Hayes, Samuel S.

Born: 1820-12-25 Nashville, Tennessee

Died: 1880-01-28 Chicago, Illinois

Flourished: 1851 to 1880 Chicago, Illinois

Samuel Snowden (Snowdon) Hayes was an attorney and public official. He was orphaned at a young age and following his education he moved permanently to Illinois, settling first in Shawneetown in 1838, where he ran a drug business for two years. Hayes read law under Henry Eddy and was admitted to the bar in 1842 then lived briefly in Mount Vernon before settling in Carmi, where he continued to practice law. He and his family moved to Chicago about 1851 and he lived there for the remainder of his life. At the time of the 1860 census, Hayes owned real estate valued at $150,000 and possessed personal property worth $5,000. Politically, he was originally a Whig, but later became a Democrat. Hayes represented White County in the Illinois House of Representatives in the assemblies of 1846-1847 and 1849-1850, and served as a delegate to the Illinois Constitutional Convention in 1847. He was a supporter of Stephen A. Douglas but opposed the Kansas-Nebraska Act. Hayes joined Douglas in his opposition to the Lecompton Constitution in 1858, and that same year ran unsuccessfully in Cook County for election to the Illinois House of Representatives as a Douglas Democrat. On the advent of the Civil War, Hayes supported the Union, but was critical of Abraham Lincoln’s administration. He was comptroller of Chicago from 1862 to 1865, and was reappointed to the position in 1873. Hayes married Elizabeth Jane Taylor in 1850 and the pair had children.

Theodore C. Pease, ed., Illinois Election Returns, 1818-1848, vol. 18 of Collections of the Illinois State Historical Library (Springfield: Illinois State Historical Library, 1923), 426, 462, 518; John Clayton, comp., The Illinois Fact Book and Historical Almanac 1673-1968 (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1970), 214, 216; Usher F. Linder, Reminiscences of the Early Bench and Bar of Illinois (Chicago: The Chicago Legal News, 1879), 316; U.S. Census Office, Seventh Census of the United States (1850), Carmi, White County, IL, 268; Indiana Marriages through 1850, La Porte County, 7 November 1850, Indiana State Library, Indianapolis, IN; Daily Illinois State Journal (Springfield), 4 November 1858, 3:2; The Weekly Pantagraph (Bloomington, IL), 17 November 1858, 1:4; U.S. Census Office, Eighth Census of the United States (1860), Ward 5, Chicago, Cook County, IL, 288; The Daily Inter Ocean (Chicago, IL), 30 January 1880, 8:4; 2 February 1880, 8:2.