Son of Samuel Wickersham Woolley and Maria Angell

Married Alice Rowberry, 6 May 1885, Logan, Cache, Utah

Children - Ralph Edwin Woolley, John Franklin Woolley, Leona Woolley, Moroni Rowberry Woolley, Ethel Woolley, Joseph Rowberry Woolley, Samuel Ray Woolley

Married Hattie Pomaikai Davis, abt 1906

Biography - In 1863 the Woolley family moved to Grantsville, Tooele, Utah, where they established a successful ranch. Samuel grew up under the guidance and influence of his father who instructed him in the duties and work of a ranch. He attended school a few months each year when he could be spared from the ranch.

When twenty years old Samuel was called to serve a mission to the Hawaiian Islands by President John Taylor and was ordained an elder by Joseph F. Smith. His uncle, Henry A. Woolley, accompanied him. Samuel was appointed to labor on Maui, Molokai and Lanai.

In 1890 Samuel and Alice were called to serve a mission at Iosepa Colony in Skull Valley, Tooele, Utah. In 1892 Samuel's Daughter died at Isoepha. The colony had been subjected to an outbreak of diptheria.

On August 9, 1895, Samuel and Alice were set apart to preside over the Hawaiian Mission. The Church had recognized that the frequent changes of plantation manager and mission president was detrimental to Laie's progress. They arrived in Honolulu on August 31st, having sailed from Vancouver. With them were their three children, Ralph Edwin, John Franklin and Moroni Rowberry.

The ship was quarantined for over a week before they were allowed to disembark. They left ship and immediately set out in horse drawn wagons for Laie. They passed over the Nuuanu Pali just ten minutes before a guard was placed there to enforce the quarantine which prohibited anyone from entering or passing out of the city.

Alice was a midwife and delivered a lot of babies. She had charge of the Relief Soceity and all the things for the women. Alice's health was never very good while she was at Laie. She contracted asthma soon after arriving and at time it became very bad. She had five miscarriages while on her mission, along with the two children who survived. In September of 1902, when her health had become so bad as to endanger her life, Alice was released from her mission, and she and Samuel, along with their children, sailed on the "Alameda" for Utah. Samuel helped her get settled in Grantsville and then returned to continue his mission.

Sometime around 1906 and 1908 Samuel took Harriet Pomaikai Davis as a plural wife. A daughter, Minerva, was born on 30 June 1909, and Hattie D. moved to Salt Lake City where she remained until her death in 1960.

President Joseph F. Smith arrived in Honolulu on May 21, 1915, to dedicate the site for the temple that was to be built at Laie. On November 27, 1919, the Laie Temple was dedicated by President Heber J. Grnat. It is recorded in the history of the mission that Samuel E. Woolley spoke and expressed the feeling that this was the greatest of all days to him. Samuel, being a mission president for 24 years, hundreds of missionaries served under Elder Woolley. He was greatly loved by all who knew him and his hosts of friends among both the natives and the people at home.

The rehabilitation plan adopted by the LDS Church in favor of the Hawaiian Rehabilitation Bill had been passed in Washington. Summing up the accomplishments of the Laie Rehabilitation plan, Samuel Woolley is credited with stating that the colony now comprises 500 men, women and children - the majority Hawaiians, that Laie had paid back it's purchase price years ago; that all artesian wells have been driven with five big pumps now in action; that an electric light plan had been inaugurated, that on 6,000 acres of the original site where before there was but one tumbled-down ranch house, there now exists houses, church, schoolhouse, barns, roads, sidewalks, that the community contributed between $8,000 and $9,000 to the building of the temple; that most of the cottages cost from $1,000 to $3,000. Mr. Woolley is also given as the authority for the statement that the birth rate is probably the highest per family of any group of Hawaiians in the Islands; that no one is every hungry in the colony; that no one is ever intoxicated and that the colonists are of good physical type.

Upon Samuel's arrival in Salt Lake City, Samuel became manager of Warm Springs, a swimming resort comples. He resided with his second wife, Hattie D., on Driggs Avenue, Alice R. remaining in Grantsville. Ill health plagued him for the next three years. When he died funeral services were held at Forest Dale Ward in Salt Lake City, in Grantsville where he was buried, and at Laie.