Published August 16, 2025
By Mike Flanagan
Emery is a well-known name in Quincy’s history. Samuel Hopkins Emery Sr. was a Congregational minister, and a Civil War Chaplin. He planted the seed and encouraged the founding of the Quincy Historical Society in 1896. Lesser-known today although as accomplished is his son and namesake, Samuel Hopkins Emery Jr.
Junior was a precocious child and entered Harvard in 1853 at the age of 13. His father was the minister of a Congregational church in Taunton, Massachusetts when he accepted the call of the Congregational Church at Fifth and Jersey in Quincy, Illinois. The senior Emery left his son behind at school. During the summer of 1856, the young Emery, paid his parents a visit. He found a temporary job in Quincy, and before the end of the summer, he had chosen to leave his schooling, and to remain in the business world with the stove foundry, Quincy’s Collins, Comstock & Company.
Between 1856 and 1869, the younger Emery accumulated a large interest in that business, becoming a partner in the firm when it was incorporated as the Comstock-Castle Stove Company. By 1879, not yet forty, his fortune was secure. His intellectual reputation was growing, which was a challenge in 19th century Quincy. His intellectual advantage was based on both his father and his grandfather’s reputations as learned, liberal clergyman.
Because his parents had moved here, young Emery was willing to leave the intellectual centers of the United States in New England for Quincy which at that time was considered the far Western frontier. Emery was still living in his parents’ home even after he was married and was a business partner with his younger brother. Though his father was active in the Union cause as an Army Hospital Chaplain, and vocal in his opposition to slavery, the young Emery spent the Civil War in Quincy pursuing his intellectual, academic and business interests rather than joining the Union cause.
Young Mr. Emery became a Mason, was a member of the Knights Templar, and was a charter member of Quincy’s Elks Lodge. He was one of the organizers of The Encore Club which brought literary celebrities to Quincy to give lectures. A. Bronson Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Mark Twain lectured in Quincy under the auspices of this group.
Mr. Emery went on to write about Emerson’s visit to Quincy. “My acquaintance with Emerson began in the fall or winter of 1866, when he came to Quincy to deliver a lecture at the invitation of the “Encore Club,” of which I was President. I was at that time living with my father, Rev. S. H. Emery, Congregational minister and pastor of a Quincy church. He very cordially assented to my desire to invite Mr. Emerson to take supper with us and Mr. Emerson graciously accepted our invitation. My father asked Mr. Emerson to say Grace (quite to my horror), but Mr. Emerson immediately responded with these words: “Spirit of all good, we invoke thy blessing.” Emerson by that time, was a famous essayist and speaker from Concord Massachusetts, who lectured throughout the country. He was a founder of Transcendentalism which was a philosophical, literary and spiritual movement based on the goodness of people and nature. It is closely related to Unitarianism. Emerson came to Quincy one more time to give lectures.
Another club which Mr. Emery organized in the early 1870s was the Plato Club. Philosophy was becoming Emery’s avocation. Quincy is listed in the annals of the History of Philosophy in America, as a center of philosophical learning and understanding during the second half of the nineteenth century. Core members of the Plate Club included Sarah Denman, and the Lorenzo Bull family. Emery was a regular contributor to philosophical journals.
In 1879, along with his brother-in-law Edward McClure, Emery Jr. relocated his family to Concord, Massachusetts, and resumed his studies at Harvard to pursue a law degree. He would see Emerson frequently who once said to him, “It was a good compliment to this town, your coming here to live.”
The Harvard faculty found it hard to believe that two young Quincy men, Emery and McClure, could impress them with their knowledge of Hegelian philosophy. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a long dead German philosopher who viewed history as a logical progression of ideas. Logic is the science or mechanics of thought. Emery and McClure were considered “green” philosophers as they could not read German nor had they ever gone to a German university.
Emery continued his intellectual and philosophical pursuits while studying law. He was one of a small group of men who met regularly in Concord to have conversations on philosophical subjects. These conversation became transformed into the Concord School of Philosophy. The school met for six weeks beginning in the spring of 1879 in Emery’s house. Both Emery and McClure obtained their law degrees in 1882. Emery was admitted to practice in Boston. Losing interest in that, Emery returned to Quincy in 1887 effectively closing the Concord School of Philosophy which only lasted one more season after Emery and McClure left for Quincy.
Emery re-entered business. He joined the Quincy Paper Company and became president of its successor, American Strawboard Company. Emery was president of Electric Wheel from 1890 until his death.
Emery’s amazing business career in Quincy included being vice-president and director at Channon-Emery Stove Company, and president of the Globe Fixture Company. His service to the community included the Quincy Historical Society and as a founder to the Quincy Public Library.
The year 1901 was an especially grievous time for Samuel H. Emery, Jr. His mother died in February of that year, his wife in March, and his father in October. S. H. Emery, Jr. survived until 1906, when he succumbed to cancer at his home at 1443 Maine Street in Quincy.
Mike Flanagan is a guest author. He received his B. A. in Philosophy and Religion from Culver-Stockton College in 1993.
Sources:
Anderson, Paul R. Platonism in the Midwest. Philadelphia: Temple University, 1963.
Emery, Rev. S. H. “What I Remember at Eighty,” The Congregationalist, Vol. LXXXII, No. 38: 413.
Flower Elizabeth and Murray G. Murphy, A History of Philosophy In America. New York: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1977.
The Historical Encyclopedia of Illinois and History of Morgan County. Chicago: Munsell Publishing Company, 1906.
”Obituary.” Quincy Daily Herald, January 22, 1906.
Portrait and Biographical Record of Adams County, Illinois. Chicago: Chapman Bros.,1892.
Sanborn, Franklin B. Recollections of Seventy Years. Boston: R. G. Badger,1909.
Snider, Denton J. The St. Louis Movement. St. Louis, Missouri: Sigma Publishing Co., 1920.
Warren, Austin. “The Concord School of Philosophy.” The New England Quarterly, Vol. 2, No. 2. (1929): 199-233.
