Butler County Genealogy Trails Kansas George Chasmar Snell Bio

BUTLER COUNTY'S EIGHTY YEARS BIOS

GEORGE CHASMAR SNELL

(Transcribed by Peg Luce)

George Chasmar Snell, who was born in Douglass, March 22, 1882, is one of the widely known citizens of Butler County. The farmers’ institutes, the county fair, Kafir Corn Carnivals, Farm Bureau and many other county-wide projects have received his commendable support. He has contributed much time and energy toward making the Douglass Fair an annual success and, in 1914 he sponsored a dairy association, of which he was secretary two years. A better breed of swine resulted through the activities of a 4-H Pig Club, of which Mr. Snell was sponsor and secretary of the donor’s committee. He was a charter member of the Lions Club, served several years on the band committee and handled the publicity for the Kafir Corn Carnival in 1914. During the World War, Mr. Snell served as chairman for the Red Cross drive in his section, and on the draft boards and the legal advisory board for which he received a bronze button and a letter of gratitude from the War Department. The returning veterans depended much upon his services in securing state and national bonuses and pensions for disability.

Mr. Snell has served Douglass as police, judge, justice of the peace and mayor. He has been active in the Democratic party twenty years, and was a ember of Congressman W. A. Ayres’ committee during his entire incumbency. For fifteen years Mr. Snell was active in insurance, loans, real estate and abstracting, and has been a notary public twenty-five years. He was educated in Douglass and in Kansas City, where his father had a dry goods store, and in Wyandotte High School. He represented publishing companies in Kansas, Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas several years; then was a reporter on the Emporia Gazette, Wichita Eagle and the Kansas City Star. He was in business in Kansas City during the three great floods.

George Snell was married March 16, 1910 to Miss Mabel Bunn at her parents’ home in Kansas City, Kansas, where he was court clerk four years. His father, Robert Henry Snell, son of Robert and Ann Bath Snell, of Brooklyn, N.Y., first came to Douglass in 1876 and bought a farm adjoining town. With him came his wife, Elizabeth Ackerly Snell, also a native of Brooklyn, and a son, Robert, who died in 1887 from pneumonia. Florence Snell, a daughter of this pioneer couple, was born at Douglass in 1879, was a graduate of Kansas State Agricultural College and studied in Northwestern, Columbia and Iowa universities. She was an institute lecturer for the extension branch of the state college, taught Domestic Science at Douglass, Belleville and Effingham and served the government during the conservation of foods program as club leader in Leavenworth County. She was the first field nutrition worker for the American Red Cross and for five years, until her death at Texarkana in 1925, she ministered to the communities in south Missouri and Arkansas. The father, Robert H. Snell, died at Douglass in March 1925 at the age of 82 years. He had remarried, in 1892, to Miss Helen S. Wyllis, a graduate of Ann Arbor and who at the time was principal of Austin High School, Chicago.

To this union was born, in 1893, a son, Harold Wyllis Snell, who was graduated from Douglass High School in 1913 and from Kansas State College in 1917 and was principal of Ford High School when he enlisted in the Signal Corps, 10th field battalion in 1918 and served thirteen months in France. Harold was a reporter for the Manhattan Mercury after returning from the army, then for four years was with the Western Electric Company, Chicago. He then went to Paris, France, and worked for a publishing house; subsequently he married Miss Marthe Devouassound, charming daughter of a bell manufacturer of Chamonix, whom he had first met during a furlough from army duty, six years before. This couple, now living in Chamonix, has a son, Donald, born in 1928.

The parents of Mrs. George Snell were William Martin Bunn, who resides in Kansas City, Kansas, and Comfort Rebecca (Hawkins) Bunn, who died in February 1934, at the age of 79. They had celebrated their golden wedding in 1933. William Bunn had been connected with railroads and had served as city councilman; he is a life member of the Masonic orders. John Ruskin Dyer, formerly dean of men at K. U. and president of Idaho University, at Pocatello, who diedin 1933, was a first cousin of Mrs. George Snell.

Mr. and Mrs. George Snell are parents of two children, Florence Elsie, 23, at home, and Gerald Chasmar Snell, 18, a student in El Dorado Junior College and employed by the El Dorado Monument Company and Adams Funeral Home. In 1934 he was nominated as cadet at West Point Military Academy.