Biographical Sketch of Hon. Sam Byrns, Washington County, Missouri

>From "History of Franklin, Jefferson, Washington, Crawford and 
Gasconade Counties", Biographical Appendix, Goodspeed Publishing 
Company, 1888.

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Hon. Sam Byrns, attorney at law, Potosi, was born in Jefferson County, 
Mo., March 4, 1848.  His father, Thomas Byrns, is a native of the same
county, and a successful agriculturist.  His mother was Margaret J.
Bowles, of St. Louis County.  In a family of nine children, Sam as he
is familiarly called and generally known, is the eldest of the living;
he was reared in his native county on a farm, receiving his education
at Steelville, Crawford County, St. James, Phelps County, and in St.
Louis.  After choosing the legal profession as a vocation he read law
with Judge John L. Thomas & Bro., and was admitted to the bar at Hills-
boro, Jefferson County, in 1872, at once entering into the active prac-
tice of his chosen calling.  In 1876 he received the nomination for
presidential elector on the Democratic ticket for this district and
made the campaign in the interest of the same, but in the fall of the
same year he received the nomination for representative to the State
Legislature and resigned the nomination for elector; he was elected to
the General Assembly by a good majority and served on the committees of
judiciary, immigration and local bills.  In 1878 he was elected to the
Senate from the Twenty-sixth Senatorial District, and served as chair-
man of the committee of criminal jurisprudence.  In 1880 he formed a
partnership with ex-circuit judge, Louis F. Dinning, and the firm of
Dinning & Byrns do an extensive practice in the courts of Southeast
Missouri, also in the Federal court in St. Louis.  He moved to Potosi
in 1883.  Mr. Byrns was married in 1872 to Miss Laura E. Honey, who 
died in 1880, and he was again married in 1884 to Miss Lissie A. Moss, 
of Jefferson County.  In 1886 he was elected a member of the Democratic
State Central Committee.  In politics, he is a partisan Democrat.  As a
lawyer Mr. Byrns ranks among the foremost of the members of the legal
profession in Southeast Missouri.  In his practice he has been faithful
and laborious to a fault, vigilant and painstaking, investigating both
the law and facts.  He is both a civil and a criminal lawyer, whose 
knowledge of either branch of the law is not questioned, and whose 
power as an advocate is admitted by the legal profession. 

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