Author: Snell, Powell
Biography:
SNELL, Powell (1738-1804: ancestry.co.uk)
He was baptised on 16 Mar. 1738 at Guiting Power, near Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the son of Powell Snell, attorney and estate owner, and his wife Dorothy Yate, who had married the previous year. He was educated (as was his father) at Balliol College Oxford (matric. 1755, MA 1759) and the Middle Temple where he was called to the bar in 1765. He inherited the Guiting Power estate on his father’s death in 1767 and later lived a fashionable social life often centred around horse-racing and the “Fairy Camp” he had built on the estate. He married Mary Phillips on 31 May 1768 at Walcot St. Mary, Bath, Somerset. There was no issue. He became a local magistrate and was an officer in the South Gloucester Militia, reaching the rank of Major. In 1795 he raised a regiment at Cheltenham, the First Troop of Gloucestershire Gentlemen and Yeomanry (later the Royal Gloucestershire Hussars). In 1791-2 he contributed to the GM as “Sagittarius” and towards the end of his life began to collect his verse for the work listed here. He died on 8 Apr. 1804 after a long illness and was buried at St. Michael and All Angels, Lower Guiting, where there is a memorial tablet. His wife, Mary, died in 1812. (ancestry.co.uk 12 Mar. 2023; Kentish Gazette 8 June 1768; Bath Chronicle 19 Apr. 1804, 13 Aug. 1812; GM May 1804, 480, and Aug. 1812, 190; Emily Lorraine de Montluzin, “Identifying ‘Sagittarius’: The Contributions of Captain Powell Snell to the Gentleman's Magazine, 1791-1792,” ANQ 25 [2012], 216-21) AA
Other Names:
- Major Snell