Frederic Snyder

The following is an extract from Charlotte Turgeon’s draft biography of her father, Frederic Snyder. Like other Snapshots, this one is best told by the original author and has been edited only for length.

My father’s name was Frederic Sylvester Snyder and his life was another Horatio Alger Story which was like the stories of many men of that era when hard work and inventive ideas rather than right connections and a proper education paved the road to success and when America was really the land of opportunity. Born in 1872 in a little town outside Stowe Vermont he was brought up in a farmhouse where his father farmed rather unsuccessfully. He had a younger brother, Joseph, and a sister who died in infancy.

I only remember two tales of his childhood in Vermont. He was born a Baptist and was baptized at the age of six or seven in the local church in the freezing weather. In those days Baptist churches, at least in Vermont, were modest wooden structures with a raised platform at the end of the church. In the floor there was a trap door which, when uncovered, revealed a large deep tub of water. Right off the platform there was a small anteroom where there was a pot-bellied stove which provided some heat for the church. The poor soul, in this case my father, whose inner soul was to be saved was draped in a sheet and led out on the platform. Before immersion, the ice had to be broken, then the appropriate words were spoken and he was put in the tub and dipped three times. He told the story with great relish always saying that what he remembered best was warming himself in front of the pot-bellied stove rather than feeling saved from sin.

The only other tale that I remember of his childhood is the following. The family cured and dried meat, both pork and beef, in the fall. This was hung on the rafters in the attic to dry, which kept it edible for months. The attic was a long room with windows at each end with a wonderful view of the Green Mountains, which he loved. This room also doubled as the banishment room when the boys were mildly naughty. Dad loved this meat and soon figured out what degree of naughtiness would earn him banishment, but not a spanking. Since he was always equipped, to his dying day, with a small jackknife, he would go upstairs when sent and though he would pretend he didn’t think life was fair, he would gleefully and dexterously slice off thin strips of jerked beef or hard sausage which he ate while repenting his sins and enjoying the view. Perhaps this explains both his eventual profession and the fact that I still consider him the most able carver I have ever met.

The year my father completed eighth grade his father died, leaving his wife and the two boys and a failing farm and no money. Young Frederic decided he would leave school and go to Boston to find a job and send money back to the farm so that his mother and younger brother could continue to live there. He was 14 years old at the time. He found work with a coal company and worked at it for three years while boarding with a family in Everett Mass, a suburb of Boston. He worked six days a week at the company, took odd jobs on the side and went to night school 5 nights a week. He also discovered the wonders of a Public Library. He was a voracious reader all his life and had an enormous love of words. Spelling Bees were very common in those days and the young man would go from school, to the library to church or to lodges, wherever the spelling bees were held and more often than not would come away with a prize, which was usually money, another small source of income.

When my father was eighteen he tired of the coal business and became worried about his future. He told me he would take long evening walks by himself and ponder his discontent, feeling somewhat guilty about it, scolding himself for being too impatient and materialistic. He wanted to get his mother and brother to come to Boston and establish a home and not live any longer in boarding houses. He knew he was a good salesman and he kept asking himself what was the most sellable commodity. After a lot of thought he decided no matter what, come wars or hurricanes, man had to eat to survive and that food would always be a priority in everyone’s budget. For a long time he had walked by a large market in downtown Boston which was a three story building filling an entire block on Hanover street, close by Faneuil hall, which carried the sign Batchelder and Company. It dealt with supplying meats to hotels and restaurants, largely in the Boston area. Dad marched in there, asked to see the President and walked into the office of Samuel Batchelder. I don’t know what transpired there but dad walked out with a job as a salesman.

Mr. Batchelder wanted to increase his clientele so one of Dad’s first jobs was to travel spring and summer through the White Mountains with a horse and buggy to visit the resort hotels and guest houses taking orders for meat and fish supplies. The orders would be sent down on the night train to Batchelder and Company in Boston and the supplies sent up by the next day’s train to such hostelries as the Mt. Washington Hotel, the Bethlehem House and many others including the Mountain View House in Whitefield, NH all within a radius of about forty miles in the heart of the White Mountains where, besides tourists, there was a fixed clientele of families minus fathers, who spent a part or the whole of the three summer months. Usually the husbands would arrive Friday evenings for the weekend for golf, tennis, fishing, as well as dancing in the ballroom on Saturday evening and concerts on Sundays. The Mountain View House was run by the Frank Dodge family for four generations. The eldest Dodges were especially kind to the young salesman and offered him every kind of hospitality as well as a lot of business. Dad said he resolved then and there that one day he was going to have enough money to be able to stay at that particular hotel.

About 1890-91, when my father was still a young man of 19, he began to get ideas of how to ship food, particularly meat, further afield more successfully. The main problem was to prevent spoilage. Ice, cut from local ponds and stored in dark warehouses was the answer for short hauls but keeping the ice from melting was the problem for longer trips. I’m sure Dad did not invent anything patentable but surely he improved the method of shipping meat. He provided himself with large leak-proof containers, which were lined first with ice and then with sawdust, an inexpensive and very available byproduct of the then-thriving lumber business. The well wrapped meat was packed between layers of ice and sawdust, then covered with more ice and sawdust. The container was covered with a thick canvas and lashed down with sturdy rope. After several experimental trials, the system was introduced to Mr. Batchelder who approved and thus began another era of shipping meat.

Meanwhile my father, always with a new bee in his bonnet concerning food supplies and shipping, began to wonder about what kind of resorts existed in the south, which he had never seen. He had read about St. Augustine. He asked himself what a place as remote as that could feed tourists other than wild turkey, corn and seafood, he asked permission to go to Florida to explore a future market. Permission was granted by Mr. Batchelder, who had begun to take a personal interest in the young salesman. Dad was 21 at this point. Leaving his young wife he took a train to Jacksonville, hired a horse and rode the countryside to explore. He went as far at St. Augustine, about 36 miles, southeast of Jacksonville because he had heard it was becoming a resort city due to its climate and beaches. There was some commerce there, sugar making, oyster and fish canning, but tourism’s the main industry and there were several guest houses and hotels including a splendid extravaganza called the Ponce de Leon and another call the St. Augustine Inn. He visited the proprietors and the cooks of each establishment and convinced them that they needed northern meat to embellish their menus. In due time he returned to Boston with great enthusiasm and enough orders to convince Mr. Batchelder that his ideas had possibilities. Dad was encouraged to go ahead with his experiment. I don’t know the details but I do know that he hired a ship in Boston, filled the hull with a cargo of red meat, hams and bacon, had it all covered with ice and sawdust and lots of canvas. He remembered watching the ship as it sailed out of Boston Harbor and if I know my father he probably prayed hard and long as he watched it slip out of view. The next day he started his return trip by train to Jacksonville and again by horse to St. Augustine.

Many is the times he told the story of returning to St. Augustine and finding lodging for himself and his horse and how on the very next day he started exploring the shore for the best vantage point to see the ship come round a point of the coast line to reach the harbor in St. Augustine. Every day he would ride out about twenty miles and peer into the haze hoping to see the heavily laden cargo ship approaching only to return at dusk to St. Augustine. Time dragged for him as the poor ship struggled with unfamiliar and often high seas. He used the story of waiting more than once to each his children patience. Of course, I now realize how worried he must have been about the ship, its safety, the ice that might be melting in the comparatively warm air and the safety of his job. But dad was never one to talk of worry or hardship and in spite of a rather bumpy road of life, making and losing two fortunes, personal tragedies in losing two children and two wives and surviving two or three depressions he was always the eternal optimist and knew the ship would come.

The ship did arrive, the meat was all still frozen and he was a hero. In fact, for years there was a plaque in the St. Augustine Inn marking the occasion of the arrival of the first fresh red meat in Florida and Dad got all the credit. I regret to say that when the inn was renovated the plaque disappeared - at least I couldn’t find it when I made a pilgrimage there 15 years ago. Ever the salesman he stayed long enough to establish more contacts in both St. Augustine and Jacksonville and possibly other places along the way before he trained back to Boston full of enthusiasm about the future. When he climbed the long wooden stairs and went down the corridor that led to Mr. Batchelder’s office, he noticed that a new suite of offices that been created next to the Presidents office. It read Frederic S. Snyder, Vice President. Two years later Mr. Batchelder having reached the venerable age of 55 decided to retire and my father, age 23, became President. For over 50 years the sign on the building read Batchelder and Snyder.