M. (Moses) Porter Snell (1839-1909), a Presbyterian minister and phonographer, was born in North Brookfield, Massachusetts, and died in Newton, New Jersey. He graduated from Amherst College in 1861. In 1862, he enlisted in the Union Army, serving first as a Sergeant in Company F of the Massachusetts 36th Volunteer Infantry Regiment, and then later on as First Lieutenant in Company I of the United States Colored Troops 39th Infantry Regiment. After the war, he studied at Hartford Seminary and was ordained in May 1870. He spent the next twenty years in Washington, D.C., as a missionary while working as a phonographer, a clerk at the Internal Revenue Service, and as an agent for the Washington City Bible Society. In 1888, he was appointed pastor of a Presbyterian church in Hermon, Maryland, and later accepted pastorates of churches in Clifton, Virginia, and Riverdale, Maryland. In 1902, he went back to work for the Internal Revenue Service until ill health forced him to retire in 1909.

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