Simon was born on November 5, 1759 at Lancaster, Pennsylvania, United States, the son of Maria Elizabeth (Knippenburg) Kraemer Snyder and Anthony Snyder, a mechanic who emigrated to America from the Palatinate. The boy's childhood was spent in poverty and hard work.
At the age of seventeen he began an apprenticeship of four years as tanner and currier at York, where he also attended night school kept by John Jones, a Quaker.
About 1784 Snyder established himself at Selinsgrove in Northumberland, now Snyder, County. There he opened a general store, operated a mill, found frequent employment as a scrivener, and rose rapidly in the general estimation of the community. He was appointed a justice of the peace and, later, judge of the court of common pleas of Northumberland County, was a member of the state constitutional convention, 1789-90 and of the Assembly from 1797 to 1807. He was speaker three terms and, as a leader of the backcountry democracy, fought to liberalize the judiciary laws and to diminish the governor's powers.
Tremendously popular in his district and among his faction, he was nominated for governor by the anti-judiciary Republicans in 1805, his chief mouthpiece being the Republican Argus in Northumberland edited by his close friend, John Binns. Unsuccessful by some five thousand votes in the bitter campaign that followed, he returned to the state house of representatives in 1806 to lead the abortive attempt to impeach Gov. Thomas McKean.
In 1808 he was elected governor and was reelected by overwhelming majorities in 1811 and 1814. In 1817 he was elected to the state Senate.
He died from typhoid fever in Selinsgrove.
Simon Snyder was the first representative of the German element or of the backcountry farming class to be elected governor of Pennsylvania. He presided over the establishment of Harrisburg as the state capital. Besides, he was one of the principal agitators for the hundred-dollar act extending the jurisdiction of justices of the peace to cases not exceeding one hundred dollars and for compulsory arbitration legislation. Snyder County, Pennsylvania, is named in his honor. Snyder Avenue in South Philadelphia, is also named in his honor.
A state-rights man, he vigorously asserted the supremacy of the state in 1809 by calling out the militia to prevent a federal court from enforcing its decision in the Olmstead case, though he later yielded under protest to the federal government. He gave loyal support to the War of 1812, sponsored an act for public education, recommended abolition of the death penalty and modification of the law for imprisonment for debt, and advanced numerous schemes for internal improvements. In 1814 he vetoed over loud public protests "the forty bank bill" to establish banks over the state, on the grounds that it would give too much power to "privileged orders, " invite visionary speculation, and divert men from useful pursuits. The bill was passed over his veto.
He was married three times: first to Elizabeth Michael of Lancaster, second on June 12, 1796, to Catherine Antes, and third on October 16, 1814, to Mary Slough Scott, a widow of Harrisburg, who survived him.
