SAMUEL S. ELDER, dealer in stoves, tinware, grates, and mantles, 616 Washington street, has conducted that branch of merchandising in Springfield over a quarter of a century. Samuel Elder and Phebe Clinkinbeard married and settled in Bourbon county, Kentucky, where the subject of this biography was born, May 5, 1831, and is one of their family of twenty children, of whom fourteen lived to adult age. They moved to Sangamon county, Illinois in November, 1834, and located two miles north of Rochester village, where they reared their large family. Mr. Elder died there in 18– (not given). His widow resides in the city, aged eighty-three in December. Samuel came to Springfield, February 17, 1849; began learning the tinner's trade the following day, and has operated on his own account since 1854. He has a fine trade in stoves and grates and mantles, making a specialty of the latter, and does an extensive business in roofing, galvanized iron cornice, and general job work, in which employs an average of six men. He married Sarah Shives, in Springfield, Illinois; she was born in the State of Pennsylvania, but brought up in Sangamon county. They have but one living child, Gusta J., now the wife of L. A. Constant, of Springfield. Mr. Elder has been an Odd Fellow more than twenty years, and he and his wife are members of the Baptist Church.