John Simpson was born in Boston, Massachusetts on March 8, 1728. In the 1750s he moved to Beaufort County, North Carolina and in 1760 he represented Beaufort in the North Carolina Colonial Assembly. He helped establish Pitt County and then represented Pitt in the North Carolina Colonial Assembly from 1764 to 1769 and from 1773 to 1775. In 1775 he shared word of an attempted uprising of enslaved people in Beaufort and Pitt Counties. Simpson later served on the Pitt County Council of Safety during the American Revolution. He served in the House of Commons in 1778 and from 1782 to 1783 and in the senate from 1780 to 1781 and from 1786 to 1787. Simpson died in Pitt on March 1, 1788.