History of Ohio County West Virginia United States of America

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Samuel Spahr Laws, educator, was born in Ohio county, Va., March 23, 1824; son of James and Rachel (Spahr) Laws; grandson of Judge Thomas Laws, of Delaware, and of John Spahr, of Virginia, and a descendant of one of two brothers named Law, Quakers, who came to the colony of Maryland in 1672, and entered on a grant of land. He was graduated valedictorian from Miami university, Oxford, Ohio, A.B., 1848, A.M., 1851; and at Princeton Theological seminary, class orator, in 1851. He was ordained by the O.S. presbytery of St. Louis in 1851, and was pastor of West church in that city, 1851-53. He was professor of physical science in Westminster college, Fulton, Mo., 1854-55, and president of the college, 1855-61. He sympathized with the south at the outbreak of the civil war, and was banished from Missouri by the Federal authorities on a parole to the loyal states, Canada or Europe. He went to Europe, where he pursued his studies, 1861-62. He settled in New York city in 1862, where he engaged in financial operations. He invented the simultaneous telegraphic (or so-called ticker) system of transmitting the fluctuations of the markets of the exchanges, which came into universal use, and from which he acquired a fortune. He took a graduate course in law at Columbia college, New York city, receiving the degree of LL.B. in 1869, and also a four-years' course at Bellevue Hospital Medical college, receiving his M.D. degree in 1873. He returned to Missouri in 1876 to accept the chancellorship of the University of the State of Missouri, which under his administration became one of the leading institutions of learning in the west. He resigned in 1889, and was professor of Christian apologetics in the Presbyterian Theological seminary, Columbia, S.C., 1893-98. He was visitor to the U.S. Military academy, West Point, 1889, and urged the reduction of the course to two years, by making it a strictly professional military school. He received the honorary degree of D.D. from Washington and Lee university, Va., and that of LL,D. from Westminster college, Mo., in 1871. He is the author of numerous inaugural and other addresses between 1874 and 1901, the subjects including: The Philosophy of Christianity; Dual Constitution of Man: New Analysis of the Cranial and Spinal Nerves; Life and Labor of Louis Pasteur; The Relation of Religion to State Education; The Presbyterian Church; Political and Constitutional Issues in the War Between the States, and a volume on Metaphysics (1879).

From: Twentieth Century Biographical Dictionary of Notable Americans, Johnson, Rossiter, editor

History of Ohio County West Virginia

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