Page:Centennial History of Oregon 1811-1912, Volume 1.djvu/92



36 THE CENTENNIAL HISTORY OP OREGON

notwithstanding some excess in living, outlived all his compatriots. Gass was the son of Irish parents, born near Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, in 1771, and died at Wellsburgh, in the state of West Virginia, April 30, 1870, nearly one hundred years old. The Gass family moved from Chambersburg when the boy was a mere child, carried in a creel on the sides of a pack horse, and set- tled near Pittsburgh. There were no schools in those days in the frontier set- tlements, and Patrick Gass grevf up as other boys of his day, schooled to hard- ships and dangers, ready and eager for adventure of any sort. He was not long in finding an opportunity, and joined a party of Indian fighters under the lead of the celebrated Lewis Wetzel, and had his experience in Indian warfare in Belmont county, Ohio, where the author of this book subsequently first saw the light of day forty years afterwards. Like other young fellows at that time, Gas^made trips down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans in "flat boats" in trading expeditions, returning home by ship to Philadelphia and thence to Pittsburgh with freight teams.

Gass learned the carpenter's trade, but when war was threatened with France in 1799, he joined the army and was ordered to Kaskaskia, Illinois, and while at that station, met Captain Meriwether Lewis, who was hunting for vol- unteers for the great expedition to the Pacific. With the aid of Lewis he man- aged to be released from his enlistment in the army, and safely made the trip from St. Louis to the moiith of the Columbia river and return to the Ohio. He kept a journal of his great trip, which shows he had by his own efforts picked up some book education, and his journal was the first account published of the expedition. When the War of 1812 broke out, he again joined the army and served along with the writer 's grandfather at the battle of Lundy 's Lane, where he was severely wounded. The remainder of his life was spent at and near Wellsburgh, West Virginia. In 1831, at sixty years of age, he was married and lived a happy life thereafter, having seven children born to him. At ninety years of age when the southern rebellion broke out, he volunteered to fight for the union of the states, but of course his age precluded an acceptance of his patriotic offer. Soon after this event he became converted to the Christian (Campbellite) faith, and was baptized by immersion in the Ohio river in front ■of the town of Wellsburgh, the entire population of the town turning out to lionor the event; and thereafter the soldier of three enlistments and two wars, the hero of the great expedition across the continent, faithfully upheld the banner of the cross. I am thus particular in making this record to preserve a suitable account of two of the most important and capable subalterns of the Lewis and Clark expedition, and not only because they were here before all the rest of us, one hundred and seven years ago, rendering great services to their country and to Oregon, but also because we were all from Ohio. The writer was personally acquainted with Patrick Gass, having met the venerable old patriot at Wellsburgh, Virginia, in 1857. He was then, at eighty-six years of age, a very bright and interesting man, and gave me a brief account of his great trip across the continent to the Pacific ocean, and of his trouble in preserving his journal of that trip.

George Shannon : The writer w-as personally acquainted with the Shannon family, whose name and fame is cherished as a part of the heritage of "Old Bel- mont County, ' ' Ohio ; and with Wilson Shannon, the youngest brother of

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