Martyr Vera was born on August 17, 1880, in the village of Veryaevo, Eletomsky district of Tambov province, in the family of the watchman of the prison Nikolai Samsonov. After graduating with honors from the Kasimov Women's Gymnasium, she worked as a teacher in a school, but after beginning to have disagreements with the religious views of the authorities, she was forced to leave it. In the late 1920s, Vera was elected the starosta of the Piatnitskaya Church in Kasimov.
In the summer of 1935, NKVD officers arrested priests and laypeople, devotees of Blessed Matrona, and Vera Samsonova. She was arrested on June 28, 1935, and imprisoned in Butyrka prison in Moscow. Vera Nikolaevna honored the grave of Tsarevich Jacob from pre-revolutionary times and participated in the panikhidas performed by priest Nikolai Pravdolyubov.
She expressed disagreement with the Soviet government regarding its attitude towards religion and the separation of school from the Church. Vera Nikolaevna secretly taught the Law of God to children in the apartments of their parents. On August 2, 1935, the Special Council of the NKVD sentenced her to five years of imprisonment in a corrective labor camp.
The heavy work undermined her health, and on February 19, 1940, she was placed in the central infirmary. Vera passed away on June 14, 1940, two weeks before the end of her sentence.
