Poet. Samuel L. Simpson was an American poet of the 19th century. Born to Ben and Nancy Simpson, he was six months old when his family moved from Missouri to the Willamette Valley via the Oregon Trail. Despite having minimal formal schooling, he earned a law degree from Willamette University in 1867 and was admitted to the Oregon Bar, yet according to the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, his law practice failed. By age thirty, he was an alcoholic, having been introduced to alcohol by the military at Fort Yamhill, and until his death in 1899 he was unable to work steadily at any one thing. He fell out of favor with his family and his few friends as most were members of temperance organizations. In 1868, a year after completing his law degree, he published in the newspaper the "State Rights Democrat of Albany" his most famous poem, "The Beautiful Willamette". Forty years later, the newspaper would call that verse "the finest poem ever written in this state." School children were having to quote his poem from memory. Although he is remembered today only as a poet, 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. In the early 1890s, he was a newspaper editor for the "Astoria Daily Budget." During that time, he wrote the poem "Launching of the Battleship Oregon" which was in fact read at the San Francisco launching by a state-wide temperance lecturer, Astoria's Narcissa White Kinney. Besides working for newspapers, he was a contributor to H.H. Bancroft's "History of the Pacific States of North America," and in 1878 he completed and edited Mrs. H.V. Stitzel's novel, "What Came of It," after the author's death. He was also a clerk in the Oregon House of Representatives, where his father represented Benton County.