Springfield-Greene
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SAMPSON BASS. One of the oldest pioneers of Greene county is Sampson Bass, one of best-known citizens and, substantial farmers of Jackson township, who has spent nearly all of his long life of eighty-seven years in this county, which he has seen come up to its present position from the wilderness where roamed the red man and wild beast and where very few white people were to be found. To all this change he has been an interested and by no means a passive spectator, having sought to do his full share in the work of progress in the locality where he has been contented to abide through many decades. He talks most interestingly of the early days when customs and manners were different, men and women were different--everything, in fact, unlike what our civilization is today. He and other early settlers are of the opinion that those were better, at least happier, times than now, and this is, in the main, true. He might well be compared with the character represented by .the American poet, Oliver Wendell Holmes, in his beautiful lines, "The Last Leaf," for Mr. Bass has lived to see his early acquaintances and friends perform their allotted acts in the local drama of civilization and then pass on to rest, coming down to us from a former generation.
Mr. Bass was born in Marion county, Tennessee, on December 8, 1827. He is a son of Andrew and Ellen (Smith) Bass. The father was a native of Georgia, from where he removed to North Carolina, thence to Tennessee when a small boy, and he grew to manhood in the last named state on a farm, and there received a limited education. He emigrated with his family in 1830 and, by mistake, settled on land belonging to the Indians, who subsequently drove him off and he settled in Greene county in the fall of 1830, securing eighty acres at first. He started with practically nothing in this state, but being a man of exceptional ability, he became wealthy for those times and owned fourteen hundred and forty acres of land at the time of his death, having acquired his property by hard work and good management, and he died in 1867 on the place where our subject now lives. He was a member of the Methodist Episcopal church. His wife was a native of Marion county, Tennessee, and there grew up on a farm, received a limited schooling and there she married Mr. Bass. She was a pioneer woman in every respect, working hard assisting her husband to get a start in the wilderness, spinning and weaving, molding candles, making soap and the thousand and one things about the house, of which the modern woman knows nothing except by tradition. She was also a member of the Methodist Episcopal church. Her death occurred on the homestead here in 1862. To these parents fourteen children were born, namely: Sampson, our subject, is the oldest; John, Henderson, Jackson and James are all deceased, Martin V. lives in Greene county, Newton, McCord and Leonard H. are deceased, Lila lives in Polk county, Missouri; Leda, deceased; Narcissus, deceased; Margaret is living in Greene county; Ellen also lives in this county.
Mr. Bass, of this sketch, was three years old when his parents brought and he was reared in Greene county and here received such limited educational advantages as those early times afforded. He worked hard assisting his father clear and develop the home farm, remaining under the parental roof tree until he was twenty-one years old, when, in 1849, he married Ann Rogers, who was born in Tennessee on October 11,1830, from which state her parents brought her to Greene county, Missouri, when she was a child, and here she grew to womanhood. Her death occurred in1866. Mr. Bass married a second time, in 1888, to Eliza Lowder, who was born in Green county, Missouri, October 9, 1850, a daughter of George H. and Juda (McCall) Lowder. She is a member of the Baptist church, as was also Mr. Bass' first wife. To the first union nine children were born, namely: Elizabeth, deceased; Jane, Polly, Riley, Sampson H., Jr., deceased; Dave J., deceased; the three youngest children died in infancy. To Mr. Bass' second union two children were born, Roy and Wright.
After his first marriage Mr. Bass went to work as a wagon maker, later bought forty acres. His father then gave him eighty acres, and later he entered forty acres. He worked hard and managed well and therefore prospered with advancing years. He continued to buy land until he accumulated seven hundred acres, constituting one of the finest farms in the county, which land he placed under an excellent state of improvement and cultivation and established a commodious home. In 1860 there was no mill in this part of the county and one was badly needed, so Mr. Bass invited his neighbors to his home on Christmas day of that year for the purpose of talking over a proposition to establish a mill in the neighborhood. It finally devolved upon Mr. Bass to build a mill in section 15, Jackson township, and for years he carried on a large and successful business with his combined flour and sawmill, sawing lumber for residents in adjoining counties, as well as for those who lived in Greene. This was in 1860 and was the first steam mill to be operated in Greene county. During the Civil war he ground flour for the armies in this part of the state. He sold his mill in 1866 and resumed farming. The town of Bassville in this township was named for our subject.
Politically Mr. Bass is an uncompromising Democrat. He is a member of the Masonic Order, and religiously belongs to the Baptist church.
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