USA > Missouri > Encyclopedia of the history of Missouri, a compendium of history and biography for ready reference, Vol. II > Part 99
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The Missouri Fur Company had 250 men,
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hunters, trappers, Creoles and Canadian voyageurs in its service, not to mention the Indians also, who, after a little instruction, contributed to swell the company's annual pack. The Indians were good hunters from the beginning, but they knew nothing and cared nothing about taking beaver, and that shy animal built his dams and plied his voca- tion undisturbed in the immediate vicinity of the Indian villages until they were made to know the value of its fur. Then they became trappers as well as hunters, and made them- selves valuable auxiliaries to the traders.
The fur and peltry currency in St. Louis, and, indeed, in the whole West-in transac- tions between St. Louis and New Orleans, Louisville and Pittsburg-was a necessity of the times, for money was scarce and inade- quate to the needs of business. There were some Spanish dollars in circulation, but so few of them that they were cut into quarters to meet the demand for small change. Furs and skins commanded a ready sale and a high value in the distant markets of Philadelphia, New York and Montreal, and a still higher value in Europe; and they possessed the quality of being easily transferred and of con- taining great value in a small compass. In 1807 Judge J. B. C. Lucas bought a house from Pierre Duchouguette for $600, payable in furs and peltries. Under the old French re- gime, and for a long time after, shaved deer- skins were rated at one livre-eighteen cents -a pound, and the beaver, otter and other choice furs were estimated in multiples of this unit. A pack of "receiptable deer skins" was 100 pounds. A coon skin, thrown on the counter of a store, would always command its fixed value in any goods in the store, and a bundle of coonskins, counted or weighed, might be presented in payment for any com- modity or service. No one ever thought of challenging the integrity or dignity of this currency, taken from the carcasses of ani- mals, any more than he would now think of disputing the integrity or dignity of gold and silver. When the fur trade was good-and there was no other trade-times were good, and the whole population of St. Louis shared in the prosperity. Plenty of furs and peltries meant plenty of currency, and this, in turn, meant increased imports of necessaries and comforts up the Mississippi from New Or- leans, or down the Ohio from Philadelphia and Pittsburg. Furs and skins had as steady
and unvarying a value as gold and silver. Beaver was always $5 a skin; otter, $5; buffalo, $8; grizzly bear, $10; black bear, $4; lynx, $2 ; fox, $1 ; raccoon, 40 cents, and mink 40 cents. The Indian goods sold to the sav- ages for their furs were cheap cloth, high colored red being the favorite, beads and trinkets, guns, powder and lead-and when a lot of these was disposed of, and choice beaver, otter and lynx furs, or deer skins, bear skins and buffalo robes received in return, there was a profit equal to double, treble, or quadruple the value of the investment-or, to put the matter in a different form, the capital invested was turned over once a year, yielding a return of 100 to 500 per cent. The value of the trade varied with the tribes dealt with. That with the Osages, who were the nearest tribe, and who may be presumed to have learned the value of their skins and furs, was estimated at a steady 50 per cent profit ; that with the Cheyennes was worth 100 per cent, and that with some tribes further out toward the mountains yielded returns all the way from three to one to five to one. These great apparent profits, however, were some- what impaired by the cost of taking the In- dian goods to the tribes and bringing in the packs in return-for these double trips, made with two to four boats and barges, consumed from two to four months. And after the packs reached St. Louis there was the cost of sending them to market. They commanded a ready sale at New Orleans, Philadelphia and Montreal: and the latter city came to be the favorite American market as long as St. Louis remained a French post, and for some time after, because it was the headquarters of the great Northwest Company, and was, therefore, the place where the trade was most cultivated. Whether they went down the Mississippi to New Orleans, or up the Ohio River to Pittsburg, and thence to Philadel- phia ; or up the Illinois River and Lake Mich- igan to Mackinaw and Detroit, and so on to Montreal, it was a tedious and protracted enterprise in which the packs had to be in charge of one of the company's members or agents, and guarded by a sufficient force of its own employes. The expeditions from St. Louis were not all mere trading affairs. The distant regions they visited, the strange peo- ple they dealt with and the adventures they encountered had a charm for scholars, writers and seekers after knowledge, as well as for
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backwoodsmen. When Manuel Lisa em- barked on his expedition in search of Mr. Henry, in 1810, he was accompanied by Mr. Henry Brackenridge, whose narrative of the expedition and other writings are held in high esteem; and when Wilson P. Hunt, in the employ of John Jacob Astor, conducted from St. Louis the Astoria expedition he had in his party two Englishmen, Mr. John Bradbury, who had been sent out by the Linnean Soci- ety of Liverpool to make a collection of American plants, and Mr. Nutall, afterward known as author of "Travels in Arkansas" and a book on the "Genera of American Plants." When the Chouteaus went out with their ventures they were explorers as well as traders, and many streams and mountains to this day bear the names they gave them. They were sagacious and enterprising traders and merchants, and from the beginning of the business to its close, extending over a period of nearly a hundred years, managed it in a wise, humane and liberal way, that not only brought them a large measure of suc- cess, but gave them influence with the Indian chiefs and a knowledge of the Indian lan- guage-qualities which enabled them to render valuable assistance to the government in its dealings with the tribes.
The abandonment of the field by the Amer- ican Fur Company did not mean the loss of the fur trade to St. Louis. The methods of conducting it were changed, but the busi- ness remained. When the Chouteaus retired the field was thrown open and the trade left to take care of itself, and the result was that individuals came in to secure each a share of the abandoned heritage, and to cultivate it more in detail and give it a new character. It was no longer a trade with Indians, for grad- ually the Indians had disappeared from the plains and valleys of the upper Missouri, and shortly afterward the buffalo, the black, cin- namon and grizzly bear disappeared also, be- fore the railroads and the multiplying white settlements, and the beaver vanished out of the very streams where they had sought refuge. The fur trade gradually settled down to a regular trade in furs and peltries, and under the stimulus of competition and good prices began to assume large proportions. In 1877 there were 12.386 bundles of furs and peltries received in St. Louis ; ten years later, in 1887, the receipts had increased to 22,045
bundles, and in 1897 they had increased to 210,432 bundles, valued at $1,000,000. The range of the trade is no longer confined to the head waters of the Missouri River and the West; the largest proportion of receipts come from the Southwest-Oklahoma, the Indian Territory, Texas, Arkansas and south- west Missouri, with considerable receipts also from Kansas, Nebraska, southern Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee and Louisiana. The rac- coon furnishes the largest number of skins, and after it deer, mink, wolf, fox, skunk, wild cat, house cat, civet cat, bear, beaver and opossum-the prices of skins in 1897 varying from 50 cents to $4 for beaver, 75 cents to $6 for otter, 50 cents to $12 for bear, 50 cents to $1 for wolf, Io to 70 cents for skunk, 20 to 80 cents for fox, 10 to 75 cents for mink, 10 to 65 cents for raccoon, 10 to 15 cents for wild cat, 5 to 10 cents for house and civet cat, 6 to 10 cents for muskrat and 3 to 5 cents for opossum. The skins are sent chiefly to St. Paul and Montreal, where they are dressed and prepared for use ; some are sent also to Chicago, New York and London. The trade is a profitable one, and it is a fact we owe to the founders of it, that St. Louis is still the largest distributive market for furs and peltries in the United States.
D. M. GRISSOM.
Fusz, Paul A., who occupies a promi- nent position among those engaged in mining operations in the West, was born August 5, 1847, in Hericourt, France. He came with his parents to the United States and to St. Louis when he was six years of age, and grew up in that city, obtaining his education mainly in the public schools. He began his career in the employ of the firm of Chouteau, Harrison & Valle, where he served first as an errand boy. Through successive promotions he reached, in 1873, the position of general man- ager of the affairs of that corporation, having entire charge of the Laclede Rolling Mills, owned by the company and located in North St. Louis, and also of the deliveries of the iron ore shipped from the "Iron Mountain Mine," of Missouri. In June of the year 1886 he resigned his position with that company, having become connected two years earlier with the Granite Mountain Mining Company, and having been made a director and treas- urer of that corporation. In 1888 he took
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charge of the mines and mills of the Granite Mountain Company as superintendent. At the organization of the Bimetallic Mining Company he was elected a director and treas- urer of that company, and in the fall of 1888 became its vice president. In October of 1889 he was elected president of the Bimetallic Company, and retained that position until the Granite Mountain Mining Company and the Bimetallic Mining Company were consoli- dated and placed under one management, in 1898, as the Granite Bimetallic Consolidated Mining Company. When this consolidation of the vast mining interests of these two com- panies went into effect Mr. Fusz was made president of the new corporation and still retains that position. December 8, 1868, Mr. Fusz married Miss Grace Hepburn, of Phila- delphia, Pennsylvania. Mrs. Fusz died No- vember 19, 1892, leaving two children.
Fyan, Robert W., lawyer, soldier, cir- cuit judge and member of Congress, was born in Pennsylvania, came to Missouri in 1858, and established himself in the practice of law at Marshfield. At the beginning of the Civil War he entered the Union service, and was made major of the Twenty-fourth Missouri Volunteers, and afterward colonel of the Forty-sixth United States Volunteers, After the war he was elected circuit attorney, in 1865, and in 1866 was elected circuit judge, and held the seat by successive re-elections until 1882. In 1875 he was chosen a mem- ber of the State Convention which framed the Constitution of that year, and in 1882 he was elected to Congress from the Thirteenth Missouri District, as a Democrat, and, after an interval of six years, was elected again in 1890, receiving 16,488 votes to 13.728 for W. H. Wade, Republican.
G
Gad's Hill .- See "Zeitonia."
Gad's Hill Train Robbery .- At Gad's Hill, a small station on the Iron Moun- tain Railroad in Wayne County, the first train robbery in the State was effected, on Janu- ary 29, 1874. It was said at the time that the five men who did the work were Arthur McCoy, two of the Younger brothers, Jim Reed and Greenwood. Only the passen- gers were robbed.
Gage, John Cutter, lawyer, was born at Pelham, New Hampshire, April 20, 1835. He is of English descent, his immi- grant ancestor, John Gage, having come to Boston in 1630. The father of John C. Gage was Frye Gage, a New England farmer, and his mother's maiden name was Keziah Cut- ter. Like most farmer boys, he spent his childhood days in agricultural occupations, acquiring such education as he could at home and in the country schools until he was old enough to enter Phillips Academy, where he was prepared to enter Dartmouth College, in which institution he matriculated in 1852. After spending two years at Dartmouth, he entered Harvard College, from which he was graduated in 1856. He read law in the office
of S. A. Brown, of Lowell, Massachusetts, and was admitted to the bar in Boston, in 1858. The following March he came west to Kansas City, and is therefore among the pioneer lawyers of that city. He formed a law copartnership with William C. Woodson in 1860, and with William Douglass in 1866, which was dissolved in 1869.
In 1870, Sanford D. Ladd became his part- ner, and in 1878, Charles E. Small, forming the firm of Gage, Ladd & Small. These men are all noted lawyers. The strong individ- uality of Mr. Gage, his marked analytical and logical powers, his accurate knowledge of the law, his unswerving devotion to the truth, and his wide range of information, pre- eminently distinguish him as a safe and trustworthy counselor. His services can never be enlisted to perpetuate a wrong. His patient study and mastery of the details of every case committed to his charge, make him a formidable opponent. He was sent to the lower House of the State Legislature in 1883, where his influence for the good of the people was commensurate with his eminence as a lawyer. Mr. Gage is a public-spirited man. He has given unstinted thought to de- veloping the best interests of his adopted city. He has been active in promoting every
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worthy enterprise during his forty years' resi- dence in Kansas City, and his career is with- out a stain. He is a lawyer among lawyers, and has aided in providing the fine law library to which the attorneys of Kansas City now have access. He was the first president of the Kansas City Bar Association and also of the Law Library Association. He has been president of the State Bar Association. His energy, devotion, integrity and unselfish- ness have won for him an enviable place among the benefactors of Kansas City. April 26, 1886, he was married to Miss Ida Bailey, daughter of Dr. Elijah Bailey, of Monroe County, Missouri, from which union have sprung two children.
Gaiennie, Frank, who has long been widely known as the manager of the St. Louis Exposition, was born in the city of New Orleans, February 9, 1841. Both his parents were natives of Louisiana, and both belonged to old families of that region. After completing his academic education in the public and private schools of New Or- leans, he took a commercial course at Bel- wood Academy, located near Natchitoches, Louisiana, from which institution he was graduated. He entered upon a course of training in a mercantile institution of Natchi- toches in 1858, and was thus employed until 1861, when he entered the Confederate Army, being mustered into Company B of the Third Louisiana Infantry on May 17th of that year. He was in active service throughout the greater part of the Civil War, participating in the battles of Wilson's Creek, Pea Ridge, Iuka Springs, the second battle of Corinth, the siege of Vicksburg and in all the marches and skirmishes incidental to those campaigns. He was promoted from private to first lieu- tenant for his valor and efficiency, and the testimony of his comrades is that no braver or more faithful soldier served in either army during the great conflict between the States. When the war closed he was paroled at Natchitoches, in July of 1865, and soon after he laid aside the uniform of a soldier he went to New Orleans, where he again entered civil life as a clerk in a commercial house. From 1866 to 1873 he was a partner in the firm of E. K. Converse & Co., of New Orleans, from which he retired in the year last named to come to St. Louis, where he established the firm of Gaiennie & Marks, and for more than a
quarter of a century he has been a member of the Merchants' Exchange and closely identified with the commercial interests of the city. In 1879 he was elected a director of the Exchange; in 1882 was made vice president, and in 1887, president of that body. His administration as president of the Ex- change was an eminently successful one, and in later years he has won additional laurels as vice president of the National Board of Trade, which position he has filled for three consecutive years. From 1885 to 1888 he was a member of the Board of Police Com- missioners of St. Louis, and no more capable man has ever been identified with the super- vision of police affairs in this city. He was grand marshal of the Papal Jubilee parade which took place on October 2, 1887, and served in the same capacity on the occasion of the celebration of the centennial of Presi- dent Washington's inauguration, on April 30, 1889. One of his distinguishing charac- teristics has been his organizing capacity, which has been so conspicuously demon- strated in his management of the St. Louis Exposition. He was appointed to this posi- tion at a time when interest in the Exposition seemed to be waning. Taking hold of the enterprise vigorously, he conciliated all in- terests and introduced so many novelties into the arrangement and management that the Exposition has since been not only a financial success, but a success in all other respects. February 22, 1862, Mr. Gaiennie married Miss Maria Louisa Elder, of New Orleans.
Gaines, Charles William, was born in White Oak Township, Henry County, Mis- souri, January 16, 1864. His parents were Richard F. and Margaret (Stone) Gaines. The father was a native of Kentucky, of Vir- ginia parentage; he removed to Saline Coun- ty, Missouri, in 1853, and to Henry County in 1860; he was a successful farmer and stock dealer, and a man of sterling character, re- garded with deep respect for his probity and business ability. The mother was a daugh- ter of John Stone, a native of North Carolina, at one time sheriff of Stokes County in that State, and afterward one of the county judges of Henry County. The son, Charles William Gaines, was educated at Central College, Fayette, Missouri, graduating in the scientific course in 1884. Upon the death of his father in 1891, he became administrator of
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the estate, one of the largest in the county, which he closed up in a manner which com- manded the utmost respect for his business sagacity and strict solicitude for the rights of all parties in interest. He has been con- tinnously engaged as a farm proprietor and stock dealer, and is accounted among the most successful of the many so engaged in one of the best agricultural and cattle regions in the land. In 1898, he became a candidate for the Democratic nomination for represen- tative from Henry County, and was made the nominee of the convention, but declined the honor, feeling that his business interests would not admit of his giving to the duties of the position the time he considered their importance would demand. In religion he is a Cumberland Presbyterian. He is a mem- ber of various Masonic bodies, including the Commandery. Mr. Gaines was married, July 19, 1899, to Miss Nannie J. Hannah, daugh- ter of J. P. Hannah, a large tobacco-planter of Salisbury, North Carolina. Mrs. Gaines is liberally educated ; her training was mainly at Salem Academy, one of the oldest female academies in the United States, at Old Salem, now the town of Winston, in North Carolina. Their home in Clinton is one of the hand- somest in that beautiful city, and its abundant hospitalities are enjoyed by a large circle of friends.
devoted a considerable portion of the follow- ing year to observing practice in the same departments of medical science in the leading hospitals in New York City. His position with leaders in the profession is well estab- lished, and he enjoys a practice which is beneficial to the suffering, as well as credit- able to himself. He is accurate and discern- ing in prognosis and diagnosis, and his ope: a- tions are performed quickly and skillfully. His attainments have found recognition by the profession in his appointment to various positions of usefulness and honor. He has served as instructor in histology in tle Kansas City Medical College, and as pro- fessor of laryngology and rhinology in the Woman's Medical College, but relinquished both on account of the exactions of his priv- ate practice. For a time he was editor of the laryngological and rhinological depait- ment of "Langsdale's Lancet"; this position he relinquished for the same reason. He is a member of the Jackson County Medica 1 Society, and of the Academy of Medicine. In politics he is a Democrat, and in religion of the Baptist faith. In 1892 Dr. Gaines was married to Miss Mary D. Moore, of Kansas City, daughter of L. T. Moore, a member of the firm of the Emery, Bird, Thayer Co. She is an amiable and liberally educated lady, a graduate of the fav- orably known private schools of Miss Bar- stow, in Kansas City, and Miss Kirkland, in Chicago. Three daughters have been born of this union, Mary D., Ruth V. and Pauline P. Gaines.
Gaines, James William, physician, was born February II, 1863, in Boone Coun- ty, Kentucky. His parents were Owen and Pauline (Huey) Gaines, both natives of the same State; the father was descended from an English family which located near Cul- Gaines, John Joseph, physician, and an acknowledged authority on the use of natural mineral waters in the treatment of chronic diseases, was born June 5, 1862, near Excelsior Springs, Clay County, Missouri. His parents were Lilburn B. and Margaret J. (Smart) Gaines. The father, who was of Irish ancestry, was a native of Kentucky. He came to Missouri, and located in Jackson County, whence he removed to the vicinity of Excelsior Springs, where he died in 1881. The mother was born on a steamboat on the Missouri River, while her parents were en route from Tennessee. Dr. Gaines was educated in the common schools, and under the care of private tutors, who afforded him peper Courthouse, Virginia. The son, James William, was reared upon a farm, and began his education in the neighborhood school; he afterward entered Georgetown (Kentucky) College, from which lie was grad- uated with class honors in 1883. He then read medicine under the tutorship of Dr. John Dulany, of Covington, Kentucky, and afterward became a student in the Medical College of Ohio, at Cincinnati, graduating in 1886. The following year he entered upon general practice in Kansas City, Missouri. His success was gratifying, but his attention had been directed to laryngology and rhinol- ogy, and he took up a course of study in the New York Postgraduate Medical School, . the equivalent of an academical course, which from which he was graduated in 1895. He was effectively supplemented by a closely fol-
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lowed course of reading of his own election. For ten years, beginning before he had at- tained his majority, he taught school with much success, during two years of this time as superintendent of the Excelsior Springs Public School. During all this time, he studied medicine systematically and persist- ently, without a preceptor. In 1890 he entered the University Medical College of Kansas City, from which he was graduated three years later, third in a class of twenty students, and in addition to his medical diploma received a certificate as a registered pharmacist, having completed the branches necessary therefor. He afterward performed special work in surgery, for which he received a certificate from Dr. Emory Lanphear, of St. Louis, and took two special courses in obstetrics in Kansas City. In 1893 he en- tered upon the practice in which he is now engaged at Excelsior Springs. While pur- suing all the medical branches, his special aptitude is for the treatment of chronic dis- eases, utilizing for the purpose the wonder- ful curative properties of the medicinal springs for which the locality is justly famed. Familiar with the waters from his youth, his knowledge of chemistry, and years of close observation, enable him to give scientific direction to the therapeutical uses of nature's agencies, and to discriminate between the useful and the empirical. His success is at- tested by the extent of his practice, which extends to between 1,500 and 2,000 patients who annually come to him for treatment from all sections of the United States, their numbers including many distinguished states- men, professional men, and financiers, of national reputation. His studies and his prac- tice have afforded him rare opportunities for original investigation, and he has long been engaged in practice along certain lines, which will be soon communicated to the medical profession in the frank manner which char- acterizes the benefactor of humanity as dis- tinguished from the charlatan. He has been an occasional contributor to professional journals, and for several years past the local newspapers have contained articles from his pen, affording information with reference to the curative properties of the waters of Ex- celsior Springs, and the desirability of the region as a health resort. He is medical examiner for twenty-six life insurance com- panies, among which are the New York
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