Death Of Sam Wooster

At every farmers' picnic held in this county, Sam Wooster has been seen, one of the oldest characters that ever tread the earth. He will appear no more - as he has passed away from earthly cares, aged over eighty years. Last night's Evening News says of him: News reached Ann Arbor this morning of the death of Sam Wooster, the most picturesque vagabond that ever decorated a community. Sam died in the Livingston county poor house. "He was an oíd man when I was aboy,"said Justice Pond, himself an old man, who jokingly estimated Sam's years at 150. Fully six feet in hight, he showed himself to be a magnificent specimen of physical manhood. Under the shapeless rags in which his proportions were always hidden, unkempt and unshorn, dirty beyond description, he wandered from farm to farm, doing odd jobs, sleeping in barns or under stacks, always welcome for his unfailing fund of humor and of amusing reminiscences. He was never drunk, never quarrelsome, and never in the hands of the law, although possessed of ble powers of absorption of liquor. [is favorite tipple was hard eider well dosed with red pepper. About twenty years ago he swam cross Whitmore lake, a two-mile tretch, tor a gallon of whisky, and arried the whisky with him in a ug, stopping in the middle of the ake to brace himself with a good wig. Old Sam was a Mexican war penioner, and a life-long democrat. iis memory was remarkable. He cnew in order every president and lis whole cabinet. He was educatd enough to surprise people with lis information on a great variety of opics. He dearly loved to hold pelling contests among the childen where he stopped, his favorite word being victuals, Tecumseh, and hubarb for sticking the unwary. Sam had been a printer in his lay, and he frequently astonished jeople by fluently reading newspaers wrong side up, a printer's trick uil of mystery to the uninitiated. Sam's picturesque qualities caught he eye of a photographer, who made him into an art photograph of .uld Lang Syne, probably the only )icture of him in existence. Everybody in southern Michigan cnew Sam. He had a way of turnng up suddenly at farmers' instiutes and fairs, where he astonished and pleased people with his well expostulated theories of political economy and politics.