SNOWBALL, JOHN (1794-1871)

SNOWBALL, JOHN, Methodist minister, Miramichi circuit, 1852-56; b. Easingwold, Yorkshire, England, 28 Sep 1794, s/o John Snowball Sr and Mary Lightfoot; m. 1823, Sarah Ann Wells, of Point de Bute, N.B.; d. Sackville, N.B., 13 Sep 1871.

John Snowball, who was raised in a Church of England home, joined the Methodist society as a young man, and against the wishes of his family, became a local preacher for that body. In 1817, when he was twenty-three, he left England for Nova Scotia. He entered the regular Methodist ministry on trial in 1818 at Annapolis, N.S., and was ordained a year later. He served on different circuits in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island until 1837 and then transferred to Newfoundland. He stayed there until 1852, when he was assigned to the Miramichi circuit at Chatham.

Times had been hard on the Miramichi in the 1840s, and Methodist church property was "barely saved from the auctioneer's hammer." Large obligations remained on the books when Snowball arrived, but being a "determined enemy of church debts," he introduced a money-raising plan which was successful in "freeing the four churches on the Miramichi circuit from all encumbrance."

Snowball served for four years at Chatham and then went to Saint John. His last assignment was at Sackville, N.B., where he retired from the ministry in 1863. By this time, his son Jabez B. Snowball was becoming established as a businessman at Chatham.