Baker, Samuel L.

Born: 1820 New York

Died: 1879-12-31 Utah Territory

Flourished: 1853 to 1860 Chicago, Illinois

Samuel L. Baker, attorney, was practicing law in Schenectady, New York by 1846. In 1850 he was elected as a Whig to be district attorney of Schenectady County and served in the position one year. Baker relocated to Chicago by 1853, where he continued the practice of law and became active in Republican politics. He represented Cook County in the 1858 Illinois Republican Convention and in the Illinois House of Representatives in 1859. At the time of the 1860 census he owned real estate valued at $100,000 but later suffered financial losses. Sometime after 1860 Baker moved first to Nevada Territory, then subsequently settled in Utah Territory, where he died in the town of West Jordan. He was described by an acquaintance as being “of the old free soil Whig stock, earnest in his anti-slavery views, and honest and unyielding in his advocacy of them.” Baker never married and had no known children.

The Schenectady Cabinet: or, Freedom’s Sentinel (NY), 10 February 1846, 4:6; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Ward 1, Schenectady, Schenectady County, NY, 98; New-York Daily Tribune (NY), 23 October 1850, 4:6; John H. Munsell and George Rogers Howell, History of the County of Schenectady, N. Y., from 1662 to 1886 (New York: W. W. Munsell, 1886), 77; The Schenectady Cabinet (NY), 9 September 1851, 2:4; John Livingston, Livingston’s Law Register, for 1852 (New York: U.S. Law Magazine, 1852), 173; John Livingston, Livingston’s Law Register, for 1853 (New York: Law Magazine, 1853), 86; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 16 June 1858, 2:2; John Clayton, The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac, 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 222-23; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 1, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 6; The Salt Lake Daily Tribune (Salt Lake City, UT), 3 January 1880, 1:7; The Salt Lake Weekly Tribune (Salt Lake City, UT), 10 January 1880, 6:7.