John A. Snively

John Andrew Snively (1889 – January 22, 1958) was an American farmer, businessman, and citrus grower in Florida and Georgia who was an original inductee into the Florida Citrus Hall of Fame. At one point, his companies were responsible for one-third of the Florida citrus crop.

Biography Snively was born in 1889 in Schellsburg, Pennsylvania, the son of Frank B. Snively and Laura Irvin Snively. In 1910, at the age of twenty-one, he moved to Winter Haven, Florida, where he began working as a fertilizer salesman.

A few years later, just before the Florida land boom of the 1920s, Snively bought his first grove, a ten-acre site near Lake Eloise in Winter Haven.

In 1934, he established the Polk Packing Company, which later became Snively Groves Inc. Snively Groves was the largest fruit packing and canning company in the United States during the 1930s; with 1,500 employees, it was the largest business in Winter Haven.

Snively was married to Dorothy DeHaven Snively, and had one son and two daughters, one of whom, Avis, was the mother of musician Gram Parsons. He died of a heart attack at the age of 68.