His father was a staunch Whig, an officer of the militia during the Revolutionary War, often the representative from Wilton in the New Hampshire General Court, and much entrusted with the business of the town.
Samuel Abbot pursued his preparatory studies in part under his brother Abiel, but was chiefly fitted for college at the public school at Andover, Massachusetts, which was known for the accuracy of its instruction and the scholars it offered for admission to universities.
Here his professional efforts were favorably noticed by the judges of the Supreme Judicial Court as indicating a well disciplined and argumentative mind.
The qualities and uses of that most common of vegetables, the potato, with the machinery by which its flour might be extracted on a large scale by horse or water power, early attracted his attention.
The farmers of the neighborhood were also much benefitted in their agriculture by this manufacturer, as it afforded them a home market and ready pay for one of their most abundant and safest crops.
With a quickness almost like intuition, he detected the weakness or fallacy of an argument, and no man saw more clearly its legitimate application or the point at which its force ceased.
In 1828, when the "pneumatic paradox," as it was called, was attracting the attention of scholars, he first suggested a true theory, which was afterwards experimentally proved by his nephew, Jos.
The instrument supposedly applied an alleged discovery in magnetism by which, in addition to the direction of the North Pole, latitude could be ascertained.
In establishing and sustaining a Lyceum for Wilton, as well as in creating libraries for the town, for the parish, for the Sunday school, and for the Sabbath reading room, Samuel Abbot was a leading agent and liberal contributor.
If he did not create, he at least did much to sustain and perpetuate that standard of morals and taste for reading and education by which Wilton was distinguished in the men and scholars which proceeded from her loins.
Retiring in his feelings, averse to all ostentation, he abandoned the law, a profession regarded as the common highway to distinction; instead, he took a course of life which best agreed with his peaceful disposition: the acquirement of knowledge.