Birdie Snook was born Charles Quimby Burdette Snook to Charles and Mary Snook in McLean, Illinois on November 21, 1879. His father was the manager of the McLean train depot. His father died of a seizure when Birdie was six years old.
Birdie went to various places on the Mississippi river starting in 1865 at age 16 and got into the clamming industry. Birdie had a rake with many tines and he plunged it down into the muddy water, dragging it along the bottom making the mussels and clams clamp down on the tines. Then he would draw the rake out of the water and pull the mussels and clams off the tines.
Clams and mussels were used for both meat and buttons for the button industry 1890-1910. Birdie would use a rake from the boat, plunging it into the muddy water and dragging it along the bottom so that the mussels and clams would clamp down onto the tines and he’d pull them off and repeat the process.
When he was 18, Birdie appears in Butler County, Missouri getting married to Mary Belle Schmick and he brings his bride back to along the Mississippi river and resumes his job on the Mississippi River. My great grandmother Ethel is his firstborn. She was born August 20, 1898 when Birdie was 18 years old. Gladys Vishti Snook arrived in February 1900, then Leo in 1901, then Orin Charles Snook in 1904, then his daughter Birdie Snook in 1906. He divorced Mary Belle and remarried to Gertrude Thompkins. With her, Birdie had Virginia, Goldie, Burdette, Donna Mae and Gertrude.
In 1921, clamming was now banned due to over-harvesting for mother of pearl buttons and he changed to being a commercial fisherman. He would catch things like channel catfish and bass. He died a few years later at the young age of 46 on January 14, 1926. I was unable to find his death certificate.
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