Samuel M. Howard Biography


	This biography appears on pages 855-856 in "History of Dakota 
	Territory" by George W. Kingsbury, Vol. V (1915) and was 
	scanned, OCRed and edited by Maurice Krueger, mkrueger@iw.net.

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				JUDGE SAMUEL M. HOWARD. 

	Judge Samuel M. Howard is one of the leading attorneys of 
Gettysburg and Potter county and is also identified with business 
pursuits. He was born in Fulton county, Illinois, July 2, 1838, a son 
of Samuel and Anna (Alderman) Howard. The father was born in Maryland 
on the 12th of February, 1793, and died in 1840, while the mother, 
whose birth occurred on the 29th of September, 1801, died in about 
1878. They removed to Illinois in 1831, before the outbreak of the 
Black Hawk war and when Cook county was still a part of Fulton county. 
Both continued to reside in Fulton county until called by death. The 
father was by occupation a farmer and was also a local minister of the 
Methodist Episcopal church. 

	Judge Samuel M. Howard is the youngest in a family of nine 
children and after attending the common schools entered the seminary at 
Cuba, Illinois, from which he was graduated. When about three years of 
age he was bound out to a farmer in Peoria county to serve until 
twenty-one years old. However, when nineteen years of age he left that 
home and attended school during the winter. He then worked for six 
months as a farm hand, after which he attended the academy at Cuba. On 
leaving that institution he engaged in teaching school and during his 
spare time read law under Governor W. P. Kellogg, who had served as 
member of congress, United States senator and governor of Louisiana. 
Judge Howard also read law under E. G. Johnson, of Peoria, and in 1866 
was admitted to the bar of Illinois. He began practice at Vermont, 
Illinois, where he enlisted for service in the Civil war on the 14th 
day of August, 1861, in Company H, Twenty-eighth Illinois Infantry, and 
remained at the front throughout all the war. He was either engaged or 
within hearing of every battle fought in the Mississippi valley by the 
Western army, except one, inclusive of the battle of Shiloh and the 
siege of Vicksburg. With his regiment he also assisted in the overthrow 
of Maximilian in Mexico and was finally mustered out of the service at 
Brownsville, Texas, March 15, 1866, and discharged May 15, 1866, at 
Springfield, Illinois. He was fortunate in escaping without a wound, 
but was confined in hospital for sickness a number of times. 

	Soon after his discharge from the army, Judge Howard resumed 
practice of the law at Knoxville, Illinois, for eleven years, when he 
accepted a position on the editorial staff of the Chicago Times under 
W. W. Story. After Mr. Story became demented, Mr. Howard removed to 
Dakota territory in 1882, and took a homestead in Potter county, South 
Dakota, the following year, where he has resided ever since. He has 
heretofore served as states attorney of such county for four full terms 
and is now serving his third term as judge of the county court. He owns 
one of the best private law libraries in the state and has an extensive 
practice before the department of the interior and the supreme court of 
the United States. His victory in this court in "Delamater vs. the 
State of South Dakota," decided March 11, 1907, and reported in 205 U. 
S., 93 (10 Am. & Eng. Ann. Cases, 733), has attracted national 
attention