Simpson - James M. - Montgomery InGenWeb Project

The candidate for Auditor was born in Green County, Tennessee, and is about forty years of age. In 1836 his parents immigrated to Fountain County, Indiana, settling in Jackson Township, which was then a wilderness. In less than a year his mother died, leaving his father with four small boys on his hands impoverished by a long overland journey and among entire strangers. After four years of rougher experience than that of David Copperfield, the subject of this sketch was taken to the home and heart of Mr. John Starnes, who was childless and who has kept a kind of orphan asylum in Jackson Township for the last thirty five years. At the age of sixteen Mr. Simpson commenced teaching school in his own district, having for his pupils his old playmates and schoolfellows. The next ten years of his life was spent in teaching and going to school alternately, first to Barnabas C. Hobbs at Bloomingdale and afterward to Oberlin College. While going to school he always roughed it, paying much of his expenses by manual labor. During this period, he read law one year at Rock Island, Illinois, in the office of Judge Waite, now of Chicago. In 1856 he married the daughter of William Gilkey, of this county, and soon after went to farming, first renting of John and Tom Robbins. In the spring of 1861, he purchased land of the Illinois Central Railroad Company in Ford County, and removing thereto roughed it four years on the prairies raising corn, and feeding cattle in the winter. In the fall of 1864 he returned with his family to this county and purchased the David Black farm in Ripley Township, paying part down and getting the balance on long time. From that day to this, himself and family have known nothing else but hard work and the closest economy, his only recreation being reading the papers and writing for the Journal over the well-known signature of “Tom Tattler.”

- kbz