WILLIAM A. SNOW, JR., ENS, USN
William Snow, Jr. '90
William Alanson Snow was admitted to the Naval Academy from Massachusetts on September 4, 1886.
Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1890 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.
Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.
Prior to the publication of the Lucky Bag in 1894, most portraits of officers and midshipmen of the Naval Academy were captured in yearly photo albums. The album for 1890 is available in the collections of the Naval Academy's Digital Collections.
Special thank you to historian Kathy Franz for identifying this resource and then extracting several dozen photographs for this site.
Loss
William died of "heart failure" aboard the cruiser Charleston while she was in Montevideo, Uruguay. His death occurred on April 12, 1894. (Information from death notice located by Kathy Franz.)
Other Information
He was survived by his parents and a brother (Sydney Bruce Snow), and is buried in Wildwood Cemetery, Winchester, Massachusetts. William's father was also named William Alanson Snow.
The "Register of Commissioned and Warrant Officers of the United States Navy and Marine Corps" was published annually from 1815 through at least the 1970s; it provided rank, command or station, and occasionally billet until the beginning of World War II when command/station was no longer included. Scanned copies were reviewed and data entered from the mid-1840s through 1922, when more-frequent Navy Directories were available.
The Navy Directory was a publication that provided information on the command, billet, and rank of every active and retired naval officer. Single editions have been found online from January 1915 and March 1918, and then from three to six editions per year from 1923 through 1940; the final edition is from April 1941.
The entries in both series of documents are sometimes cryptic and confusing. They are often inconsistent, even within an edition, with the name of commands; this is especially true for aviation squadrons in the 1920s and early 1930s.
Alumni listed at the same command may or may not have had significant interactions; they could have shared a stateroom or workspace, stood many hours of watch together… or, especially at the larger commands, they might not have known each other at all. The information provides the opportunity to draw connections that are otherwise invisible, though, and gives a fuller view of the professional experiences of these alumni in Memorial Hall.
January 1892
January 1893
Memorial Hall Error
Illness is not a criteria for inclusion in Memorial Hall. Also, William was a "Jr.;" this is omitted in Memorial Hall.
William is one of 2 members of the Class of 1890 on Virtual Memorial Hall.
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