Samuel Phillips Verner (14 November 1873 – 9 October 1943) was an American missionary and explorer in the Congo Free State.

He had begun to read the works of David Livingstone and Henry Morton Stanley on African travels and got in touch with the family of Samuel N. Lapsley, the first Presbyterian missionary who died in the Congo.

Verner was ordained under an extraordinary clause on 25 September 1895 at the Tuscaloosa Presbytery after an examination in various subjects.

His African assistant, Kassongo, ran to the nearby village of Bindundu and he was treated by a medicine woman.

Verner had been hired to procure specimens of African natives for the Louisiana Purchase Exposition and World's Fair of 1904.

The situation generated outrage among African-Americans and they obtained his release from Mayor George B. McClellan Jr. Benga eventually killed himself in 1916 after he was unable to secure passage back to Africa.

Verner may have been subject of controversy due to some aspects of his activities in contradiction to the nationwide ban in the United States implemented under the Thirteenth Amendment.

In 1912, a patent application for a trapezoidal animal trap gives his address as living in the Obispo Panama canal area.