Samuel Wallin

Samuel Wallin (July 31, 1856 – December 1, 1917) was a United States Representative from New York and a longtime civic and business leader in Amsterdam, New York. He was born in Easton, Northampton County, Pennsylvania, on July 31, 1856. In 1864, during his childhood, he moved with his parents to Amsterdam, Montgomery County, New York, a growing industrial community along the Mohawk River that would remain his home for the rest of his life.

Wallin was educated in the public schools of Amsterdam and at the Amsterdam Academy, an institution that provided secondary and preparatory education to the city’s youth. After completing his schooling, he entered the local business community, engaging in the manufacture of carpets and rugs. Amsterdam was an important center of the textile and carpet industry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Wallin’s involvement in this sector placed him among the city’s prominent industrial and commercial figures.

Wallin’s business success and standing in the community led him into public service at the municipal level. He served as an alderman of Amsterdam from 1889 to 1892, participating in the governance of a city undergoing rapid industrial expansion and urban development. Building on this experience, he was elected Mayor of Amsterdam, serving from 1900 to 1901. In that capacity he oversaw local administration and contributed to the civic and economic affairs of the municipality at the turn of the century.

Active in Republican Party politics, Wallin extended his public role beyond the local level. He was chosen as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1916, reflecting his influence within party circles in New York State. His political career reached the national stage when he was elected as a Republican to the Sixty-third Congress, representing New York in the United States House of Representatives from March 4, 1913, to March 3, 1915. During his single term in Congress he served at a time when the nation was addressing issues of progressive reform and the early impacts of World War I abroad. Wallin did not seek renomination in 1914 and thus concluded his congressional service at the end of that term.

After leaving Congress, Wallin returned to Amsterdam and resumed his business activities in the manufacture of carpets and rugs. He remained a respected figure in the community, known both for his long association with the city’s principal industry and for his years of municipal and national public service. Samuel Wallin died in Amsterdam, New York, on December 1, 1917. He was interred in Green Hill Cemetery, bringing to a close a life closely identified with the civic and economic development of Amsterdam and with Republican politics in New York during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.