Samuel received a careful and thorough education. After elementary
work in the private academy of Waterford, at the early age of
twelve he spent a year or more in the “Washington Academy” of
Cambridge, New York, then under the principalship of Rev. Nathaniel
Scudder Prime. In later years he recalled with pleasure some of his
classmates: “We read Cæsar together; John K. Meyers, David Bullions
(Latin grammarian), E. D. G. Prime (editor of the _New York
Observer_), and I recited to Samuel Irenæus.” In 1833 he entered
the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute at Troy, five miles from home.
In the winter term 1835 he entered Dartmouth College at Hanover,
New Hampshire, but remained only till the close of that academic
year. It was here that occurred the deeper spiritual experience
which he recalls in the words that open this chapter; a conscious
conversion during a revival which swept through the college that
winter. It was following this experience that in the same year he
united with the Waterford church upon profession of faith. Why
he did not continue at Dartmouth does not appear; probably the
difficulty of access would have been a chief factor. However, in
the fall of that year he entered Union College, at Schenectady,
a few miles from his home. His work at Rensselaer and Dartmouth
qualified him to enter the junior class, so that he graduated
in the year 1837. He received the degree A.B. in course and the
honour of Φ.Β.Κ.; and following three years of post-graduate work
in teaching, he received the degree M.A. from his alma mater.
The three years immediately following graduation from Union were
spent in teaching; one year in Virginia, a year as principal of
Weston (Conn.) Academy and a year as principal of the private
school “Erasmus Hall,” in Brooklyn. He now entered upon his medical
course, spending the year 1841-2 in the University of Pennsylvania,
and the next year in the Albany Medical College. With the lapse
of a year not accounted for in the record,—probably teaching
in Virginia, to which he refers in telling of some chemical
experiments—he graduated from the College of Physicians and
Surgeons of New York with the degree M.D. in 1845.
Upon completion of his medical course he offered himself to the
Presbyterian Board of Foreign Missions (Old School), and was
commissioned in 1846. He was assigned to Siam together with his
college-mate, Rev. Stephen Mattoon, of Sandy Hill, New York, (now
Hudson Falls). Placing himself under the care of the Presbytery of
Troy he was licensed to preach.