Samuel Bates was born in Virginia before the Civil War in 1849 and lived there until about 1870. He moved to the Midwest by 1880. He married his spouse Susan in 1897 until her death in 1900. He remarried to Sephronia Brown by 1910.

Rev. Bates served at multiple churches in Iowa in the early 1900s including Corinthian Baptist in Des Moines in 1901, Galilee Baptist in Evans in Mahaska County in 1903, and Clarinda in southwest Iowa in 1906. He returned to central Iowa serving in Colfax in September 1906, then returning to Des Moines in 1907 to serve at Maple Street Baptist Church until his death in 1930. He is buried at Laurel Hill Cemetery in Des Moines, Iowa.