Archives West Finding Aid

Historian Eugene Edmund Snyder was born in Portland on August 3, 1918, the only child of Aurora Colony descendant Edmund I. Snyder and artist Amanda (Tester) Snyder. He published more than a dozen nonfiction titles on Oregon history, world travels, and art. He is perhaps best known in research circles for his books on Portland history, including Portland Names and Neighborhoods: Their Historic Origins, Early Portland: Stump-Town Triumphant, We Claimed this Land: Portland’s Pioneers Settlers, and Skidmore’s Portland: His Fountain and its Sculptor. Additionally, he published three fiction novels.

Snyder edited his school newspaper before he graduated from Portland’s Washington High School in 1937. He copy wrote for The Oregonian for a short time before matriculating at Reed College. He served as a naval communications officer during World War II, then studied French at Laval University in Quebec. Later, he was employed for one year by Business Week as a writer, before attending the University of California Berkeley, earning a master’s degree in economics. After traveling for a year, he became an economist for a congressional committee before attending Oxford University for two years, graduating with another master’s degree in 1952.

Following his studies, Snyder taught economics at the University of British Columbia, Linfield College and Portland State University. During summers, he often returned to his “first love,” newspaper writing, as copy editor or reporter. He died July 15, 2010 and is buried in Aurora Community Cemetery.

Snyder’s mother, Amanda Snyder, was a prominent Oregon artist for more than 40 years. Mostly self-taught, she is known for her paintings of birds, clowns, still life, dolls and barns, plus her abstract works. She published A Bookful of Birds, a collection of her drawings, in 1972. Her works can be found in the Oregon Historical Society, Portland Art Museum, Seattle Art Museum, Reed College, Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art, Hallie Ford Museum of Art, and various private and corporate collections. She died in 1980 at the age of 85. Eugene Snyder also was a collector and promoter of his mother’s work and in 1998 succeeded in publishing Amanda’s Friends: Prints and Drawings by Amanda Snyder, American Artist, 1894-1980. Amanda Snyder's brother, Jefferson Tester (1899-1972), was also a well known Oregon artist.