Samuel Colver was born on September 10, 1815, in Union Co., Ohio, the son of Samuel and Rachel (Curry) Colver. Early in life he studied law at Plymouth College in Plymouth, Marshall Co., Indiana. Afterward, he served as a Texas Ranger and served with General Sam Houston at the Battle of San Jacinto; he later served as an Indian scout, still in Texas. He returned to Ohio, where he traveled the countryside performing a mesmerism show. In 1850, he and his brother Hiram moved their families from Ohio to Oregon via the Oregon Trail. Colver served as an Indian Agent in the Rogue River Valley, where he was a signer of the Table Rock Treaty that effectively ended the Modoc Indian War. He also served as a US Marshall. Samuel and Hiram founded the small community of Phoenix, Oregon, which still exists today southeast of the city of Medford. (The Samuel Colver home in Phoenix, Oregon was listed on the National Register of Historic Places on October 25, 1990.)

Samuel Colver was married to Huldah, who was born in Ohio in 1823. They had two children. Their eldest daughter Isabel, was born in 1850 on the journey to Oregon. Their son Lewellyn served in the 1st Oregon infantry, Company "I," in 1865, and was killed in 1884 by a man who mistook him for a burglar. Isabel died in 1886, and in 1887 Samuel Colver, grief-stricken over the loss of both his children, was confined for a month to an asylum. He died rather mysteriously in 1891; he had been missing for several weeks and his horse was found dead near a lake. Huldah Colver died in 1907.