Gookins, Samuel B.

Born: 1809-05-30 Rupert, Vermont

Died: 1880-06-14 Terre Haute, Indiana

Flourished: 1823 to 1858 Terre Haute, Indiana

Samuel B. Gookins, newspaper editor, attorney, and judge, relocated with his family to Rodman, New York, as a child in 1812, then moved again with relatives to Indiana, near Terre Haute, in 1823. Three years later, Gookins apprenticed at Terre Haute’s first newspaper, the Western Register, and following his four-year apprenticeship he moved to Vincennes to work on the Vincennes Gazette. After a year, he returned to Terre Haute and became an editor at the Western Register. Gookins remained in that position until 1832, when he decided to read law under a local attorney. After earning admittance to the bar in 1834, Gookins established a practice based in Terre Haute from which he covered circuit courts in Indiana and Illinois. He continued to practice as an attorney until 1850, and occasionally encountered Abraham Lincoln in the circuit courts of Illinois. Gookins served in the Indiana General Assembly, 1851 to 1852, where he helped organize the new state legal system established by the 1851 constitution. He then ran as a Whig for a judgeship on the Indiana Supreme Court under the new constitution and lost. Two years later, riding the anti-Nebraska sentiment in the state, he was successful in his second bid for election to the Indiana Supreme Court and remained on the bench for three years. Gookins moved to Chicago, Illinois, in 1858 and opened a new law practice there. During the Civil War, he supported the Lincoln administration and favored emancipation. Gookins married Mary C. Osborn in 1834 and the pair had children.

H. W. Beckwith, History of Vigo and Parke Counties (Chicago, IL: H. H. Hill & N. Iddings, 1880), pt. 2, 160-64; Indiana Marriages through 1850, Vigo County, 23 January 1834, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN; For Lincoln’s cases involving Gookins, search Participant, “Gookins, Samuel B.,” Martha L. Benner and Cullom Davis, et al., eds., The Law Practice of Abraham Lincoln: Complete Documentary Edition, 2d edition (Springfield: Illinois Historic Preservation Agency, 2009), http://www.lawpracticeofabrahamlincoln.org; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Vigo County, IN, 263; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Vigo County, IN, 103; The Indianapolis News (IN), 15 June 1880, 1:7.