Poor Mayor Snelbaker! He was defeated by a failed revolution in Europe five years before he became Cincinnati’s mayor.

David T. Snelbaker was elected mayor of Cincinnati as a Democrat in 1853 and served only one term. His single term was controversial, in large part because of Cincinnati’s new police department and their behavior during a riot among the city’s Germans.

The riot was fueled by strong feelings about religion, and by stronger feelings about immigrants, particularly the Germans. In 1848, revolutions sprang up across Europe. All were eventually crushed by the royal authorities. Many of the revolutionaries fled to America, some under sentence of death. Resentment among these free-thinking “Forty-Eighters” simmered. When the Pope named Gaetano Bedini as his “nuncio” or ambassador to America, the Forty-Eighters were unhappy. Bedini was known among these exiles as the “Butcher of Bologna” for his role in suppressing rebellion in northern Italy.

Charles Frederic Goss, in his “Cincinnati, the Queen City, 1788-1912,” reports:

“In 1853 there came to America and to Cincinnati a distinguished prelate of the Roman Catholic church - the Papal Nuncio [Gaetano] Bedini - and his arrival was the signal for a violent outbreak of passion among the Germans. In 1850, out of a population of 115,438 more than 51,000 were German born or of a German parentage, among whom were many heroic spirits that had been imbittered by those injustices which had provoked the rebellion of 1848. In their hearts they cherished an undying resentment towards anyone who had attempted to suppress their liberties in their homeland and, believing that the papal nuncio was such a man, they assembled in a mass meeting and demanded that he should leave the town. Some of them, upon its adjournment, were impelled by their excitement towards the home of the archbishop on Eighth and Elm, where Bedini was a guest, but at the Eighth Street Park they encountered the entire police force, headed by the chief, who was acting under the orders of Mayor Snelbaker. Instantly, trouble began. Heads were broken with clubs and shots were fired with such effect that fourteen people were wounded before the crowd gave way. The Germans were wild, and at a subsequent meeting sent a committee of one hundred to demand the resignation of the mayor. Upon his refusal to yield to their childish demands, a half-formed determination to go and compel him to do so was defeated by the eloquence of Bellamy Storer, who persuaded the angry Germans that they were transgressing the boundaries of their rights.”

One German rioter was killed and more than 60 people arrested. Snelbaker fired Police Chief Thomas Lookens over the behavior of the police, but there was a second riot inspired by Nuncio Bedini in January of 1854. This time, Snelbaker did not fire Police Chief David Hoke, who remained in office for yet another riot in 1855.

Although Snelbaker’s term was punctuated by riots, it included some efforts to establish a system of public works for the rapidly growing city, including sewers.

Snelbaker was born in 1804 in Pennsylvania. He married his first wife, Elizabeth, in Pennsylvania. She is possibly Elizabeth Duy, who married a David “Snellbaker” in 1826. The couple lived in the Philadelphia area for seven or eight years and arrived in Cincinnati with four or five children in the mid-1830s. In December 1836, Elizabeth and two of their children – David and Eliza – died with the space of a week and were buried at the Methodist Christie Chapel on Catherine Street between Fulton and Cutter streets in Cincinnati. Shortly after Elizabeth’s death, Snelbaker remarried in Cincinnati to Mary Ann Hooper of Adams County, Ohio, and fathered at least four more children. Census records suggest that, at approximately the time of Elizabeth’s death, he may have spent some time in Kentucky.

Around 1841 or 1842 Snelbaker partnered with Alexander Delzell of Virginia to run a cooperage (Delzell & Snelbaker) on Walnut Street north of Canal Street and south of 12th street. Mr. Delzell (or possibly a son of the same name) served as one of the city’s constables in addition to his work at the cooperage.

By 1846, the partnership was no longer in business, and Snelbaker was operating as a Justice of the Peace, with offices on the south side of Sixth Street, between Main and Walnut, residing on the west side of Walnut Street between 12th and 13th streets (approximately where the cooperage was located). Three years later, had moved his residence to the east side of Linn between Catherine and Clark streets.

As mayor from 1853 until his term expired in April 1855, Snelbaker’s office was in the city buildings, a set of undistinguished barracks on 8th Street between Plum Street and Western Row, next-door to the new Catholic cathedral. His house was now numbered 162 Linn (thanks to an 1852 ordinance to begin numbering addresses in the city). After retiring from politics, Snelbaker opened a law office at 241 West 9th Street, on the south side near Western Row (renamed Central Avenue by the early 1860s). The year before he died, Snelbaker still maintained a law office on 9th Street, but now at 209 (“old No. 239”) Ninth Street.

At the age of 62, David T. Snelbaker, the Pennsylvania cooper who became Cincinnati’s mayor, died of general debility on February 15, 1867. Within two months his widow, Mary Ann, had wasted away. Snelbaker is buried at Spring Grove Cemetery in Lot 45 of Section 51, located in proximity to Elizabeth and Mary Ann, as well as several of his children and grandchildren.