1992: THE LATE BOB SIMPKINS: THE ORIGINAL HAMILTON HISTORIAN

"Though you travel the world over in search of the beautiful,
You must carry it with you or you find it not."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This article by my former journalistic colleague Echo Fling is among the very best of the many columns written on the agricultural heritage of Hamilton township. It has been re-formatted in order to fit on the computer monitor. Ms Fling chose the one man who in my estimation was the real "Hamilton Historian," the late, Robert Simpkins. Bob had a fierce love of Hamilton, and the many stories he told me of his early years as a farmer at the Simpkins Brothers Dairy Farm on Yardville-Hamilton Square Road have all been stored in my mental memory bank. Before he passed on to be with the Lord at age 102, it was my privilege to take Bob to and from our monthly Hamilton Township Historical Society meetings. I marveled at the stories he told, and feeling with which he told them. He was a splendid example of a very humble but knowledgeable man. The interview above is an incredibly concise thumbnail sketch of the rural Hamilton of old.