On July 4, 2026, the United States will celebrate its 250th, or semiquincentennial, birthday. A branch of the United States military, however, has already sailed past that milestone. On October 13, 2025, the U.S. Navy hit the big 2-5-0. That date commemorates when the Continental Congress met in Philadelphia in 1775, and authorized a purchase of two merchant ships to convert to warships for its fight against the Naval superpower, Great Britian.
Samuel Jacob Zeigler, Jr., or Sam Zeigler, as he was known, was born in Bordeaux, South Carolina on July 29, 1889, to Samuel J. Zeigler Sr. and Howelle Zeigler. Samuel J. Zeigler Sr. was also born in South Carolina but had already made a name for himself, forming corporations and hundreds of acres of real estate deals, in the young city of Shreveport and the communities of north Bossier Parish. Samuel J. Zeigler Sr., in fact, is considered the “father” of the north Bossier town of Plain Dealing, developing it alongside the Cotton Belt Railroad. His first wife, Sallie Vance Zeigler, with whom he’d had five children, only two survived childhood, died in 1886. S.J. Zeigler returned to South Carolina for a time and married Howelle there in 1887. When Sam Jr. was a year old, the family returned to north Louisiana, where Sam’s sister Pola was born. Like his father’s landholdings and businesses, young Sam’s life straddled both parishes of Caddo and Bossier, and much of his time was spent in Vanceville and Plain Dealing.
On December 21, 1907, the Shreveport Journal reported that Sam Zeigler had been appointed as a midshipman at the United States Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. The paper reporter Sam had been a student at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge for two years, where he received preliminary military training and was a champion marksman. The paper praised Sam as “well qualified, both physically and intellectually” to withstand the academy’s rigid entrance requirements.
Sam Zeigler’s Navy career began at the United States Naval Academy (USNA) with a fore-deck view of historical change. His matriculation in 1908 coincided with the final years of the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt (1901- 1909), one of the era’s foremost naval strategists. Roosevelt’s goal was to expand and modernize the U.S. Navy with no less an aim than to see America galvanized as a world power.
The naval academy, which opened in 1845, had also been growing into its own, taking on the look and traditions that are well-known today. The famous USNA fight song and unofficial Navy anthem, “Anchors Away,” had recently been composed by the academy’s music and choir director. “The New Naval Academy,” a major construction plan to replace the inadequate and already-aging physical plant was nearing completion. In the five years leading up to Zeigler’s arrival on campus, new buildings were opening up annually. In addition, new ships, and even the first modern submarine, were arriving in the same timeframe. In 1911, the first naval aerodrome was established at Annapolis and experimental flights began at the school.
At Sam Zeigler’s graduation in 1912, when he was fourth in his class of 156, his class tossed their hats in the air - the very first Academy graduates to perform the now famous tradition. After his graduation, Ensign Zeigler had some time for vacation, visiting folks back in Louisiana. The Bossier Banner-Progress reported this visit on July 25, 1912, and quoted a Shreveport newspaper to inform readers, “The grade of ensign corresponds to the rank of lieutenant commissioned in the regular military service of the United States. At his graduation, Ensign Zeigler scored in the highest orders of merit. He is a product of Shreveport. His record, which is very creditable, is an index of his future promotion. It is to be hoped that he will in time reach the rank of admiral.”
Sam was assigned to the USS Minnesota of the Atlanta Fleet, based out of Norfolk, Virginia. In 1912, the ship operated in the Caribbean, then patrolled the Mexican coast between 1913 and 1914 during the Mexican Revolution. In January 1914, Sam Zeigler transferred to temporary duty at the navy yard in Philadelphia and was ordered to the Postgraduate School for Naval architecture in Annapolis. By summer of 1915, he was appointed Assistant Naval Constructor. Continuing in Naval architecture, he was sent to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and earned an M.S. degree in 1916. Taking advantage of his Cambridge location, Zeigler also completed a two-year business course at Harvard and reported for duty in the Boston Navy Yard’s hull division.
The Boston Navy Yard, which began in 1880, was one of the Navy’s first ship-building yards. When Sam Zeigler arrived, the shipyard was in the midst of the “New Navy’s” switch from wooden to steel-hulled battleships and was on the cusp of gearing up for the Great War, later known as WWI, that was raging in Europe. In August 1914, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson had declared the United States would continue its neutral position, and the Navy’s job was to protect that neutrality by stationing destroyers at the Boston Navy Yard. But following the sinking of the RMS Lusitania in May 1915, Wilson advocated for U.S. military preparedness to protect American interests and called upon Congress to authorize construction of over 150 warships. On April 6, 1917, following unrestrained German submarine warfare that sunk several American ships and claimed American lives, the U. S. declared war on Germany.
The Boston Navy yard was teeming with repairs on an endless supply of damaged warships and support vessels, as well as outfitting and commissioning a steady stream of private ships for use in warfare. Zeigler’s skill directing this kind of work was eventually needed in the Navy’s ship repairs department in Brest, France. The U.S. Navy’s primary role in the Great War was troop transportation. The sheer numbers of “fresh” American troops continually arriving to fight the increasingly war-weary Germans made the ships carrying them targets of German attacks. The Navy’s ultimate success in moving these troops became a main reason that Germany signed an armistice agreement on November 11, 1918, cutting short Zeigler’s time in France.
Watch this column for a continuation of the story of the Naval career of Shreveport-Bossier’s Samuel J. Zeigler, Jr. and its window into U.S. Naval History, including Naval aviation and WWII. If you have World War I or II family photos or stories to share, please visit or contact us at the History Center. We will scan them and return the originals if that is your preference. We are located at 7204 Hutchison Drive, Bossier City, LA, 71111. We are open M-Th 9-8, Fri 9-6, and Sat 9-5. Our phone number is (318) 746-7717 and our email is history-center@bossierlibrary.org
For other fun facts, photos, and videos, be sure to follow us @BPLHistoryCenter on FB, @bplhistorycenter on TikTok, and check out our blog http://bpl-hc.blogspot.com/.
Images:
- Navy 250 logo
- Portrait of Samuel J. Zeigler, Jr. Modern Biographical Files in the Navy Department Library, Naval History and Heritage Command, Washington, DC
- Boston Navy Yard in 1916, Boston National Historic Park photo
Article by: Pam Carlisle
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