Samuel Kirkland

Samuel Kirkland (December 1, 1741 – February 28, 1808) was a Presbyterian minister and missionary among the Oneida and Tuscarora peoples of present-day central New York State. He was a long-time friend of the Oneida chief Skenandoa.

Kirkland graduated from Princeton in 1765. In 1793 as part of his missionary work with the Oneida tribe he founded a seminary, the Hamilton-Oneida Academy in Clinton, New York. The seminary admitted both white and Oneida boys. Kirkland named it in honor of Treasury Secretary Alexander Hamilton, who was a member of the first Board of Trustees of the Hamilton-Oneida Academy. The Hamilton-Oneida Academy was chartered as Hamilton College in 1812 (Hamilton College).

A student of the Iroquoian languages, Kirkland lived for many years with the Iroquois tribes. He helped negotiate the land purchases that New York State made from the Iroquois after the American Revolutionary War, acquiring his own land in the process.