SNETHEN, Nicholas, clergyman, born in Fresh Pond (now Glen Cove), Long Island, New York, 15 November, 1769; died in Princeton, Indiana, 30 May, 1845. His youth was spent on the farm of his father, Barak, who had served in the British army at the capture of Montreal in 1760. The son entered the itinerant ministry of the Methodist Episcopal church in 1794, travelled and preached for four years in New England and the south, and actively favored the limitation of the episcopal prerogative. His plan for a delegated general conference was adopted in 1808. He also advocated a preachers' anti-slavery tract society, and was active against the future admission of any slave-holder into the church. Afterward he travelled as private secretary to Bishop Francis Asbury, who called Mr. Snethen his "silver trumpet." In 1804-'6 he was stationed in New York, whence he removed to his farm in Frederick county, Maryland By his marriage he became the holder of slaves, whom he emancipated as soon as the law would permit. From 1809 till 1814 he was again an itinerant. While he was in Georgetown, D. C., he was elected chaplain to the United States house of representatives. He was the first to introduce camp-meetings into New York and Maryland, and was a leader of a large meeting on Wye river, Maryland, in 1809. In 1821 he began to write in favor of lay representation. The refusal of this right by the general conference in 1828, and the expulsion from the church of many of its advocates, led to the formation of the Methodist Protestant church, in which he bore an active part, and in connection with which he travelled and preached after his removal to Indiana in 1829, till shortly before his death. He died on his way to become president of the Snethen school for young clergymen in Iowa City. Mr. Snethen became an editor with the Reverend Asa Shinn of the "Methodist Protestant" in 1834, contributed to periodicals, and published "Lectures on Preaching the Gospel" (1822) ; "Essays on Lay Representation" (1835) ; and "Lectures on Biblical Subjects" (1836). His son, Worthington, edited a volume of his sermons (1846).