FISHER, Samuel Ware, educator, born in Morristown, N.J., 5 April 1814; died at College Hill, near Cincinnati, Ohio, 18 January 1874. His father was a Presbyterian pastor at Morristown. The son was graduated at Yale in 1835, and he entered Princeton theological seminary, but after two years went to the Union theological seminary, New York City, where ha was graduated in 1839. Before leaving the seminary he was called to the pastorate of the Presbyterian Church in West Bloomfield, now Montclair, New Jersey he was pastor there for three and a half years, and then for four years in Albany, where he achieved a high reputation as a pulpit orator. From Albany he was called in 1847 to Cincinnati. as a successor to Rev. Dr. Lyman Beecher. This pastorate he always considered the most effective work of his ministry, but resigned in 1858 to accept the presidency of Hamilton College, Clinton, N.Y. Here his scholarship, his eloquence, and his executive ability effected a more liberal endowment and increased efficiency.

In September 1867, finding his pulpit work more congenial, Dr. Fisher resigned and accepted a call from the Westminster Presbyterian Church in Utica, but in May 1870, he was stricken with paralysis. From the first attack he recovered, but did not regain the full use of his speech, and therefore resigned his pastorate in 1871, and was able to partially resume his duties, but a second attack compelled his resignation of all active duties, and he removed to Cincinnati. He was the author of "Three Great Temptations of Young Men, with several Lectures addressed to Business and Professional Men "(Cincinnati, 1852). Only a few of his sermons, orations, and addresses were published. A volume of "Occasional Sermons and Addresses" appeared in New York in 1860, and a course of sermons on the "Life of Christ" at Utica after his death.

His nephew, Samuel Sparks Fisher, lawyer, born in St. Joseph County, Michigan, 11 April 1832; drowned in the Susquehanna River, in Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, 14 August 1874, studied law in Philadelphia, went to Cincinnati in 1854, and was for many years engaged there in the managing of patent cases. He was colonel of the Ohio National Guard, and during the last four months of the civil war, was in active service as acting brigadier general on the eastern shore of Virginia. In 1869 he was appointed by President Grant commissioner of the patent office, but resigned early in 1871, to devote his attention to private business. He was following up the Susquehanna on a pleasure journey with his son when both were drowned. He published six volumes of "Reports of Cases Arising under Letters Patent for Inventions in the Circuit Courts of the United States" (Cincinnati, 1868'74).