Samuel Swinfin Burdett (21 February 1836 – 24 September 1924) was a member of the US House of Representatives (R-MO 5) from 4 March 1869 to 3 March 1873, succeeding Richard Schell and preceding John Hardy.
Biography[]
Samuel Swinfin Burdett was born in Broughton Astley, Leicestershire, England, the son of a Baptist minister. He emigrated to the United States at the age of 12, and he worked on a farm in Lorain County, Ohio before being admitted to the bar in DeWitt, Iowa in 1858. Burdett was an abolitionist, joining John Brown's Jayhawkers during the Bleeding Kansas upheaval and serving in the Union Army during the American Civil War. He went on to serve as a delegate to the 1868 Republican National Convention, and he went on to serve in the US House of Representatives from 1869 to 1873 and as Commander-in-Chief of the Grand Army of the Republic from 1885 to 1886. He died in his hometown of Broughton Astley in 1924 at the age of 78.