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A life span of almost ninety years, sixty-three of which had been spent in Sherman and Grayson County, Tex., closed with the death of Samuel Bonham on January 29, 1922, after two days illness. He was born in Clarke County, Va., February, 1832, and completed a college course at Berryville, making a civil engineer. He then served Clarke County as county surveyor, but at the age of twenty-two he went to Missouri and there engaged in surveying. Going thence to Kansas, he was surveying for the State when he was captured by the Pawnee Indians. Leaving Kansas, he engaged in surveying in Nebraska for three years, then went to Texas in 1859 and located in Sherman, then a village, where he continued his special work until called to up arms for the South. He joined a company under Capt. Ben McCulloch, Baylor's Regiment, W. P. Layne's Brigade, and gave four years service to the Confederacy.

Returning to Sherman after the war was over, he again took up surveying and was county surveyor for nearly forty years. In that time he laid out hundreds of farms and many of the plats of Sherman and Denison, seeing these communities grow into teir present-day status from the trading stations of pioneer days. He was a charter member of the Grayson County's Old Settlers Associations, and at the time of his death dean of the Grayson County early settlers. He was active almost to the last, going about the city among friends when the weather was good.

Comrade Bonham was married in 1863 to Miss Martha Ann Melton, daughter of one of the Sherman pioneers, and to them were born five sons and three daughters, all surviving him. After the death of his wife he lived with his children in New York and Knoxville, Tenn., eventually returning to Sherman as the home of his choice.