Samuel Ritter Peters
Politician. Republican. Born: August 16, 1842, Circleville, Ohio. Died: April 21,1910, Newton Kansas. Served in U.S. House of Representatives, 7th District: March 4, 1883, to March 3, 1891.
Samuel R. Peters, who was born in near Circleville, Ohio, on August 16, 1842, attended the local public schools and then the Ohio Wesleyan University at Delaware, before enlisting in the Union Army as a private in Company E, Seventy-third Regiment, Ohio Volunteer Infantry, in October 1861. Peters' service spanned the entire Civil War, during which time he rose through the ranks to become a captain before mustering out in June 1865. Subsequently, he graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with a law degree in 1867. Peters was admitted and started a practice in Memphis, Missouri, that same year. He edited the Memphis Reveille (1868-1873), was a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1872, and served as mayor of the northeast Missouri town, before moving to Marion, Kansas in 1873. In 1874 Peters was elected a member of the state senate but resigned in March 1875 to accept appointment as judge of the ninth judicial district, a position he held for almost a decade. He moved to Newton, Harvey County, in 1876, and resigned his judgeship in 1883 after winning a seat in the Forty-eighth Congress; he won reelection three times, serving from March 4, 1883-March 3, 1891. Peters was not a candidate for renomination in 1890. Instead, he returned to Newton, resumed the practice of law, and continued his public service on the local level: member of the board of managers of the State reformatory (1895-1899), postmaster of Newton (1898-1910). For a time Peters also edited the Newton Daily Kansas-Republican. He died in Newton on April 21, 1910, and was buried in the Greenwood Cemetery.
Entry: Peters, Samuel Ritter
Author: Kansas Historical Society
Author information: The Kansas Historical Society is a state agency charged with actively safeguarding and sharing the state's history.
Date Created: June 2011
Date Modified: May 2012
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