page_title: Snowden Family Band
section_title: Family life
hierarchical_section_title: Snowden Family Band / Family life
context_page_description: The Snowden Family Band was a 19th-century African American musical group. The children of the Snowden family of Clinton, Knox County, Ohio, comprised the ensemble. The band's career stretched from before the American Civil War into living memory; no other African American band of their type lasted as long.
  The Snowdens earned their living by farming. However, through their music, they integrated themselves into their predominantly white community and entertained, corresponded with, and even taught their white neighbors. A long Knox County tradition credits them with composing the song "Dixie".
context_section_description: Thomas Snowden, a freed slave, and Ellen Cooper, a house servant, met and married in Knox County. They had nine children, of whom seven survived infancy. Although Thomas and Ellen Snowden were both illiterate, the children attended white schools and learned to read and write.
  The Snowdens were primarily farmers by trade, with their homestead located at Clinton, Ohio, a small village north of Mount Vernon. In July 1856, the 39-year-old Ellen Snowden became the head of household upon the death of Thomas Snowden, 53. The family soon had trouble paying the mortgage on their farm, prompting them by 1859 to add a line to their handbills proclaiming that they were trying "to secure means to pay back indebtedness upon their homestead." In 1864, the bank foreclosed on two of their farm's 8 acres (32,000 m²). Ellen Snowden paid the rest of the mortgage the following year.
  Their music allowed the Snowdens to integrate into their mostly white community. Music and the Snowdens were synonymous in the area; the 1860 census for Morris Township in Knox County lists their "Profession, Occupation, or Trade" as "Snowden Band", and an 1876 city directory for Mount Vernon lists them as "Snowden Minstrels". The Snowdens played local events, or received invitations telling them, for example, that "Snowden & Mrs. Snowden Are Respectfully Invited to attend a Birthday Party At Mr. Samuel Alberts of their daughter on Monday Evening. Please bring your music." George Root, a white man, even asked to live with the family during the Civil War so that he could take singing and fiddling lessons.
  When not performing for profit, the Snowdens played for fun and practice in their Clinton home. In later years, Ben and Lew Snowden, on fiddle and banjo respectively, played in the second-story gable of their house for whomever would listen. Their home faced Samuel Smith's tavern, and Smith's patrons often took drinks over to the Snowden yard to enjoy the music.
  Despite their reputation, the Snowdens were not immune to prejudice. In 1864, Ellen Snowden sued white neighbors who were preventing her from planting crops; she won the case. Days after the passing of the 15th Amendment on 3 February 1870, a local official prevented Ben Snowden from voting. Snowden sued the man but ultimately lost the case. Beginning in 1878, Ben Snowden, aged 38, courted a 23-year-old white woman named Nan Simpson, who lived in Newville, Ohio, just north of Knox County. Their affair lasted two years before Ellen Snowden learned of it and put a stop to the relationship.
  Socially the Snowdens professed conservative values, praising in their letters and music such concepts as women's virtue, temperance, and piety. They attended the African Methodist Episcopal Church, one of the few in the United States at the time that used instruments during the worship service. Less conservatively, they supported abolitionism, though never overtly.
  By 1900, Ben and Lew Snowden were the last remaining members of the family. They took up racehorse driving as a hobby and continued to farm, but it was still their music that defined them. They performed from their home's gable, and the next generation of fiddlers most likely sought them out. Though there is no hard evidence to prove such meetings occurred, both John Balzell and Dan Emmett likely knew the Snowdens and played with them on occasion. Ben Snowden died in 1920, and Lew Snowden in 1923. They left no known heirs.
caption: Lew and Ben Snowden on banjo and fiddle in the second-story gable of their home, Clinton, Knox County, Ohio, c. 1890s.
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