Samuel Hoar

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Samuel Hoar (May 18, 1778 - November 2, 1856) was a United States lawyer and politician.

Hoar was a native of Lincoln and Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard University in 1802.

He served two terms in the Massachusetts State Senate and was a member of the United States House of Representatives in 1835 - 1836.

Hoar was an expert in maritime law. In 1844 the state of Massachusetts chose him to represent the state in a legal conflict with South Carolina over the later state's seizing free African Americans working on ships docked at their sea ports and selling them into slavery unless the ship captain paid ransom. After landing at Charleston, South Carolina, locals mobbed him as a Yankee medler and warned him to leave town, and the South Carolina legislature barred him from appearing before that state's courts. When news of this incident reached Massachusetts it aroused much ire, and contributed to sentiment against slavery and in favor of abolitionism.

Hoar was elected to the Massachusetts Governor's Council in 1845, and elected a state representative in 1850. In 1854, he chaired a committee formed to call for a meeting at the American House in Boston (July 7, 1854) in order to discuss the formation of a new party and to call a state convention. Anger over the Kansas-Nebraska bill, and the issue of slavery in Federal territories were motivating factors leading to the subsequent convention (in Worcester, September 7, 1854), and the formation of the Republican Party of Massachusetts out of the Free Soil Party.^[1]

Samuel Hoar's son George Frisbie Hoar became a prominent U.S. Senator; Samuel Hoar's son Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (1816-1895) was appointed Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and was appointed US Attorney General by President Grant.

[edit] Other individuals named Samuel Hoar

The Hoar family, a prominent political family in Massachusetts history, has had number of individuals named Samuel Hoar since the 1700s:

Samuel Hoar (1743 - d. ____ ) Father of the Samuel Hoar this article is about. A lieutenant of the Lincoln, Massachusetts company at the Concord batle on April 19, 1775. For many years a member of the Massachusetts General Court as a representative and senator, and a member in the 1820 - 1821 Massachusetts Constitutional Convention.

Later Samuel Hoars were successful attorneys and civic leaders:

Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar's son, Samuel Hoar (1845-1904), was editor of the American Law Review from 1873 to 1879. In 1887 he became general counsel for the Boston and Albany Railroad Company.
Samuel Hoar (1887 - 1952) (son of Samuel Hoar) was partner in a prominent Boston law firm, Goodwin, Procter and Hoar. He donated a number of parcels to the Federal Government which the kernel to the foundation of the Great Meadows National Wildlife Refuge on the Concord and Sudbury rivers in Massachusetts. He helped establish the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts.
Samual Hoar (b. ____ - 2004) (son of Samuel Hoar) of Essex, Massachusetts also was a partner in Goodwin, Procter and Hoar
Samuel Hoar (b. ____ - ) (son of Samuel Hoar) is a lawyer in Burlington, Vermont