There is coming to the front of Idaho a class of lawyers of the younger generation who are making their mark in no uncertain way and will be worthy successors to some of the older members of the bar when their time for retirement shall come. One of the best and most prominent of these is Prosecuting Attorney Samuels, of Shoshone County, some account of whose busy and successful career to the present time it is purposed to introduce here.
Henry F. Samuels was born in Mississippi, April 4, 1869, a son of Captain Floyd and Isabella (Jenkins) Samuels. His father was captain, 1 861-5, of Company E, Twelfth Kentucky Cavalry, United States Army, and had a brother in another Kentucky regiment in the Confederate service. He now lives in Indiana, and his wife died there in 1873.
Mr. Samuels spent the days of his childhood and youth in Indiana. He acquired his primary education in the public schools, and after leaving the public schools; he boarded at home and walked five miles every morning and night to attend the high school at Leavenworth, being unable financially to pay his board. At the age of seventeen he went to Ulysses, Nebraska, where he completed his high school course in 1889. In the summer of that year he began the study of law in the office of Waldo Brothers, at Ulysses, Nebraska, and was under the preceptorship of these able lawyers for nearly a year. After having studied in the law department of the University of Michigan for some time, he returned to Leavenworth, Indiana, where he was admitted to the bar.
In 1892 Mr. Samuels came to Idaho, and practiced his profession at Grangeville until 1895, when he removed to Wallace, where he has met with much success and won a high position among the younger members of the bar. He was elected, in 1898, prosecuting attorney of Shoshone county, by a majority of eighty-four, and is filling that office with much zeal and ability. He is a member of the sons of Veterans and of the Woodmen of the World, and is chancellor commander of Wallace Lodge, No. 9, Knights of Pythias.
In 1892 Mr. Samuels married Miss Ionia Snyder, a native of Indiana, and they have a child, Amzel, which makes a happy little family.
Air. Samuels has overcome the poverty of his youth, which is a certificate of labor well performed, and it is the same firmness and perseverance of character which he exhibited while getting his education, allowing no obstacle to turn him from his true course, that is now pushing him to the front and making him a leader in his profession.