Samuel Sidney McClure was born on February 17, 1857 in County Antrim, Ireland, the son of Thomas and Elizabeth (Gaston) McClure. In 1864, his father died, so in 1866 his mother emigrated to the United States and settled in Porter County, Indiana. McClure attended Valparaiso high school from 1871 to 1874. He then enrolled in Knox College, graduating in 1882, and he would be elected a trustee of the College in 1894. He married Harriet Sophia Hurd, whom he had met at Knox College, on September 4, 1883, and they had five children: Eleanor, Elizabeth (Bess), Mary, Robert and their adopted son Enrico. From 1882 through the end of 1883, McClure edited the Wheelman, a bicycling magazine. The following spring he worked at the DeVinne printing house before moving on to work for The Century Company from April to October 1884. On November 16, 1884 McClure started McClure's Syndicate, the first newspaper syndicate in the United States. In 1893, McClure founded McClure's Magazine which was famous for its "muckraking" journalism and fiction pieces written by such respected writers as Jack London, Ida Tarbell, Upton Sinclair, Rudyard Kipling, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Willa Cather, and Lincoln Steffens. McClure would also use his magazine to promote the pedagogical theories of Maria Montessori after meeting her in 1910. After McClure's Magazine was met with a series of staff changes and financial difficulties, McClure turned to his own publishing pursuits. In 1914, he published My Autobiography, ghostwritten by Willa Cather who had worked as a managing editor at McClure's Magazine. During World War I he was concerned with matters of peace, joining Henry Ford aboard his "Peace Ship" in 1915 and publishing a book entitled Obstacles to Peace in 1917. From 1915 to 1917, McClure also became co-owner with Edward A. Rumely of The Evening Mail. McClure traveled frequently throughout his life, crossing the Atlantic 149 times and making trips to Europe, Palestine, Egypt, and China. McClure's Magazine and McClure's syndicate were both eventually sold, and McClure himself died on March 21, 1949. He is buried in Galesburg, Illinois.