The man whose name heads this sketch was born in the Township of Ballston, near Ballston Spa, Saratoga County, New York, on the twenty-fifth of September, 1828. The family from which he is descended is traced back to an early period in American Colonial history, when the immigrant ancestor (an Englishman) settled in Connecticut, where many rich, intelligent and influential members of the name are still found. That branch of the family from which Samuel A. Jennings springs has been settled in Saratoga County for more than a century. His father, Samuel Jennings, was born there about 1789, but the grand father, Edmund Jennings, came from Connecticut.
The most of the members of the family, as the record shows, have been farmers. On the maternal side Mr. Jennings is of Scotch extraction, his mother, Jane (Spear) Jennings, having been the daughter of Scotch parents, who moved to the town of Ballston previous to her birth. She was a sister of the well-known Judge Gilbert M. Spear of New York City.
Samuel A. Jennings acquired the rudiments of an English education in the common schools, which he supplemented with a year's course at the academy at Jonesville, New York.
After leaving school he learned the carpenter's trade, serving three years as an apprentice. He spent the winters of the five years succeeding his seventeenth birthday teaching school, at which he was quite successful. In the fall of 1853 he went to Aspinwall, Central America, with a party of carpenters from the locality where he lived, and thus first began to indulge that desire for travel that has possessed him all his life. After remaining in Central America until the beginning of the next summer and having partially satisfied his desire for seeing the world there, he returned to his home. In April, 1855, he came west and settled at Davenport, where he worked at carpentering till the hard times of 1857, when work at his trade was difficult to obtain, and he went into the employ of Haight & Sears, dealers in leather and saddlery, as a drummer, and four years later became the third partner in the firm of Haight, Sears & Company.
From that date he spent a large portion of his time in soliciting business for his firm, and during the twenty years he was in the business, was one of the best known commercial men in Central and Eastern Iowa. In this business he was successful and saved a good sum of money, but desiring a change he retired from the firm January 1, 1878, and the spring following became a member of the firm of Jennings & Price who then constituted the Davenport Woolen Mills Company - leasing the mills they operated for two years. After an interval of a year, a part of which time Mr. Jennings spent in Texas, the mills were bought, and the Davenport Woolen Mills Company, S. A. Jennings, president and manager, W. K. Haight, secretary and treasurer, has since operated them profitably, doubling the output and number of operatives, now employing about one hundred and thirty persons and turning out one hundred and twenty-five thousand dollars' worth of goods annually, which are sold to the retail trade over Iowa and adjoining States. Since the year 1891 the manufacture of clothing has been a prominent feature of the business.
In March, 1858, at Davenport, Mr. Jennings married Miss Ellen M. Clapp, a native of Kent, Ohio. They are the parents of four children; two of whom died in childhood and two, Reuben Price Jennings and Will Haight Jennings, have grown up and are in the employ of the Woolen Mills Company. Mr. Jennings served one term (1890-91) as alderman and in that time was principally instrumental in having the present police patrol system inaugurated. His nomination and election came to him unsought. In politics he is independent. During the war he was a warm supporter of Lincoln and the Union. He now acts with the Democratic party on national issues. In religious matters he has liberal views. Business trips and pleasure jaunts have taken him in all parts of the United States, and into nearly every State, in some of which he has made profitable investments. He has spent one winter in California and four in the Southern States, but notwithstanding his love of travel he is a very domestic man, fond of home, and has lived in one ward for thirty-nine years and in the same house twenty-nine years.
Samuel A. Jennings is a good representative of the live American business man and shows the characteristics transmitted to him from his New England ancestors. He is honest, truthful, diligent and economical, temperate and thoroughly reliable. He makes few promises and keeps those he makes. He looks far into the future in business matters and sagaciously calculates the chances, so arranging his affairs as to take advantage of trade conditions and reap the benefits of good judgment and judicious investment.
He is a man whose advice is often sought by other men in business. From a poor boy, through good habits and good management he has accumulated a comfortable fortune to which he adds yearly, and may look ahead to yet other years of success.
BIOGRAPHIES