Once his parents realized that this job fulfilled some deep emotional need of their son, they supplied him with considerable money, which he used both for the leper colony and for helping local villagers in small ways, all of which further enhanced his respectability.

Raised a Quaker, Samuel was drawn to the asceticism that is exalted in Indian spirituality and began living a simple, frugal life among the villagers, becoming a sort of Christian Sannyasi.

A few years later, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was visiting the Viceroy at Simla (the summer capital of the British Raj) heard of the leper colony and was impressed.

In 1912, Samuel married a local girl, gave up his life of poverty, and purchased a chunk of farmland near his wife's village in Kotgarh[2] and settled there.

He had also by now dealt with the demons of failure that had plagued his growing years, and as an American man in an uncritical rural society, in the company of an Indian wife who was non-judgmental and made few demands on his, Samuel was happier than he had ever been before.

He identified a new strain of apples developed by the Stark brothers of Louisiana, United States as being suitable to the Simla Hills and began cultivating them on his farm in Kotgarh.

He was jailed for sedition and promoting hatred against the British government in 1921, becoming the only American to become a political prisoner of Great Britain in the freedom struggle.

To leave him free to criticise the government was intolerable, so his white skin has proved no protection for him…" He died on 14 May 1946 after an extended illness shortly before Indian independence.