Author: Snowden, Richard
Biography:
SNOWDEN, Richard (1753-1825: findmypast.com)
His Columbiad (1795), at first published anonymously, is signed "a New-Jersey Farmer" and dated from Newton, Gloucester County NJ. The author was a Quaker, son of Leonard and Jane Snowden; the good records of the meetings of the Society of Friends allow some major events of his life to be tracked, starting with his marriage to Sarah Brown in 1779 and ending with his death and burial in Philadelphia in 1825. There was at least one child, a daughter, Rebecca. The publication history of The Columbiad is complicated by the fact that besides the three known editions that Snowden seems to have had a hand in (Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Clinton OH), it was added as a second section to two editions (Baltimore, Clinton) of Snowden's prose work, The American Revolution: Written in the Style of an Ancient History, which had first appeared in 1794 and was reprinted occasionally for the next 30 years. Snowden also wrote a History of North and South America . . . to the Death of General Washington, first published in Philadelphia in 1806; on the title-page he identifies himself as "Richard Snowden, Esq." He may have moved to Philadelphia at some point after 1815. (findmypast.com 2 Oct. 2020; ancestry.com 2 Oct. 2020)