Page:Oregon, her history, her great men, her literature.djvu/343

 Samuel Leonidas Simpson, the author of "The Gold-Gated West," has been called the "Burns of Oregon."

"His father was born in Tennessee on March 29, 1818, of Scotch ancestry. His mother was a granddaughter of Col. Cooper, a companion of Daniel Boone in Kentucky. Sam. L. Simpson crossed the plains to Oregon with his parents in 1846. His mother taught him the alphabet when he was four years old by tracing letters in the ashes on the hearthstone of the primitive cabin in Marion County in which the family lived. The first poems he ever read were selections from a worn volume of Robert Burns which was presented to Samuel L. Simpson's mother by Dr. John McLoughlin, at Oregon City, where the Simpson family spent the first winter. An occasional country school of three months in the year afforded the only opportunity the boy had for education until he was fifteen years old. Then he was employed as clerk in the sutler's store of his father at Fort Yamhill, a military post near the Grand Ronde Indian Reservation. Here he became acquainted with Lieut. Phil Sheridan (afterwards General), who gave him a copy of Byron's poems. When sixteen years old Samuel Simpson entered Willamette University, Salem, where he graduated in 1865. Soon afterwards he became editor of the Oregon "Statesman," continuing in that relation until the close of 1866. He was admitted to the bar in 1867, and began practicing; but clients were few and the profession of law was not to his liking; hence he entered the journalistic profession which he followed the remainder of his life,