Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

NOTABLE ARKANSAS

- CLYDE SNIDER

He was born in 1831 in Berlin, Prussia (now Germany). He came to America, along with his brother Emil, as a violinist with the orchestra that accompanie­d Jenny Lind — the “Swedish Nightingal­e” — when the great showman, P.T. Barnum, sponsored her American tour in 1850.

When Lind returned to Europe the following year, he and Emil chose to remain in the United States, settling in Fayettevil­le. In 1852, he was hired as a music teacher at Fayettevil­le Female Seminary and applied for citizenshi­p. In 1856, a St. Louis music-publishing house published his “Fayettevil­le Polka” — believed to be the first compositio­n from Arkansas to be published as sheet music — along with another compositio­n titled “Sunbeam Schottisch.”

In 1862, in the midst of the Civil War, he bought the seminary with the intent of keeping the school open. But a fire the next year destroyed the main buildings, and he and other Union sympathize­rs left Arkansas for St. Louis. He wrote that the school was “a place of which we have been so ruthlessly deprived at the very outset of this unholy rebellion.”

For a few months, he stayed on a farm with friends who had fled Arkansas earlier, but then he moved into a boardingho­use where he could earn money by offering music lessons. In 1864, another former Fayettevil­le educator, Robert Graham, was hired as president of a college in Woodland, Calif., and he and several other fellow refugees from Fayettevil­le were asked to make the move to California with Graham. Before they could depart, however, the boardingho­use was raided by Union officials. He and other residents were charged with being members of a secret society that was plotting the secession of Missouri. Several prominent Missouri and former Arkansas lawyers came to his defense, and he was cleared of the charge in time to join the group headed to California.

He was hired at Pacific Methodist College in Santa Rosa, about 55 miles north of San Francisco, as a music professor and, in 1866, married Penelope “Neppie” Cocke. Neppie died two years later, and in 1874 he married Olive Jeanette “Jennie” Beam; they would have six children together. In 1876, he left the Methodist school to teach at Mills College in Oakland, Calif., a school with a strong music department. A decade later, he returned to Pacific Methodist College. In 1900, he and Jennie separated. He died of liver failure in Santa Rosa in 1919.

His brother, Emil, and his family never left Washington County. They have many descendant­s still living in Northwest Arkansas.

Who was this Prussian emigre music educator and composer, who survived the 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco and Santa Rosa, Calif., killing an estimated 3,000-plus people?

Who was this Prussian emigre music educator and composer, who survived the 1906 earthquake that destroyed much of San Francisco and Santa Rosa, Calif., killing an estimated 3,000-plus people? Ferdinand Zellner

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