Page:The Gold-Gated West.djvu/11



, the author of this collection of poems, was born in the State of Missouri on the 10th day of November, 1845, and was the second son of Hon. Ben Simpson and Nancy Cooper Simpson. In 1846 Ben Simpson organized and conducted an emigrant train across the plains to Oregon. The trials, hardships and triumphs of that great undertaking are most interestingly told in the poem entitled "The Campfires of the Pioneers."

Sam Simpson, as he was familiarly known, was taught the alphabet by his mother at the age of four years, from copies traced in the ashes on the hearthstone of their pioneer home. He attended the country schools of the time and was reputed precocious in his earlier life. He has left one gem, a reminiscence of his school-days, "The Lost Path."

At the age of fifteen he was employed in the sutler's store, owned by his father, on the Grande Ronde Indian Reservation, a military post at that time. Here the precocious boy met and became the flattered protégé of Grant, Sheridan, and others of that post. General Sheridan presented him a copy