Bertrand Hollis SNELL, Congress, NY (1870-1958)

SNELL, Bertrand Hollis, a Representative from New York; born in Colton, St. Lawrence County, N.Y., December 9, 1870; attended the public schools; was graduated from the State normal school at Potsdam, N.Y., in 1889 and from Amherst (Mass.) College in 1894; began work as a bookkeeper and afterward became secretary and manager of a paper company in Potsdam; in 1904 organized the Canton Lumber Co. in Potsdam; president and manager of cheese manufacturing company of New York City; owner of a power plant in Higley Falls, N.Y.; director of the Northern New York Trust Co., the Agricultural Insurance Co. of Watertown, N.Y., and Gould Pumps, Inc., Seneca Falls, N.Y.; vice president of the Northern New York Development League 1908-1910; member of the Republican State committee 1914-1944; delegate to all Republican National Conventions 1916-1940, serving as chairman in 1932 and 1936; president, board of trustees of Clarkson College, Potsdam, N.Y., 1920-1945; elected as a Republican to the Sixty-fourth Congress to fill the vacancy caused by the death of Edwin A. Merritt, Jr.; reelected to the Sixty-fifth and to the ten succeeding Congresses and served from November 2, 1915, to January 3, 1939; chairman, Committee on War Claims (Sixty-seventh Congress), Committee on Rules (Sixty-eighth through Seventy-first Congresses); minority leader (Seventy-second through Seventy-fifth Congresses); was not a candidate for renomination in 1938; publisher of the Potsdam Courier-Freeman newspaper 1934-1949; in 1941 became owner and manager of New York State Oil Co., of Kansas; died in Potsdam, N.Y., February 2, 1958; interment in Bayside Cemetery.

Bibliography

Barone, Louis A. “Republican House Minority Leader Bertrand H. Snell and the Coming of the New Deal, 1931-1939.” Ph.D. diss., State University of New York at Buffalo, 1969.

Source: Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, 1771-Present