Snell, Richard H.

Born: 1815-XX-XX Ohio

Flourished: Pekin, Illinois

Richard H. Snell was a town leader and official, road commissioner, brick mason, farmer, and real estate investor. He began his career as a town official at least as early as 1835, when Pekin's trustees appointed him tax collector for the town. Three years later he was elected town trustee, a position he was re-elected to in both 1839 and 1841. Also in 1839, the Illinois General Assembly appointed him one of five commissioners charged with locating the route for a road to be constructed from Peoria County, through Tazewell County, and ending in Canton, Illinois. In January 1842, he married Caroline App. The two had at least five children together. Firmly rooted in Pekin, he acquired nearly 300 acres of land in Tazewell County in 1851. In 1855, he served a stint as marshal for Pekin in order to fill a vacancy in that position after the previous marshal resigned. By 1860, however, he was living and farming in Leavenworth County in the Kansas Territory.

History of Tazewell County Illinois (Chicago: Chas. C. Chapman, 1879), 566-68; An Act to Locate a Certain Road Therein Named; Illinois Statewide Marriage Index, Tazewell County, 5 January 1842, Illinois State Archives, Springfield, IL; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Pekin, Tazewell County, IL, 113; For an exhaustive list of Snell's land purchases, search "Snell Richard," https://www.ilsos.gov/isa/landsrch.jsp; William H. Bates, Directory of the City of Pekin Illinois for the Years 1903-4 (Pekin, IL: W. H. Bates, 1904), 229; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Leavenworth County, Kansas Territory, 289.