Samuel Larkin Warner

Samuel Larkin Warner (June 14, 1828 – February 6, 1893) was a U.S. Representative from Connecticut and a prominent nineteenth-century lawyer and public official, and was the brother of Levi Warner, who also later served in Congress. He was born in Wethersfield, Hartford County, Connecticut, where he spent his early years in a community that was then a small but established New England town along the Connecticut River. His upbringing in Wethersfield placed him within the social and political culture of antebellum Connecticut, which would shape his later public career.

Warner pursued his education at Wilbraham Academy in Wilbraham, Massachusetts, an institution known in the mid-nineteenth century for preparing young men for collegiate and professional study. After his preparatory education, he studied law at the law department of Yale College in New Haven, Connecticut, gaining exposure to one of the leading centers of legal education in New England. He subsequently continued his legal training at the law department of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from which he graduated in 1854. That same year he was admitted to the bar in Boston, Massachusetts, formally entering the legal profession.

Following his admission to the bar, Warner returned to his home state and commenced the practice of law in Portland, Connecticut, in 1855. Establishing himself as an attorney in a small but growing river town, he quickly became involved in local affairs. His abilities and standing in the community led to his election as a member of the Connecticut House of Representatives in 1858, marking his entry into elective public office. In 1860 he moved to Middletown, Connecticut, a larger and more commercially active city on the Connecticut River, where he continued his legal practice and deepened his engagement in municipal and state politics.

In Middletown, Warner rose to prominence during the Civil War era. He was elected mayor of the city and served from 1862 to 1866, a period that encompassed the most critical years of the war and the beginning of Reconstruction. As mayor, he would have overseen local administration, public order, and support for the Union war effort at the municipal level. His growing stature within the Republican Party was reflected in his selection as a delegate to the Republican National Convention in 1864, where the party renominated President Abraham Lincoln. His participation in the convention placed him among the Connecticut Republicans involved in shaping national policy during the war.

Warner was elected as a Republican to the Thirty-ninth Congress, serving a single term in the U.S. House of Representatives from March 4, 1865, to March 3, 1867. His congressional service coincided with the immediate post–Civil War period, when Congress addressed the restoration of the former Confederate states, the status of freedmen, and the broader framework of Reconstruction. Representing Connecticut at a time of intense national debate, he served during a Congress that enacted significant legislation on civil rights and the reorganization of the Union. He was not a candidate for renomination at the end of his term, choosing instead to return to private life.

After leaving Congress, Warner resumed the practice of law in Middletown, continuing his professional career while remaining active in Republican politics. His ongoing influence within the party was evidenced by his later service as a delegate to the Republican National Conventions of 1888 and 1892, gatherings that nominated Benjamin Harrison and then renominated Harrison four years later. Through these roles he maintained a voice in national political affairs well into the late nineteenth century, even though he no longer held elective office.

Samuel Larkin Warner died in Middletown, Connecticut, on February 6, 1893. He was interred in Indian Hill Cemetery in Middletown, a burial ground that contains the graves of many of the city’s leading citizens. His career, spanning local, state, and national office, reflected the trajectory of a New England lawyer-politician who participated in the political realignments of the Civil War and Reconstruction eras and remained engaged in public life for several decades.