Delaware gazette and state journal. (Wilmington, Del.) 1883-1902, 1886-02-18
nBUoKsKrx SAM"
The story OF His Evcnsfni Ani Err

rutic B1tcs
The New York Hq'ald on Sunday
printed the following biographical sketch
of Samuel II. Hall, who died in this city
some 10 days: "Buckskin San' ia dead.
Adult readers may not recall him at all,
but Juvenile grief will be aa widespread
as the oountry's borders. He was the
author of Indian stories, such as ''Blanco
Bill, the Mustang Monarch" 1.-The
Rafting Ranger" "Bowider Bill, the
Man OF Taos Dandy Dave and His
Horse, White Stocking" and ''Phe
Mountain Bravo" He was not hum
bug, who had never been further west
than Michigan.
Fifty years ago the Hall family, of Leo
minister, Mass, had q son born to it..
They named him Sam III. He grew to
early manhood in the quiet New England
neighborhood. Sam Hall demanded ex-
element, and the community frowned on
his favorite methods of obtaining it. So
he ran away from home and wandered
down to Texas. The first that was known
of him there was rs one of Ben McOul-
lough's roughs. He had at last found
congenial employment, and from hat
time to the breaking out of the rebellion
there was no harder riding or fighting
daredevil than he. His companions
named him Buckslkin Sam. He was
slender and undersized, with good fea-
lures, gentle voice aud manner and dark
eyes of more than ordinary beauty. He
rode at about one hundred and twenty
five pounds. The rangers went up and
down the Rio Grande, killing Indians
usually, and Greasers sometimes. IL was
not long before Bucksldn Sam became
known as dead shot, skilful horseman,
hard drinker and IL man without fear.
He was the chosen companion of Big
Foot Wallace, Joe Ford and Ben Thomp-
son, who was shot recently at San An
tonic. The war came on and men in
Texas had to choose sides, or, rather,
they had to choose one side, and that the
Southern one. Sam was New Highlander,
and be did not believe in secession. If
he did, along with the other rangers, join
the rebel army it was under compulsion,
and it was not long before he appeared
within the Union lines. Until the close
of the struggle he did service as spy
and scout in the army of the southwest.
When Sam reappeared in the New Eng
land village his hair was long, his hat
wide brimmed, and his aspect that of the
most picturesque of rangers, and yet his
reception was not warm, for he tried to
turn the town into "a border camp OF roy
stering inebriety, and he soon got elected
from the family donicile. he came to
this city, and how he lived for Is while
nobody knows, but eventually Colonel
Prentiss Ingraham and Buffalo Blll be-
friendcd him, discovered that he had un-
usual facility of description, and advised
him to write fiction based on his personal
experiences. So Sam turned into pub.
fishing firm q story called "Kit Carson,
Jr." The manuscript was so crude that
they could not use it as it was, but they,
discovered merit in it, and advised him
to have it edited for them to read. He
then bargained with professional writer,
an Oxford graduate, to lick the narrative
into readable shape. The publishers say
that the charm Of the series of stories lay
in their truthfulness to reality and their
freedom from coarseness. .-
Sam found the temptations of New
York too much for him. In Wilmington,
Delaware, lived George M. butcher, an
old Texas friend, who had been one of the
toughest of the rangers, but had re-
formed and become a temperance re-
vivalist. Sam went there to be improved
by his former partner. He stayed there
until his moral teacher ran away, leaving
a helpless family, by whom Sam stood
sturdily to the day of his death as sole
support. He was one of the characters
of Wilmington, marked by his retention
of the ranger hair and sombrero. The
mayor of Wilmington has written to his
| publishers and they have responded with
q check sufficient to bury him neatly.