General Notes

Alias:<ALIA> /Gordan/
Cause of Death:<CAUS> Lingering illness of six months duration
From his obtiuary (provided by Betty Frodin of Ottawa, Illinois) : "Mr.
Samuel Gordon, an old and respected citizen of Deer Park township, died
at the home of his son, Mr. Wiley Gordon at Utica, Jan. 31, 1912, at the
age of 75 years, after a lingering illness of six months duration.  He
leaves to mourn his untimely death nine children, Mrs. Jacob Mott,
Langler, Oklahoma; Mr. Frank Gordon, Hermit, California; Mrs. Frank
Fishburn, South Ottawa; Mrs. David Hunter, Grand Ridge; Mrs. George
Kelly, Marsielles; Mr. George Gordon, Ottawa; Wiley, John and Ophela,
Utica.  Funeral services at 2 o'clock Thursday afternoon from the home,
burial at Vermillionville, Ill."
The following newpaper clipping is from the Utica Illinois Weekly
Gazette, July 19, 1912 (provided by Betty Frodin of Ottawa, Illinois):
"Poet of the Canyon Gets Fine Tribute from a Writer in a Chicago
Paper.  The following words of appreciation of a quaint character
well-known in Utica, who passed away last winter, will interest the
Gazette readers:  The poet of the canyons is dead.  The gate across the
horseshoe path is closed with a padlock, and the cord of signal bell is
tangled in the bushes on the rock so that no importunate visitor may pull
it.  And Samuel Gordon chants no more. 
This poet was known to hundreds of persons who have ventured paths of
the Illinois river canyons above Starved Rock.  To many persons he was
more of an attraction than his canyong.  Wanderers from Starved Rock
might be tired after the succession of Wildcat, Fern, the Widow and Lone
Tree and refuse to tramp father into Horseshoe canyon except for the
prospect of seeing the poet and hearing his verse.  Many of his visitors
were from the valley cities near by, but he had set it down in meter that
his preference was for those of Chicago.  It was ten or fifteen years ago
that Samuel Gordon rented a little farm at the edge of the river bluff
two miles southeast of Utica.  The farm is for the most part of sandy
earth, in which wheat stalks wither under the hot sun like children in
the slums of a city.  At one side is the precipice below which the river
runs, and the windows of the little brown house look out over a vast
panorama of valley.  At another side there is a hollow carpeted with
treetops, and in the shade of these trees are the walls of Horseshoe
canyon. 
Entrance into this curve of the Horsehoe can be gained with care only
by a passage through the Gordon farm, and across the path the tenant
built a barbed wire fence with a gate in it.  Here, half way up the steep
side of the ravine, the tourist was fain to pull the bell rope and wait
for the opening of the padlock. 
He was an old man-75 or 76 years old at the time of his death last
February- and yet his agility was astonishing.  His descent was always so
rapid that it seemed as if he were sliding on his heels through the sand
and over the crumbling rock, to land at last on the middle path in a
little cloud of dust and dry leaves.  It was more astonishing still when
one saw what sort of man he was-thinner and paler than the ordinary man
of his age; despite his life in the outdoors.  His complaint always was
that he would never pass through another winter, and his last prophecy
came true.
It was not good manners to offer this guardian the price of admission
to his canyon and demand immediate entrance.  He loved to chat a while. 
There was a ceremony to go through if one was to receive his approbation;
the weather, his health, the beauties of the spot and then-after a pause-
his poetry.  It was not correct to mention his gift of song, but merely
to say as a matter of course, "Well, Mr. Gordon, what are you going to
give us?"  and then the old man would scratch his head and pull his beard
and quaver that he didn't know, and the, being sufficiently