Samuel M. Strickler was born in Tennessee in 1832 but spent most of his childhood in Shelby County, Indiana. He attended Franklin College and later taught school in Alabama before moving to Junction City, Kansas Territory in 1860. The teaching contract is dated December 3, 1856, for Mount Hope, Lawrence Co., Alabama. Before moving to Kansas, Strickler was married to Mary Sackett, born in 1832 in Indiana, and together they had three children: Laura (1854-1864), Melissa D. (Strickler) Marriner (1858-1943), and Willard Sackett (1863-1927).

In Junction City Strickler worked with the firm of Street and Strickler, which contracted merchandise to military posts. In 1862 he was elected to the Kansas State Senate, and in 1871 he served as a member of the House of Representatives. During the Civil War, Strickler served as a Brigadier General in the Kansas militia. He and William K. Bartlett maintained the Junction City Union for three years.

Samuel M. Strickler left Kansas in 1879, moving to first Colorado, then New Mexico, and finally settling on an orange ranch in California, where he died in 1894. He was buried in Highland Cemetery in Junction City, Kansas. His wife Mary died in 1922 in Los Angeles, California and was also buried in Junction City.

(Biographical information is available in Kansas Historical Collections, v.7, P. 380-381.)