 73rd Governor of Connecticut.- Early life :Hurley, a second generation Irish-American, was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut on August 25, 1895 to Robert Emmet and Sabina O'Hara Hurley. He attended local public schools and Cheshire Academy...
. Hurley lost badly to Wesleyan graduate Raymond E. Baldwin
Raymond E. Baldwin
Raymond Earl Baldwin was a United States Senator, the 72nd and 74th Governor of Connecticut.-Biography:Born in Rye, New York, he moved to Middletown, Connecticut in 1903 and attended the public schools. He graduated from Wesleyan University in Middletown in 1916, and entered Yale University...
, but Snow took the post of lieutenant governor. Two years later he took the gubernatorial nomination from Chester Bowles
Chester Bowles
Chester Bliss Bowles was a liberal Democratic American diplomat and politician from Connecticut.-Biography:...
and Thomas Dodd in a last minute surprise that left The Hartford Courant with a first page headline that read: "Bowles Nominated. The Professor Slinks Back to the Cloistered Halls of Wesleyan." He ended up losing to then Wesleyan President James L. McConaughy in an unusually gentlemanly race. Governor Baldwin had won the race for the U.S. Senate over former Governor Cross, and resigned as governor on December 27, 1946. That gave Snow thirteen days to serve as governor before McConaughey's inauguration on January 8, 1947. His last effort in state politics was a run for the U.S. Senate in 1950.
Later life
He also became president on the Connecticut Association Board of Education in 1940. In 1947 the Wesleyan University class of 1927 as their 20th reunion gift to their university provided the funds to their then aged professor to write his autobiography. After much work and effort he completed his autobiography published as "Codline's Child" named after the midwife who had birthed him, his parents being unable to afford bringing a doctor out to White Head Island. Wesleyan University also published Snow's "Collected Poems" in 1963.Snow served as educational commissioner and chairman of the Middletown Board of Education for over 30 years. An elementary school in Middletown is named for Wilbert Snow. He also played a major role in founding the Middlesex Community College. He died on September 28, 1977, aged 93.
Books
- Maine Coast, 1923
- The Inner Harbor, 1926
- Down East, 1932
- Selected Poems, 1935
- Collected Poems, 1963
- Codline's Child, 1974
Sources
- Sobel, Robert and John Raimo. Biographical Directory of the Governors of the United States, 1789-1978. Greenwood Press, 1988. ISBN 0-313-28093-2
- Snow, Wilbert. Codline's Child, The Autobiography of Wilbert Snow, Wesleyan University PressWesleyan University PressWesleyan University Press is a university press that is part of Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. The Press is currently directed by Suzanna Tamminen, a published poet and essayist...
, 1974.