Samuel L. Simpson, Lone Fir Cemetery, Portland, Oregon - Dead Poets' Society Memorials on Waymarking.com

Samuel “Sam” Leonidas Simpson (1845-1899), "Sweet Singer of Oregon's Beauty," was best known for his poetry. He attended Willamette University in Salem as a youth, where he graduated in 1865. Around 1866 he was co-editor of the Salem Oregon Statesman with his brother, Sylvester.

About 1870, reflecting on the serenity and peacefulness of the Willamette River, he wrote the poem "Beautiful Willamette". Although he is remembered today only as a poet, Sam Simpson's prose is a “rich literary source of Oregon history. One of his better stories provides a vivid description of Fort Yamhill in 1860 and memorable characterizations of the blustering Captain Russell, the dashing Lieutenant Sheridan, and the venerable Chief Sam of the Rogue River Indians.”

From the early 1870s until his death, Simpson was a newspaperman who was brilliant but alcoholic and undependable. He sold poems and short stories in the mid-1880s. The Oregonian newspaper published much of his poetry and fiction. In the early 1890s, Simpson wrote the poem "Launching of the Battleship Oregon" which was in fact read at the San Francisco launching. A collection of his work, ”The Gold Gated West,” was published in 1910.

During the last 24 years of his life, he had not been welcome in many quarters. Although most people loved his poems, his reputation as an alcoholic overrode his fame as a poet. Rarely was he asked to dine. He was buried at Lone Fir Cemetery in Block 13, Lot 21. Enthusiasm for Simpson and his poems continued for decades.

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