The Randolph Society Foundation Board is pleased to announce that Samuel Burns Hood, a dedicated educator who served his community and his country valiantly, will be inducted into the 2024 class of honorees.
Samuel Burns Hood was born on May 15, 1834, in Chester, South Carolina. His parents both came from Irish immigrant families, and they were a part of a strong Presbyterian community. In 1845, when Samuel was eleven, he made the journey with his parents and his siblings to Randolph County, Illinois, where they settled on a farm outside of Sparta.
Samuel was educated alongside his eight surviving siblings, and early on, he showed a keen curiosity and a hunger for learning. He and his older brother, Alexander, were taken on as pupils at Union Academy, a Presbyterian prep school in Sparta that sought to extend educational opportunities to students who wanted to become teachers or take college courses. Samuel wanted to do both. He studied literature and law at the University of Michigan before returning to Sparta to become a teacher.
His blossoming educational career was interrupted by war. In June 1861, he enlisted as a sergeant with the 22nd Illinois Infantry, joining a company filled with other young men from Randolph County. Samuel took part in battles from Missouri to Tennessee in the first year of the war. He was quickly promoted through the ranks and appointed to serve as quartermaster, a role he filled so efficiently that he earned special commendations.
Samuel was captured by the Confederates during the Battle of Stones River and held prisoner for several weeks, during which he feared strongly for his own life. After he was released in a prisoner exchange, he returned to his regiment. He was subsequently wounded in both the Battle of Chickamauga and the storming of Missionary Ridge. His valor was recognized with a promotion to captain. He was mustered out after three years of service in 1864, and he remained an active part of veterans’ organizations like the G.A.R. for the rest of his life.
On his return to Sparta, Samuel married Margaret Frazier, with whom he raised a family of seven children on St. Louis Street. He spent the next forty years of his life working as a teacher and administrator in Sparta’s schools. He was elected twice as Randolph County’s Superintendent of Schools in the 1880s and was nominated as a candidate for Illinois Superintendent of Schools in 1894. He was also an advocate for the establishment of a teaching college in the area, which would later become Southern Illinois University in Carbondale.
The crowning achievement of Samuel’s tenure as an educator in Sparta was the opening of the community’s high school. Though some in the community initially opposed the high school, largely because of tax issues, Samuel and his colleagues successfully established a thriving secondary school in the community. Students could take courses there in the arts and sciences, languages, mathematics, government, and rhetoric. Later, the offerings were expanded to include a range of business courses as well. Samuel also donated his personal collections to a museum within the high school building.
Samuel passed away in Sparta on February 4, 1914, and the entire community deeply mourned the loss of one of its most prominent and active citizens. Fittingly, when a new building for the high school was constructed in 1916, it was located on land once owned by the family, and the street in front of the school was named Hood Avenue in Samuel’s honor. The Hood Memorial Fountain, now part of the school’s landscaping, was also dedicated in Samuel’s memory in May 1919. After his death, Samuel was remembered as the “father of Sparta schools,” a dedicated teacher who helped to lay a strong foundation for the educational success of generations of learners who followed.
Click here to read a more detailed biography of Samuel Burns Hood.
The Randolph Society 