While learning about my world-traveling, teacher-athlete grandmother Gladys, I became curious. Had she inherited an adventure gene? What personality traits did she inherit from her Oregon Trail traveling parents and grandparents?
Digging into the Gose family tree, I found a fascinating guy: Gladys’s pioneer grandpa (my great-great-grandpa).
This article was previously published Oct/Nov 2020 in Nostalgia Magazine. That publication includes history about the territories of eastern Washington and northern Idaho.
Most census records listed the occupation of John M. Gose as “farmer”. Yet additional vintage documents, including near-100-year-old family letters and newspaper articles from the 1800s, reveal his adventurous side.
Before becoming a well-known agriculturalist, John was a gold-hunter and Oregon Trail traveler. He made three trips across the plains, traveling by foot, covered wagon, or horseback at least 5,312 miles before finally settling in Walla Walla, in Washington Territory.
As I read more about John, I found it curious that he and his wife Hannah begat a doctor, teacher, and a whole passel of lawyers, including a Washington State Supreme Court Judge. Curious, because as John’s eldest sons grew up, there was not yet a public Walla Walla high school with graduating students, no local college, and no law school in the region. So how did three of those boys become lawyers?
Let’s set the stage first (or shall I say, stagecoach?) to look at their father’s earlier adventures. John Martin Gose, born in 1825, was raised with eight siblings by a wagon-maker and farmer father. At twenty-four years old, John eagerly headed west from Missouri with the California Gold Rush, seeking adventure and fortune. A scribble in the 1850 census literally lists his profession as “Cal Gold digger” – the same year California became our 32nd state.
After four years there, John returned to Missouri, bought land, and married 22-year-old Hannah Jane McQuown. The Civil War raged about them as the young couple raised small children while Asra, a nephew, helped them farm. Missouri was war-torn; residents fought on both Union and Confederate sides.
Asra enlisted at age 17 and was killed in battle a few months later. Perhaps this influenced Hannah’s willingness–with five children under ten years old–to rough it on the rugged Oregon Trail. Anything was better than war.
In 1864, John and Hannah’s family became part of a nine-wagon train headed west. The Gose family’s oxen pulled three of those covered wagons. Nine-year-old Phelps helped his father John drive one carrying his mother, siblings, bedding and a sheet iron stove. Little Phelps was tireless, walking most of the way. Hannah later said, “The longer we were out, the better he liked to crack that black-snake and call “Gee” or “Haw”’.
In the bumping, swaying wagon, Hannah minded 8-year-old Dora, 5-year-old “Mack” (McQuown, who’d grow up to be that famed judge), 3-year-old John R., and 1-year-old “Lum” (Christopher Columbus Gose, later called C.C.). John’s brothers Joe and Will drove the two other Gose wagons pulled by oxen and milk cows.
Hannah later attributed the family’s safety from Indians to the fact they’d had no horses. Details of that journey I found in a handwritten letter to Gladys, from her parents Clara and Phelps.
“Your dad wants to tell you the story of their dog, which they started to bring with them. The dog was a Greyhound and some Indians who were at their camp one day were very eager to buy him. Your Gpa was not [interested in] the trade but the Indians, who believed the dog would be great in their chase after deer, antelope and elk, offered him $10 (in gold, of course). He let them take the dog at that price, tho he did not want to sell.
“The next day, the Indians were back wanting their money. They said the dog gnawed the rope and ran away. This of course in pantomime. Your grandpa did not have any intention of returning the money, but other members of the train who had not ever crossed the plains twice, as your Gpa had, persuaded him that the Indians might make trouble so he gave them back the $10…”
Found in a letter to my grandmother, Gladys, from her parents, including her father Phelps.
I imagine the family was in a hurry to press on. Indian attacks on the trail were uncommon, yet had occurred enough to put fear in the travelers. Of equal concern were injuries from wagon wheel accidents, and threats of disease. Cholera, diphtheria, dysentery, and typhoid fever (from contaminated water) were all deadly back then.
Enroute to Walla Walla, the family wintered in Boise City, Idaho Territory: population 1,658. Archived newspapers from the 1865 Idaho World show announcements for saloons, gold dust exchanges, and stagecoach lines (fare payment in gold or “greenbacks”). For sale were “readers” (school books), wall paper, blasting powder, crockery, tooth brushes, liquors, cigars, cloths, and plows. An ad in one 1865 issue of the Idaho World (Boise City, Idaho Territory) simply stated Bacon, Beans and Lard.
Communications were via Overland Telegraph, and the Overland Mail via stagecoach. The intercoastal railway was not yet complete. While the little family was still on their journey, in April of 1865, President Lincoln was assassinated.
July 26th in 1865, John, Hannah and their children arrived in Walla Walla, Washington Territory. Soon Hannah was expecting her sixth child, Oscar.
In Walla Walla, wheat farming was on its way to becoming the backbone of the region’s economy and John joined in. The children started their education with teachers in rented rooms in town, with attendance fluctuating with farming schedules.
When Phelps was about eleven years old, the first public school in Walla Walla (and the Inland Empire) was erected –a one-story wooden building. However, there would be no public high school graduates until decades later, so Phelps and his siblings attended Whitman (Seminary) academy for pioneer students.
When the Gose siblings were young adults and teens, tragedy struck the family. Oscar, their youngest brother, died. Despite their grief, the siblings carried on. Dora became a teacher and Phelps a lawyer–even without a college education.
Phelps (T.P. Gose) handled cases related to land issues and horse thievery, among other things. Houses of ill fame (brothels) were allowed, but only in a certain part of town. Walla Walla was the largest city in the territory (population over 3,500) until Seattle finally surpassed that. Phelps practiced law for years before Whitman finally became a college (1882) and there was a law school in the region (1889) — the same year Washington finally became a state.
So how was Phelps educated? He “read law”: a common way to become a lawyer until the 1890s. This simply meant independently reading authoritative works on law, then taking the bar exam, usually oral, before a judge. Phelps followed the advice of Abraham Lincoln, who had written:
“Get the books, and read and study them till you understand them in their principal features; and that is the main thing. It is of no consequence to be in a large town while you are reading.”
Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Isham Reavis on November 5, 1855 on Reading law.
Mack F. Gose also read law to become a lawyer, then a Supreme Court Judge for four years in Olympia (1909).
Brother Lum (C.C. Gose) was first a sheriff, then went to the legislature and passed the bar to join Phelps at Gose & Gose.
A newspaper described Lum’s personality glowingly:
“While he was much admired for his intellectual attainments, it was for the virtues of the heart that he was loved. He was devotedly attached to his family. It was said of him that he never attended a ball game (which as an enthusiast he often did) without being accompanied by his little 10-year-old son, and they were chums in charming comradeship.”
Phelps’s personality was similar. He was enormously devoted to his five children. He made sure all, including four daughters and a son, were strongly educated in Walla Walla. They all attended Whitman or the University of Washington—including my grandmother, Gladys.
For women at that time, that was unusual. The Wa-Hi 1915 yearbook indicated few young women were college-bound, although many earned high school shorthand certification.
The only Gose brother to leave the region to study was John R, at Jefferson medical college in Philadelphia. He practiced medicine for 17 years, then turned to farming. Which brings us full circle back to their father John’s love of the land. Even in the practice of law, that influenced the brothers Gose. Said of Mack:
“Judge Gose is the only real farmer we have ever had on the Supreme Court Bench. While he is a brilliant lawyer, he practically devoted his time to farming for some years before going on the bench. He was a real farmer. Above all, he was an honest man and as treads the earth.”
From an article urging re-election of Judge Mack F Gose, in The Washington Standard (Olympia, Washington) on 30 Oct 1914.
Love of farming, teaching, and travel, have passed down through six generations. John’s granddaughter, Gladys, became a teacher and expat in India; her daughter Jill, a South American Importer. I, my husband and kids were for a time expats in Norway; my children love world travel.
While travel methods have changed — from covered wagons, to steamships, to airplanes – it seems there will always be Gose family travelers. Next stop, outer space?
