Notes:
JAMES HERVEY AND ELIZABETH GILDERSLEEVE
1825-1882
James Hervey Gildersleeve, western pioneer, was born in Rochester, N. Y., July 20, 1825, died in Denver, Colorado, Apr. 12, 1882, son of Rev. William and his second wife Hannah (Leland). Before his tenth birthday he had moved with his father's family to Bethany, N. Y., Crawford and Venango counties, Pa., and New Albany, Indiana. After a few years at Fort Wayne, Ind., the family settled on a small farm in Sunbury, Delaware county, Ohio in 1838. His father died in 1845 so that he had to manage the farm until of age. He then reacted to his roving disposition and adventurous spirit that made him one of the hardy pioneers of the West. He left Ohio for Pettis county, Missouri. There in 1857, he married Elizabeth Tipton Heath, born in Franklin county, Ohio, April 16, 1838, died in New Rochelle, N. Y., May 1, 1915. She was the daughter of Richard and Sarah (Tipton) Heath and proved to be a remarkable pioneer woman of the West. She was the youngest of thirteen children. Her father was born in Kentucky, Feb. 14, 1790 and moved with his father's family to Ohio, served in the War of 1812 and married Sarah Tipton, daughter of Sylvester and Mary Tipton, who came from Scotland. Sylvester, a descendant of Lord Tipton, first settled in Pennsylvania. Richard Heath settled near Columbus, Ohio and had a large farm, twelve miles south in Franklin county and was justice-of-the peace.
Mrs. Gildersleeve's mother died when she was a baby and as a baby she went to a married sister's family in Pettis county, Missouri, where she was reared and married. She had three children by Mr. Gildersleeve: Minnie Bell, born Aug. 9, 1858, died July 10, 1885, married in Denver, Colo., Sept. 5, 1883, to Jacob Mumma, no issue; Maud Heath, born near Sedalia, Mo., Apr. 19, 1866, married Sept. 5, 1883, in Denver, Colo., Chauncey Jerome Parrett; and Pearl Crab, born in Denver, Colo., June 25, 1875, married Jan. 31, 1894, Hugh Grosvenor Curran.
In 1859, when the town of Sedalia, Missouri, was first laid out on the Kansas Pacific railroad then building through Missouri, Gildersleeve went to Sedalia and built a hotel, one of the first houses in town. It was painted white and called the White House. In the spring of 1860, he moved his family in, the town was flourishing and business was good. The war cry sounded of the great Civil War which caused great depression. Sedalia was near the Kansas state line and the terminus of the railroad. The family passed through thrilling experiences and by autumn the hotel was empty. Southern sympathizers all went south and Union people north. Gildersleeve belonged to the Home Guards. Many terrible things happened. When the first battle was fought at Boonville, Mo., the Confederates were defeated. The Confederate general, Price, marched his men south to the railroad where they captured a train of cars and came up to Sedalia with a squad of men. They posted armed guards on the streets and went for loot from store to store taking everything that they needed and filling the cars with provisions and loot. Before leaving they left word that they would return and burn the town. The Home Guards sent all the women and children down to Hat Creek to camp so they could defend the town better. However, the Confederates ran the train over Lamene River and burned the bridge.
At a later time, a pitched battle was fought between the Union men and a squad of Confederates on the streets of Sedalia. Two men were killed and many wounded. It was a time when armed bands of guerillas and even lone guerillas roamed the country. There were weeks at a time that Mrs. Gildersleeve did not dare to undress and her husband slept with his gun at the head of the bed. In 1861, Gen. Sigel with an army of 1 6,000 men was stationed at Sedalia. With his staff of officers, he occupied their hotel and boarded at their table. In the autumn, he advised them to pack their valuables as he had a train ready, and to send the women and children away as his pickets had been driven in by the Con-federates and he expected an attack to be made. However, the enemy's army passed to the west of him.
Undergoing such excitement, Mrs. Gildersleeve's health failed so she went to St. Louis, Mo., with her husband and she procured a permit to leave the state. They parted there, she went to Ohio while he went back to Sedalia to arrange matters there. He had obtained a permit as sutler to sell goods in the U. S. Army. He went south and was gone eight months from his family. He re-turned to Columbus, Ohio, in the fall of 1862, where he remained with his family all winter. He decided then to venture across the Great Plains, the "Great American Desert." In the spring of 1863, he returned to Sedalia, Mo., sold his hotel and went up into Iowa to buy a drove of cows to bring across the plains. He sent for his wife and child to join him at Winterset, Iowa, where her sister lived. She missed the train at St. Louis and went to the Everett House kept by Capt. Isaac Bush Gildersleeve who had been a steamboat captain on the Mississippi River a number of years. Their relationship was not solved but he was very courteous and next morning went with her to the train never to hear of each other again.
Isaac Bush Gildersleeve, born in Scipio, Cayuga county, N. Y., Apr. 5, 1823, died at Wiccopee, East Fishkill, N. Y., Feb. 25, 189o, married in 1864, Charlotte Anne Miller of White Pigeon, Michigan, born in Berwick, Pa., Sept. 21, 1833, died Sept. 24, 1887. His father Solomon Gildersleeve born in 1782 in Fishkill, N. Y., died in 1838, ensign in the War of 1812, 149th N. Y. Regiment, moved back to Fishkill in 1830 where his father Iived, Nathaniel, born in Hempstead, L. I., in 1753. He was the son of Benjamin (whose father George was born Oct. 22, 1687, charter member of St. George's Church of Hempstead, L. I.), and served in the Revolution (N. Y. in Rev.) from Fishkill and died in Liberty, Sullivan county, N. Y., in 1840. Capt. Isaac B. Gildersleeve was part owner of the "G. W. Sparrowhawk," "Spread Eagle" and "Minnehaha." He was in U. S. service in the Civil War at the battle of Shiloh transporting troops with Gen. U. S. Grant on board of his steamboat. He sold the Everett House in St. Louis, Mo., in 1870 and bought a large farm at Wiccopee near Hopewell where his only daughter Rita Alice, born July 1, 1866 has lived and managed the estate. (1940.)
Mrs. James Hervey Gildersleeve soon joined her husband from St. Louis and on April 10, they started for Denver, Colorado, in an ox team with two young men who were glad to join them to drive the cows. After six weeks journey across the plains, they reached the Rocky Mountains and Denver, encountering many Indians who were friendly. Some of them wanted to trade their ponies for their little daughter Minnie.
At Denver, Mr. Gildersleeve bought a restaurant and ran it through the summer. He hired a man to take his herd of cows out to pasturage and care for them all summer long. Denver had just experienced a large fire and the little village was building up again. He had an excellent chance to procure a homestead where the finest residential portion of Denver developed. He found the milk business overdone in Denver so early in the fall of 1863, he started his herd with a trusty man for Montana, expecting to winter in the Salt Lake valley, as he had not sold his restaurant. When he sold it, he fell ill of typhoid fever and was not able to travel for two months. The winter set in very hard in Colorado and Utah where his cows were. There was never known to be such a winter there with so much snow. No feed or corn was available so that half of his herd perished. In the spring, he started for Virginia City, Montana, and sold his cows to go into the grocery business. He sent his brother George Whitfield Gildersleeve to Missouri to collect a debt and buy a team to bring to Denver so that he could bring Mrs. Gildersleeve to Montana. His brother saw she was in poor health and, not wishing to bury her on the road, he turned the team over to her, advising her to go back to Ohio on a visit, while he went prospecting in the Rocky Mountains with his brother Charles Leland.
So, at Denver a party was made up of Mrs. Gildersleeve, daughter Minnie and Mrs. Gildersleeve's sister with her two boys as she had been in Denver three years and decided to go back to Ohio on a visit. Mrs. Betts, a minister's wife with a young lady in her charge joined them, chartered a two-storied prairie schooner, May 14, 1864, and left Denver to cross the plains. The Indians at that time became very hostile. They were making depredations before them and behind them on the trail. The first night on leaving Denver, they stopped at a toll gate kept by a family named Colgate, a man, wife, and two children. Two nights later, this family were all massacred and scalped in cold blood by the Indians. They stopped over night at O'Flanner's Bluff on the Platte River where they met a wagon load of immigrants who had witnessed an Indian massacre of a train not very far off on the other side of the river. There Mrs. Betts went on, leaving her charge in care of Mrs. Gildersleeve. Reach!
ing Fort Kearney in Nebraska, her sister and two boys took a coach to Iowa. Mrs. Bett's young charge, Mrs. Gildersleeve and daughter Minnie stayed with the Prairie schooner and travelled on to St.
Joseph, Missouri, where they took a steamboat to Ohio. Her husband, stayed in Montana until late in the fall when he returned after an absence of a year from his family. He had several sacks of gold dust. He was offered $2,000 in greenback money for one of them in Chicago which he refused. As the Civil War was ending, the price of gold began to drop so he took his gold to the mint at Philadelphia, Pa., and had it coined while gold was getting lower in price. He took a train to Cincinnati, Ohio, and sold the gold and began to speculate on the Exchange and made considerable money. His throat was affected in Cincinnati so he went to New York City and speculated in the Wall Street exchange. It took only a few months to lose all he had.
His family was living with his uncle, Dr. Thomas Gildersleeve, at 299 West Houston street, N. Y. City. He gave his wife $10,000 in 7 1/2% government bonds but as usually happens, this was also lost in Wall Street dabbling in speculations since they were in his charge at the time and were put up as margins. While dealing there in 1865, he went south to look over the Southern battlefield at Malvern Hill, Va., for the burial place of the lost son of Dr. Gildersleeve who was killed in action, July 1, 1862. Charles Josiah Seymour Gildersleeve had enlisted June 21, 1861, in Company A, 40th New York Volunteer Infantry. After closing up affairs in Wall Street, he returned with his family to Sedalia, Mo., in the fall of 1865. He went into the grocery business remaining there during the winter. But that was making money too slowly for his adventurous spirit so he sold his grocery in 1866.
He went back to Montana with an ox train filled with groceries. The Indians were very hostile then but he got safely through to Helena with only the loss of two ponies. After disposing of his cargo, he bought a ranch there and stocked it with cattle. He sent for Mrs. Gildersleeve and the two children, Maud being a year old then, so Apr. 19, 1867, they started out with the two children and another family from Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, where they had been when Mr. Gildersleeve had started for Montana. The family then took the train to Kansas City Junction and then the rest of the way by stage coach.
The Indians had made a raid and burned all the stations along the stage line, many places still smoking in ruins. When far into Kansas, they encountered a large herd of buffalo and they watched an Indian trying to lariat the buffalo which were galloping over the trail going south. They also met a troop of wild horses. They travelled three weeks over the worst roads possible and the stage coach was stuck in the mud so often that stoppages were frequent and the horses had to be unhitched and then hitched to the back of the wagon to haul it out of the mud. When they arrived at the Platte River, they found it flooded and the ferry boat washed away. The lndians were hostile so Mrs. Gildersleeve telegraphed her brother-in-law in Denver to pay her passage to Salt Lake City, Utah, on the stage coach. The reply came, "Your passage to Salt Lake City on the stage coach is paid to Denver. Gildersleeve is coming back."
She took the coach which was guarded most of the way by a military escort of soldiers from station to station as protection from the Indians. Fort Phil Kearney, Wyoming, was saved in January 1867 from destruction from the Indians, Sioux, under Chief Red Cloud. One of a line of forts along the Bozeman Road to the West, this fort was in command of Col. Henry B. Carrington. A wood train from the fort, Dec. 21, 1866, was attacked by the Sioux and cut off. Col. W. J. Fetterson with eighty men set out to relieve them but were all killed in an Indian trap. With this terrible loss of men, Col. Carrington sent for help to Fort Laramie, 236 miles away. "Portugee" John Phillips, civilian guide, had volunteered to go through the Indians infesting the country in hostile war parties at the time. Having set out at midnight in a raging blizzard, 25 degrees below zero, Phillips rode on and near midnight of Christmas Eve, he reached Fort Laramie, frozen and exhausted. His horse dropped dead at his feet. By Phillips' ride, help came before January 1867 so that they were ready for the Sioux attack.
The coach that carried Mrs. Gildersleeve reached Denver, the last to travel for two weeks on account of the Indians. Her husband wrote that he would leave Salt Lake City on a certain date. After two weeks silence, she heard he was lying in Bridger, Utah, with a broken leg caused by the stage coach upsetting in the mountain trail. He had telegraphed but the telegram had not been delivered. When he could walk on crutches he travelled to Denver. They met after a year's separation.
The Union Pacific railroad was then building across the Continent. In 1867, they had laid out the town of Cheyenne, Wyoming, and as soon as his leg mended he went there and built a hotel. In due time, Mrs. Gildersleeve and family followed him. Business was good for a year. There was a good deal of lawlessness in Cheyenne that first winter. They formed a vigilance committee. Mrs. Gildersleeve was sick at the time when her husband told her of two men being hung three blocks away by the Vigilantes which act prevented further lawlessness. She almost choked when she heard of it and had to loosen the neck of her night gown ever after.
As the building of the railroad progressed farther west, he followed the railroad through Nevada by making a hotel made of tents in the winter of 1868. She went back to Ohio and put her daughter Minnie in school, coming back to Cheyenne in the spring, to join her husband there. As business had fallen off, Mr. Gildersleeve rented the hotel and left for South Pass, Wyoming. They left the railroad at Bryan, Wyoming, bought a team of horses and a wagon and took two passengers in. The weather was very good. The second night it began to snow. The next morning they went their way in a blizzard which obliterated the road so they had to turn back to reach the station and safety. The road was along a telegraph line. One of the young men went ahead to a telegraph pole in the blinding snow and then shouted back so the team could be driven without losing their way. That was repeated all the way back through the raging blizzard. They finally reached the station at night nearly perished with cold. Next morning the sun was brightly shining so they travelled all -day. In the evening they reached an unfinished cabin, no doors or windows, a fireplace but no ax to cut wood so they put logs through the window to make a fire. Their provisions were scanty as they had been on the road so long. After a fire had been started a wagon came up with ten men, passengers for the gold mining camp. As provisions were few for both parties, they agreed to share in common which left Mr. and Mrs. Gildersleeve worse off than before. Everything was eaten up that night so that there was nothing for breakfast and Maud, the baby, cried for hunger. In the night, the mail wagon came up. They all started off but soon stalled in the snow. Mr. Gildersleeve caused the mail man to bring Mrs. Gildersleeve and the baby into South Pass while one man on horseback went back with provisions to the party stalled in the snow. There was great excitement in the mining -camp over recent finds of gold. Mr. Gildersleeve bought a supply -of groceries and merchandise and went into business. His brother George Whitfield Gildersleeve joined them and went into business in the next mining camp. They stayed there two years until the mining diminished when the family all went back to Denver.
Mr. Gildersleeve then went into the country, took up land (pre-emption and homestead) and stocked his ranch with sheep and cattle. After ranching two years, he rented the ranch and returned to Denver. In 1877, the Leadville excitement broke out and he went there for two years in the miners' supply business. In 1881, he got a ranch near Byers, Colorado and went into the sheep business where he took his family. In December 1881, he was struck on the spine by a buck ram which caused paralysis and he passed away, April 10, 1882, aged 56, in Denver where he was buried in Riverside cemetery, under the auspices of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.
Mrs. Elizabeth Gildersleeve continued on the ranch in the sheep business, giving it her personal attention for ten years. She then sold the ranch and bought a home in Denver. In later years she resided in New Rochelle, N. Y., near her daughter, Mrs. Pearl G. Curran. She was afflicted with failing sight but with all her other faculties unimpaired. Her memories were vivid of her pioneering experiences in the West. She wrote them out in long hand but could only feel the paper as her eyes were too dim. She died in New Rochelle, N. Y., May 1, 1915, aged 77, a remarkable wife and mother.
She had the distinction of crossing the Great Plains into the Rocky Mountains by ox team and prairie schooner, mule teams and stage coach, and then several times by train, experiencing the successive steps in land and water transportation in the development of the West. Her daughter Maud married Chauncey Jerome Parrett and had three children: Grace Gildersleeve, wife of William C. Tarbel of Deertrail, Colo.; Blanche Minnie, wife of Merlin Hall Aylesworth (see Who's Who in America) and Chauncey Gildersleeve, rancher in Byers, Colorado. Her youngest daughter Pearl married Hugh Grosvenor Curran and had two children, Pearl Elizabeth, wife of Winfred Byron Holton, Jr.,. of Pelham Manor, N. Y., and Hugh Grosvenor, born Dec. 14,. 1896, died in 1931.