Representative Green Berry Samuels

Green Berry Samuels (February 1, 1806 – January 5, 1859) was a Virginia lawyer, politician, and judge who served one term in the United States House of Representatives and later sat on the state’s highest court. Born in Shenandoah County, Virginia, in early February 1806—sources variously giving February 1 and February 6 as his date of birth—he was a son of Isaac Samuels (1762–1819) and Elizabeth Pennybacker Samuels (1766–1824). He grew up in the Shenandoah Valley in a family connected to several prominent local figures, including his cousin Isaac Samuels Pennybacker, who would also serve in Congress and the United States Senate.

Samuels received a private classical education in Virginia, reflecting the educational pattern of many aspiring professionals in the early nineteenth century. He then pursued formal legal training at the Winchester Law School under Judge Henry St. George Tucker Sr., one of the leading legal educators of the period. Under Tucker’s tutelage, Samuels acquired the grounding in common law and Virginia jurisprudence that would shape his subsequent career as both advocate and jurist. He was admitted to the bar in 1827 and soon established a legal practice in Woodstock, the county seat of Shenandoah County, where he built a reputation as a capable attorney.

On April 12, 1831, Samuels married Maria Gore Coffman. The couple made their home in the Shenandoah Valley and had five children who reached adulthood: Elizabeth Margaret Samuels, Isaac Pennybacker Samuels, Anna Maria Samuels, Green Berry Samuels Jr., and Samuel Coffman Samuels. His family ties, both through birth and marriage, connected him to a broad network of local professionals and landholders that underpinned his entry into public life.

As a member of the Democratic Party representing Virginia, Samuels contributed to the legislative process during one term in office. Voters of Virginia’s 16th congressional district elected him as a Democrat to the Twenty-sixth Congress, where he served from March 4, 1839, to March 3, 1841. He succeeded his cousin Isaac Samuels Pennybacker in that seat, continuing the family’s representation of the region in the national legislature. His service in Congress occurred during a significant period in American history, marked by debates over economic policy, westward expansion, and the balance of power between the federal government and the states. Participating in the democratic process, he represented the interests of his Shenandoah Valley constituents within the broader national political context. After completing his term, Samuels chose not to seek re-election, and William A. Harris succeeded him in the House. Following the subsequent federal census and reapportionment, population losses caused Virginia to lose that particular congressional seat.

After leaving Congress, Samuels returned to his legal practice and remained active in Virginia public affairs. In 1850, voters from Shenandoah, Hardy, and Warren Counties elected him as one of their four delegates to the Virginia Constitutional Convention of 1850, alongside William Seymour, Giles Cook, and Samuel C. Williams. The convention addressed major questions of representation, suffrage, and internal improvements in a rapidly changing commonwealth. Samuels’s participation reflected his standing as a leading legal and political figure in his region. However, his service at the convention was cut short when, on December 10, 1850, he resigned his seat after being elected by the General Assembly as a judge of the circuit court. Mark Bird was chosen to succeed him as a delegate to the convention.

Samuels’s judicial career advanced quickly. As a circuit court judge, he presided over a broad range of civil and criminal matters at a time when Virginia’s courts were central to resolving disputes arising from commerce, landholding, and the institution of slavery. In 1852, the Virginia legislature elected him to the Court of Appeals, then the state’s highest appellate tribunal. His elevation to that court placed him among the leading jurists of the commonwealth, and he served there during a period of intensifying sectional tensions in the years preceding the Civil War.

Green Berry Samuels died suddenly in Richmond, Virginia, on January 5, 1859, at the age of 52, while still in judicial service. His body was returned to Woodstock, where he was buried in the Old Lutheran Graveyard (Emanuel Lutheran Church Cemetery). Remembered as a lawyer, Democratic congressman, constitutional convention delegate, and appellate judge, he played a notable role in both the legislative and judicial life of Virginia in the antebellum era.