Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 26.djvu/283

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Samuel Kimbrough Barlow
223

himself, the community and his country, was to let him drink and die as soon as possible. He answered every call of conscience and country, enlisting in the Cayuse Indian war, furnishing his own horse and entire equipment, and with others, who called themselves "Lord High Privates" held back the Indians until the arrival of the militia.

He died in Canemah, Oregon, July 14, 1867, and was buried by the side of his wife, Susannah Lee Barlow, in the dedicated cemetery at Barlow, Oregon. On their tall, white marble shaft is inscribed the words of an epitaph he composed a short time before his death:

Oh, do not disturb the repose of the dead;
Behold, the bright spirit has risen and fled!
Nor linger in sadness around the dark tomb,
But go where flowers forever doth bloom.

He died as he had lived, entering fearlessly upon his final journey into the Great Unknown.

***

The very last word in the history of S. K. Barlow and the Old Barlow Trail was spoken in the dedication of the monument to his memory at Government Camp on the Mount Hood Loop on July 27, 1925. There were present many old time pioneers who came in automobiles, who previously had plodded over ruts, swamps and steep hills and who now, with many others, witnessed the ceremony that closed the final chapter of the Barlow road.

Mr. George H. Himes, Secretary of the Oregon Pioneer Association, was chairman of the day. Incidentally, he presented Mrs. Daisy Stott Bullock, president of the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers, with a historic mosaic gavel made of Oregon wood. Hon. Harvey G. Starkweather, chairman of the monument committee of the Sons and Daughters of Oregon Pioneers, gave the address, entitled "Samuel Kimbrough Barlow, Pioneer Road Builder," and presented the deed of the small triangular