Nicholas Snethen “Sneed” Ogburn, Jr. was born on September 24, 1884 in Monroe, North Carolina to Nicholas Snethen Ogburn and Eliza Bright Wolfe. Sneed was raised in Monroe’s Central Methodist Church.

Beginning in the fall of 1900, Sneed attended Trinity College and graduated in 1905. While at the college, Sneed roomed with a Japanese Christian named Zentsuki “Zensky” Hinohara. Hinohara’s conversion sparked an interest in conducting missionary work in Japan, a dream Sneed would fulfill years later. Sneed completed a summer term at Moody Bible Institute in Chicago in 1908 before enrolling in Vanderbilt for seminary training in the Fall of 1908. He graduated from Vanderbilt in 1911 with a B.D. and became an ordained deacon in the Methodist Episcopal Church.

Sneed set sail from San Francisco on October 19, 1912 to begin what would become a nearly 30-year mission to Japan. He spent the first two years at the Missionary Japanese Language School before being appointed to an evangelical ministry in the agricultural town of Uwajima.

When he left for Japan in 1912, Sneed was betrothed to Maude Shuford Hoyle. The two would marry in 1921 during a year-long furlough in the United States. After the furlough, Sneed returned to Japan on an appointment as a teacher at Kwansei Gakuin School in Kobe. The family would furlough in Charlotte, North Carolina every few years until Maude and the children returned to the U.S. permanently in 1940. Rev. Ogburn stayed another year, but finally returned in November 1941, days before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.

When Rev. Ogburn returned, he became a preacher in several pastorates in the Western North Carolina Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church. He and his wife retired in 1950.

Maude died in 1976 and Rev. Ogburn died on December 20, 1983 at the age of 99.