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Charles M. Snow 

From Signs of the Times (Australasian), January 8, 1934.

Snow, Charles Miles (1868–1933)

By Milton Hook

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Milton Hook, Ed.D. (Andrews University, Berrien Springs, Michigan, the United States). Hook retired in 1997 as a minister in the Greater Sydney Conference, Australia. An Australian by birth Hook has served the Church as a teacher at the elementary, academy and college levels, a missionary in Papua New Guinea, and as a local church pastor. In retirement he is a conjoint senior lecturer at Avondale College of Higher Education. He has authored Flames Over Battle Creek, Avondale: Experiment on the Dora, Desmond Ford: Reformist Theologian, Gospel Revivalist, the Seventh-day Adventist Heritage Series, and many magazine articles. He is married to Noeleen and has two sons and three grandchildren.

Charles M. Snow was an author and editor of leading denominational periodicals in the United States and Australasia during the early decades of the twentieth century.

Early Life, Education and Marriage

Born on January 26, 1868, Charles was the fourth of six children raised by Edward and Grisella Snow on a farm in Bridgewater, Maine. His siblings were George (b.1859), Hannah (b. 1861), Katherine (b. 1862), Jessie (b. 1871) and Corie (b. 1876).1 Charles stayed on the family farm until he was seventeen. As a youngster he enlisted in the local temperance club, an interest that grew to the point where he was elected Worthy Chief Templar of the Bridgewater Lodge of the Good Templars, an international organization dedicated to fighting the consumption of alcohol.2

In 1885 Charles left home to attend South Lancaster Academy where he took the business course. Having grasped the elements of stenography early in his studies he earned his fees by teaching the discipline to others and doing stenographic work for the academy principal. During vacations he took similar work. Having completed his course in 1891 he accepted the role of private secretary to the president of the California Conference, Stephen N. Haskell. At Oakland, California, he married Emma Hurlburt Boyd on September 29, 1892.3

Editor and Author in America

In 1894 Snow was appointed to supervise the typewriting department at Pacific Press Publishing Association at Oakland.4 By 1902 he was an assistant editor for the Signs of the Times periodical being printed at the same establishment.5 He continued as an assistant editor until July 1906.6 During this period he and Emma were blessed with their only child, daughter Ivanilla Juanita, born in 1903.7

The last issue of the Signs of the Times bearing Snow’s name in the masthead was July 18, 1906, three days before the Pacific Press building was totally destroyed by fire.8 Snow’s new position was with the Review and Herald Publishing Association, Washington, D.C. where he served as an associate editor of the Review and Herald.9 He was first listed as an ordained minister in the 1907 Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook.10 He had become well-known as one of the denomination’s foremost editors. He was also a member of the Sabbath School Department committee in addition to the Religious Liberty Bureau committee at General Conference headquarters.11

In mid-1908 Charles transitioned from the Review and Herald office to be associate editor of a relatively new quarterly periodical titled Liberty, founded in 1906 as the successor to the Sentinel of Christian Liberty (originally the American Sentinel).12 The publication’s theme had become a special interest for him and many articles on it were published under his name.13 A regular portion of the periodical’s pages were devoted to temperance topics including contentious subjects such as prohibition. Snow’s interest in temperance began during his teenage years and now he continued to contribute to this debate as an author and editor.14

Snow became Liberty magazine’s chief editor in 1909. In order to research and prepare a scholarly book on religious liberty, he stepped down to associate editor of the periodical in mid-1912.15 Snow’s book was published in 1914 under the title Religious Liberty in America.16

Editor and Author in Australia

The following year the Australasian Union Conference (AUC) requested that Snow transfer to Australia in order to be the editor for the Australasian versions of the evangelistic periodicals titled Signs of the Times and Life and Health, issued by the Signs Publishing Company, Warburton, Victoria. To fulfil these roles Charles and his family sailed from San Francisco on December 7, 1915. He would serve for eighteen years as an editor and pastor in Australia. During those years he published another book titled On the Throne of Sin.17

In 1926 Snow was nominated to be an AUC delegate at the General Conference session in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was also requested to visit Seventh-day Adventist institutions on his return trip via Europe in order to familiarize himself with modern publishing technology. He paid the fares for Emma and Ivanilla to accompany him on this memorable round-the-world journey.18 They sailed from Sydney on March 25, 1926, arriving back in Melbourne later that same year.19 A series of articles appeared in the Review and Herald telling of their travel experiences.20

Snow returned to his editorial desk while also serving as the pastor of the Warburton church near the publishing house.21 In that same church, on July 21, 1929, he had the joy of performing the marriage service for daughter Ivanilla and Clifford Tempest. The couple sailed from Sydney three days later in order to begin studies at Washington Missionary College.22 Less than twenty-four hours after they left the shores Emma suffered a fatal fall at home.23 It was a tragic blow for Charles, left alone in his grief while trying to maintain his normal work load.

Two years later, on June 14, 1931, Charles married Rhoda Petersen24 and life began to return to normal again. All too soon, though, Snow began to show signs of deteriorating health. He was eventually admitted to the Warburton Sanitarium but treatments did not bring healing. He passed away on December 10, 1933. His obituary in the Australasian Record carried the lyrics of his own hymn titled Going Home, a typical example of the many poems and songs he had composed.25

Charles M. Snow was laid to rest alongside Emma in the Upper Yarra Public Cemetery, Wesburn, near Warburton. It is a bushland little plot of ground not far removed from where they lived and worked and perished far from their home country while at their post of duty.

Sources

Anderson, A[lbert] W. “Death of Mrs. C.M. Snow.” Australasian Record, August 19, 1929.

“C.M. Snow obituary.” ARH, April 5, 1934.

“Charles Miles Snow.” FamilySearch, Intellectual Reserve, 2020. Retrieved from https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/landscape/L8WH-LGQ.

Cottrell, H[ampton] W. “The Story of Our Loss.” Signs of the Times, August 8, 1906.

Fulton, J[ohn] E. “Sailing for America.” Australasian Record, April 5, 1926.

Maine, Aroostock County. 1880 United States Census. Digital images. FamilySearch.org, 2020, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/L8WH-LGQ.

“Tempest-Snow.” Australasian Record, August 12, 1929.

Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook. Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1907-1933.

Snow, C[harles] M. “Afoot on the Old Roman Road.” ARH, September 2, 1926.

Snow, C[harles] M. “Church and State in the Days of Rome.” Liberty, Third quarter 1908.

Snow, C[harles] M. “Two Kinds of Bars.” Liberty, Fourth quarter 1908.

Stewart, A[ndrew] G. “Charles Miles Snow.” Australasian Record, January 15, 1934.

Stewart, G[eorge] G. “Snow - Petersen.” Australasian Record, July 20, 1931.

Notes

  1. 1880 United States Census, Aroostock County, Maine, digital image, “Snow, Edward,” FamilySearch.org, accessed April 8, 2020, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/person/sources/L8WH-LGQ.↩

  2. A[ndrew] G. Stewart, “Charles Miles Snow,” Australasian Record, January 15, 1934, 6-7.↩

  3. Ibid.↩

  4. Ibid.↩

  5. Masthead, Signs of the Times, January 15, 1902, 15.↩

  6. Masthead, Signs of the Times, July 18, 1906, [3].↩

  7. “Charles Miles Snow,” FamilySearch, Intellectual Reserve, 2020, accessed April 8, 2020, https://www.familysearch.org/tree/pedigree/landscape/L8WH-LGQ.↩

  8. H[ampton] W. Cottrell, “The Story of Our Loss,” Signs of the Times, August 8, 1906, [3]-5.↩

  9. “C.M. Snow obituary,” ARH, April 5, 1934, 21.↩

  10. “Ministerial Directory,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1907), 201.↩

  11. “General Conference,” Seventh-day Adventist Yearbook (Washington, D.C.: Review and Herald Publishing Association, 1908), 11, 15.↩

  12. Seventh-day Adventist Encyclopedia, 2nd rev. edition (1996), s.v. “Liberty.”↩

  13. E.g., C[harles] M. Snow, “Church and State in the Days of Rome,” Liberty, Third quarter 1908, [14]-20.↩

  14. E.g., C[harles] M. Snow, “Two Kinds of Bars,” Liberty, Fourth quarter, 1908, [44].↩

  15. Stewart, “Charles Miles Snow.”↩

  16. A[ndrew] G. Stewart, “Charles Miles Snow,” Australasian Record, 1934, 6-7.↩

  17. Ibid.↩

  18. J[ohn] E. Fulton, “Sailing for America,” Australasian Record, April 5, 1926, 8.↩

  19. A[ndrew] G. Stewart, “Charles Miles Snow,” Australasian Record, January 15, 1934, 6-7.↩

  20. E.g., C[harles] M. Snow, “Afoot on the Old Roman Road,” ARH, September 2, 1926, 11.↩

  21. A[ndrew] G. Stewart, “Charles Miles Snow,” Australasian Record, January 15, 1934, 6-7.↩

  22. “Tempest-Snow,” Australasian Record, August 12, 1929, 7.↩

  23. A[lbert] W. Anderson, “Death of Mrs. C.M. Snow,” Australasian Record, August 19, 1929, 7.↩

  24. G[eorge] G. Stewart, “Snow-Petersen,” Australasian Record, July 20, 1931, 7.↩

  25. A[ndrew] G. Stewart, “Charles Miles Snow,” Australasian Record, January 15, 1934, 6-7.↩

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Hook, Milton. "Snow, Charles Miles (1868–1933)." Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. April 28, 2021. Accessed February 17, 2022. https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=8A6N.

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Hook, Milton. "Snow, Charles Miles (1868–1933)." Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. April 28, 2021. Date of access February 17, 2022, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=8A6N.

Copy to clipboard Download Word File

Hook, Milton (2021, April 28). Snow, Charles Miles (1868–1933). Encyclopedia of Seventh-day Adventists. Retrieved February 17, 2022, https://encyclopedia.adventist.org/article?id=8A6N.

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