One in a long line of highly competent lawyers in his family, Concord-born Samuel Hoar (1845-1904) was the grandson of Squire Sam Hoar and the third child and oldest son of Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar (lawyer, judge, and United States Attorney General) and his wife Caroline Downes Brooks Hoar (herself the daughter of lawyer Nathan Brooks). Young Sam served in the Civil War, entered Harvard in 1864, and graduated in 1867. He subsequently studied law in the Worcester office of his uncle George Frisbie Hoar, clerked with William M. Evarts and with E.R. Hoar (his father), then attended Harvard Law School for a year. He enjoyed a successful legal career and was an active participant in the public life of Concord.

Samuel Hoar married Kate Wise of Baltimore in 1871. In 1886, nine years after the death of his first wife, he married Helen Putnam Wadleigh, with whom he had two sons, Samuel and John. He died in Concord in 1904.

Model of civic responsibility though Samuel Hoar was in adulthood, this photograph of him as a young boy demonstrates the limits of his early willingness to do what was expected of him. He was clearly not pleased at having to sit patiently, hat in hand, for the photographer.

The original daguerreotype comes from an extensive collection of Hoar family papers given to the library by one of Sam's grandchildren.