He taught in Huntingdon Academy, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1836 and commenced practice in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania.

He resumed the practice of law and served as director of the Hollidaysburg School Board for thirty years.

Himself for many years an accomplished principal, well versed in rhetoric and elocution and an orator of no little ability: a man whose able speeches on the subject of the tariff made him prominent as the whig (sic) candidate for governor in after years; a man who had much of the gentleness, amiability and good nature, without any of the weakness of Pickwick.

He had a wide knowledge of classical literature, was a fine conversationalist, and I am indebted to him for some of the finest quotations from them, I can now recall, and also in developing my taste in the matter of reading only the best authors, especially English, whom he seems to have at his fingerends."

Samuel Calvin married Rebecca Blodget in the early 1840s and produced a daughter, Eliza in 1845, and a son, Mathew, in 1847.