Samuel West was born in Yarmouth, Massachussets, the son of Dr. Sackfield and Ruth (Jenkins) W. He was a descendant of Francis West who settled in Duxbury, Massachussets, sometime before 1639. Soon after Samuel's birth his family moved to Barnstable.
In Barnstable he received a scanty schooling. He worked on a neighbor's farm to earn enough for a college education and was graduated at Harvard in 1754 after a brilliant academic career.
In 1756 he went to Falmouth as schoolmaster, but his interest in theology led him to enter the ministry and on July 3, 1761, he was ordained pastor of the church in what was then a part of Dartmouth, Massachussets, but in 1787 was incorporated as New Bedford. Here he preached without interim until poor health forced his retirement in 1803. In 1790 a new church was erected in the neighboring town of Fair Haven, and West preached to both churches at the request of the parishioners. He became familiar early with the writings of Calvin, Grotius, Hobbes, and Dupin, and almost from the inception of his ministerial career preached the Arminian doctrine which opened the way for Unitarianism. During the Revolutionary War he served for a period as chaplain. The service that gained him most renown was that of deciphering for Washington a treasonable code letter sent by Dr. Benjamin Church and intended for a British admiral at Newport. After working all night over the code, West found the key, which revealed that the letter contained valuable information concerning the Continental Army's supplies, number of dead and wounded, shipments of gunpowder to Philadelphia, and other matters of importance. Among his published discourses were A Sermon Preached before the Honorable Council (1776), reprinted in J. W. Thornton, The Pulpit of the American Revolution (1860), in which he dealt summarily with the tyrannical attitude of England, declaring that "Tyranny and arbitrary power are utterly inconsistent with and subversive of the very end and design of civil government". Another of his discourses was An Anniversary Sermon Preached at Plymouth, December 22d, 1777 (1778). After the war West engaged in the Calvinistic-Arminian controversy, both in the pulpit and through publications. He preached without notes, and, according to Alden Bradford, he "had a good measure of independence in his inquiries. " In 1793 he published Essays on Liberty and Necessity, an enlarged edition of which appeared in 1795. These essays were a reply to the views of Jonathan Edwards, and according to West were "penned about twenty years ago. " His chief arguments against Edwards were that divine prescience does not imply the necessity of future events; that self-determination is consistent with moral agency; that the Deity's permission of sin is proof for the self-governing power of men; and that volition is an effect which has a cause. Of all the replies to Edwards' Freedom of the Will, West's was most thorough and most persuasive. He helped to widen the rift that had already appeared between Calvinist and Arminian. He was much interested in the prophetic portions of the Bible and was convinced that they contained predictions of the course of events in the Revolution. He was also interested in alchemy and was imposed upon by a man who claimed he could turn salt water into fresh. After his retirement in 1803 he went to live with a son in Tiverton, R. I, where he died.
Throughout his life he was noted for his absent-mindedness, and many stories regarding his unconventional appearances have survived. In his later years his memory failed entirely.
He was married first, March 7, 1768, to Experience Howland, by whom he had six children; she died in 1789, and in January 1790, he married Lovisa (Hathaway) Jenne.
