George Warren Samuel

Father-in-Law of John S. Lemon, George Warren Samuel was born June 4, 1810, at New Castle, Henry County, Kentucky. His two grandfathers, Judge William Samuel of Caroline County, Virginia, and Edmund Bartlett of Spotsylvania County, Virginia, had both brought their families to Kentucky after the American Revolution.

George left school at the age of seventeen, and went west to Fayette, Howard County, Missouri, in 1828. There he was employed by a mercantile firm which was active in the Santa Fe Trail business. After two years he embarked in business for himself with the help of his former employers. In the next ten years he tried a number of different businesses including papermaking, meat packing, and steamboating, and suffered the consequences of bank failures.

In 1838 he moved to Martinsville, now Platte City, and built the first house made of sawed lumber there. In the same year he married Rebecca Todd, daughter of Judge David Todd of Columbia, Missouri

In the fall of 1839 George Samuel participated with several others in an effort to buy from Joseph Robidoux the land on which his trading post was located at Blacksnake Hills. They intended to organize a town on the site and were prepared to pay $1,600 for the land. They actually brought the money in silver in saddle bags to Robidoux. Originally favorably inclined, Robidoux changed his mind about selling, and in less than four years established his own town Saint Joseph, on the land.

After that, George Samuel left his house in Platte City, which was later occupied by David R. Atchison, who became United States senator. Samuel moved to Savannah, Missouri, which was organized as a town in 184I. There he engaged in the mercantile business and became president of the Savannah Branch of the Southern Bank of St. Louis.

Mr. Samuel was a Southern sympathizer, and his only son, David Todd Samuel, at the age of twenty-five a lieutenant colonel of the Missouri Cavalry, C.S.A., was killed on a ridge near Atlanta, Georgia, in August, 1864. After the Civil War, Mr. Samuel, then a widower, moved with his daughters to St. Joseph and organized the St. Joseph Fire and Marine Insurance Company, becoming its president. He died February 18, 1899.

His wife, Rebecca Todd Samuel, was a first cousin of Mary Todd Lincoln, wife of Abraham Lincoln. Her father was the brother of Robert S. Todd of Lexington, Kentucky, father of Mrs. Lincoln. A tradition in the Samuel family was that Rebecca had met Lincoln at some time because she was quoted as saying: "Mr. Lincoln was a very nice man.”