Biography of Samuel Eells

As his nearest living kinsman I am asked to tell something new of Samuel Eells. We have a biography of him written by my father, his brother, and many published sketches, from all of which we may fairly picture him to ourselves in his habit as he lived, but something still is left to tell of his antecedents and the surroundings by which the man we love was moulded.

His first American ancestor bearing the family name was John Eells, who migrated to Massachusetts Bay Colony from the West of England three hundred years ago in 1632, settled in Dorchester, Massachusetts, was a freeman of the Colony and a prosperous farmer, but when the Long Parliament met in England in 1640 John Eells, that stern old Puritan, sniffed the coming battle from afar, sold all he owned for whatever price it would bring, and sailed back to England to take up arms for his religion, carrying with him his son Samuel, the "suckling child" a few weeks old. John never returned to America, but his son Samuel (from whom our Samuel was named) came back to his native Colony in 1661, and soon displayed marked ability and energy. He practiced "the notable profession of the law," and moreover was merchant, miller, selectman, Town Clerk, and often a Deputy in the General Court of Connecticut, as well as "a Major in the Regiment," fighting with distinction against the Indians in King Philip's War. From him our Samuel loved to trace his descent through an unbroken line of four clergymen from father to son, each a graduate of Harvard or Yale. Three ruled New England Parishes piously and well, but the fourth, Samuel's father, glowed with missionary zeal, and followed the call of duty into the wilderness to Westmoreland in this County of Oneida, where he was pastor of the Congregational Church.

There our Samuel was born on Saturday, May 18, 1810, the second son in a family of five sons and one daughter, another daughter having died in infancy. He was born into a harsh world which it is hard to imagine in these luxurious days, although it was here less than three generations ago. Central New York was then the frontier, and Samuel's home in Westmoreland knew only log-cabins, home-spun linsey-woolsey and tow-linen, flint and steel instead of matches, tallow-dips for lighting, rude make-shift furniture, the plainest of food all home-grown, few books besides the Bible, Pilgrim's Progress and Foxe's Book of Martyrs, and those read only on Sunday which began at sunset on Saturday night, every member of the family, large or small, being constantly busied on week days in endless household labors; the Mohawk stage road to Albany the only link with the outside world; the preacher's stipend a mere pittance of money, eked out by cordwood and by such contributions of necessary food as the parishioners could spare from their own scanty store.

In such surroundings Samuel spent his childhood, and although the family was united and loving, the unavoidable hardships undermined his health. There was nothing unusual in this. Infant mortality was high in those pioneering days of large families and few survivors; tuberculosis from which he suffered was especially rampant; and such conditions were general and inevitable. In spite of them Samuel passed a happy boyhood amid warm family affection, and was taught at home by his parents. Meantime his missionary father while faithfully performing the duties of his small parish was actively engaged in wider religious and educational work. He encouraged and promoted the evolution of Hamilton College from its original Indian school. When it was chartered by the State of New York he was one of the committee of three trustees who organized and opened the college and drew up its curriculum. Then as the frontier receded he pursued it by becoming the District Secretary of the Western Educational Society, whose duties required long and frequent horseback journeys everywhere through the forests and clearings of Western New York. During these absences Samuel's education continued under his mother's tuition, or perhaps under some village schoolmaster, for we are told that he "was confined strictly to study since he was four years of age." He was already leading his boyish companions by his force of character, his keen intellect, his affectionate disposition, and by that richest and rarest of human gifts which we awkwardly term "personal magnetism."

In his fifteenth year Samuel's health broke down, and his wise father took him from his books and procured farm work for him for two seasons. In 1826 he attended the Clinton Academy where he displayed unsuspected talent in declamation and in literary composition. In the summer of the following year 1827 he entered the freshman class at Hamilton, but a recurrence of his malady forced him to leave College almost immediately, and he decided to try a sea-voyage to benefit his health. This did not mean for him a deck-chair on an ocean-liner as it might now-a-days, nor even a snug cabin in a packet vessel of the period, but a sailor's hammock swung in the forecastle of any craft which would hire him. He had no money; his father could spare him none, so he must work his passage. He made his way to New Haven with great effort in his weakened condition, most of the way on foot, and there he shipped on a coasting schooner to Chesapeake Bay, but he found the voyage too short for much improvement in his health. Looking for another ship which would take on such a sickly young landlubber he followed the coast north through New York and half the harbors of New England until in New Bedford he succeeded in getting a berth on a fishing smack for the Banks of Newfoundland by agreeing to pay the skipper half the fish he might catch. On his return he utilized the strength and skill gained in those former cruses by shipping again to the coast of Nova Scotia. At last in November 1828 he came home to Westmoreland, having supported himself entirely by his own exertions during his absence, and richer by a new wardrobe, regained strength for a time at least, and the discipline of his varied experiences as a man among men. Without delay he entered Hamilton again as a freshman, this time in the class of 1832, having lost a college year by his absence.

He found the college at the lowest ebb in its history, torn by a bitter controversy between the President and most of the trustees, and by another even more bitter controversy between the student body and all the powers that were. The board of trustees had spent the permanent funds of the endowment in erecting college buildings which were still far from completion, so that hardly any money was left to pay instructors. The board had also interfered with management and discipline by the Faculty in a case of student wrong doing, which had enraged and alienated the undergraduates. In consequence, as we learn from President North's half-century letter, in Samuel's Sophomore year ten trustees had resigned, only two permanent officers of the college remained, namely President Davis and the professor of Chemistry and of the students only nine were left, all of them being members of the two lower classes. President North records the names of these "immortal nine" as he calls them, among them being Samuel Eells, and it is worthy of note that each of the nine in after life became distinguished in one way or another. The tide quickly turned, necessary funds were raised, and the Faculty was reconstituted and although no students were graduated in the classes of 1829 and 1830 the ranks of the remaining classes were steadily recruited. Samuel's sea-faring life had been a useful preparation for his four years of driving under bare poles in this stormy college course. He naturally took the lead there as always. The radiant boy impressed his inspiring personality upon his fellows, and in his senior year he immortalized himself among the college men of America by evoking from that welter of conflict the Alpha Delta Phi Fraternity, instinct with his character and his ideals. I shall not dwell upon the founding of the Society, which is more or less familiar to us all.

Misfortune still attended him at graduation, for although he was appointed valedictorian of his class there were no Commencement exercises in 1832, owing to a terrible epidemic of cholera which forbade all public gatherings. Samuel's father had removed to Ohio the year before, and Samuel set out to follow him thither upon his graduation, intending to join his elder brother in establishing an academy at Worthington in that State. He had long known that consumption held him in its grip, and before leaving Clinton he told a friend prophetically that he did not expect to live longer than ten years, and that he intended to crowd those years as full as possible. He had got as far as Buffalo on his journey and had boarded a boat there bound for Ohio when cholera attacked him, and before sailing far he was prostrated by the disease. The panic-stricken passengers all fled from him and insisted that he be put ashore at once. Of all on board only one young man ventured near enough to speak with him, and Samuel persuaded him to bring him some calomel, of which he took as much as he dared. At midnight they put him off at Dunkirk, leaving him to die in a shed on the wharf. No one came near him there, not even the village doctor, except two young men who peeped through the door, actuated apparently by morbid curiosity. Even to that extremity his magnetic appeal induced them to bring him hot water and the rest of his calomel. That done, they waited to see him die, but he rallied instead, and after a week of misery he staggered from his shed and resumed his solitary journey. Somehow, he reached his father's house at Worthington, where he soon decided that the proposed academy could not succeed, and the plan was abandoned.

Leaving his family there Samuel went on to Springfield, Ohio, without money, friends, influence, or health, intending to study law there and to support himself meanwhile by creating a school and teaching in it. His school began with only two scholars, but grew rapidly to as many as he could handle, while he read more law than candidates usually did, and in addition delivered public lectures on such subjects as Astronomy and Geology. During these exhaustive labors his disease made fearful progress. In one of his letters written at that time he says: "For the last six weeks I have been very low and failing rapidly," but adds: "Perhaps you wonder that I am not alarmed for myself in these circumstances. I answer, No! I am willing to suffer, to spend and be spent in this way, if such is the will of God." Undaunted, he was submitted to the Ohio Bar in February, 1835, and went forthwith to Cincinnati to undertake the practice of the law. Of his prospects he wrote in another letter: "I am entering the duties of an arduous and crowded profession with no experience, dependent on it for my daily bread, with a host of competitors all interested in holding me under water, poor, friendless, a stranger in a strange place, doomed to hard work and little or no pay for a time at least. But I am a young man free as the wind, with a tolerable education, inured to hard study by long habit, and capable of bringing to the work not great talents but what will supply their place, namely great diligence, exclusive devotion to the duties I attempt, a prompt and unswerving self-sacrifice, and withal a free high spirit of unconquerable independence that bows to nothing but God!" There speaks a heroic soul! He does not even mention among his handicaps the disease which was crushing him.

For several months he found no clients, but when opportunities began to present themselves he made the most of every one to such effect that before the close of his first year at the Bar he was offered a junior partnership by Salmon P. Chase, them a lawyer in established practice in Cincinnati, afterward to become Chief Justice of the United States. Samuel gladly accepted this new association, which gave him at once abundant work and opportunity to display his legal attainments and his remarkable eloquence. He remained with Mr. Chase about two years, during which time his professional standing became so assured that notwithstanding his failing health he resigned his partnership and opened an office of his own at the end of 1837, less than three years after his admission to the Bar. His business speedily grew beyond his strength. Once more he was stricken down, this time never to recover.

He took in a partner to maintain his office, and rode on horseback slowly and painfully to his father's house which was then at Amherst, in Ohio. There he passed the summer of 1838, gaining some relief, and in the autumn he returned to his office, hoping to continue his practice in some measure, but he found himself too weak, although he kept up an intermittent struggle for a few months longer. He spent the winter of 1840 in Cuba, and the following summer with his father. In September he once more tried desperately to resume his office work, but collapsed at once and then resigned himself to waiting for the inevitable end. His many friends did all in their power to lighten his sufferings of mind and body, and it was in the home of one of them, Mr. S. W. Pomeroy of Cincinnati that the close of his long martyrdom came peacefully on Sunday morning, March 13, 1842, before he had completed his thirty-second year.

His body was buried in the City Cemetery of Cincinnati, but was removed in 1859 to the family plot in Woodland Cemetery in Cleveland, and in recent years it has been entombed in a vault of the Alpha Delta Phi Chapter house on the Campus of Hamilton College, where his spirit has so long dwelt. There may it rest forever!