Samuel H. Sterling was born around 1875 in Maryland. For many decades, he was a resident of Washington, D.C., where he was a laborer, a plasterer, and a preacher. He served as minister of the Christian Temple C.M.E. Church in Washington, N.C., in 1917. Sterling married Helen C. Blakey in July 1898. He may have died in a tuberculosis hospital in Washington, D.C., on or about October 30, 1927.