MosierBiographies

CYRUS A. MOSIER.- No one but a pioneer of the Northwestern Territory can fully appreciate the features of the life history of Mr. Mosier; and, besides, his experiences have been too intense for description, The best outline we can give is necessarily cold and bleak compared with the realities in his life's career. A large volume, consisting of one great mountain of poetic climaxes, would be required to give even this outline. In this work we simply do best we can in the limited space allotted .

A poet is born, not made; and he is ne always born in the country, receiving as he grows up his inspiration from scenes of wilder ness and from experiences in the simplicity of country life. A poet, however, is not necessarilyy a rhymester. Colonel Ingersoll, for example, is a great poet in fact, though not indulging in either rhyme or verse. Mr. Mosier has the soul of a poet, and such a training as only the spiritual gymnastics of the great West can give. Not the man who has capacity only, nor the man who has training only, can be a great or well finished man; but he who has both the capacity and the training: the latter however, may consist only of an extraordinary environment.

The first paternal ancestors of Mr Mosier who came to America were from Germany, landing on the shores of the Chesapeake, in Maryland, early in 1700. In the maternal line his first American ancestors were from the British Isles, having English, Irish, Scotch and Welsh blood in their strain. Mr. Mosier's maternal grandfather, Giles H. Swan, graduated at Yale College in 1815, and soon afterward married, Jane Rockwell, an innkeeper's daughter, at Stonington, Connecticut. The

next year he moved with his bride to Richland county, Ohio, where, in the depths of the wilderness, he cleared the ground and established a home, near what is now Plymouth Station, on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. In the upper story of that cabin the first Masonic lodge of that region was organized, of which Mr. Swan was the Master. In that small cabin Mr. Mosier's mother, Maria, nee Swan, was born, the eldest child in the family, and learned to spin wool and flax, and weave the thread into cloth, the only source of clothing and bedding for the family. Eli Mosier, our subject's father, was a native of Pennsylvania, born July 4, 1812, and when five years of age was taken by his parents in their emigration to a point near Crestline Crossing, Ohio, where he aided in clearing a tract of heavily beech-covered land, and also learned the trades of carpentry and cabinet-making. After attaining the maturity of manhood he married Miss Maria Swan, as already mentioned, at Paris, Richland county, that State, January 11,1837; and on October 13 following the subject of this sketch was born there.

In the autumn of 1839 the family moved to Platte county, Missouri, settling at a point seventeen miles from Fort Leavenworth, then only a United States garrison. The country was then an unbroken wilderness, inhabited by Indians and wild beasts. Here the father took a claim, built a cabin and joined others in the hard struggle for the development of what is now one of the foremost States of the Union.

Here young Cyrus was taught to read by his mother, who had been a teacher in Ohio; but as early as four and a half years of age he was sent to school; and he still remembers vividly the first noon hour, when the pupils ,began to eat their dinners. Before beginning on his bread and butter he cast side glances about the room-for he was too bashful to turn his head-to see to what extent he might be a spectacle for the older critics. The school-house was of the uniform type of the period and place, so often described. The school was, sustained by subscription, for as yet the free-school system had not been introduced. The teacher was the same gray-haired Irish gentleman of the old school who had been his fathers' teacher in Ohio. He mended the goose-quill pens and set the copies in a beautiful round hand as plain as print. He had two daughters, who took kind care of young Cyrus, as the latter still wore dresses like a girl. On one occasion they took him to a grave a short distance from the school house. It was surrounded with a rough wooden fence, which was covered with wild roses full of buds and bloom and forming a magnificent bower. This is the first grave and these the first roses in Mr. Mosier's memory. The perfume of the roses was entrancingly delicious, and the beauty and loveliness of that rose-covered grave will ever remain a pleasant reminiscence with our subject as long as life shall last.

In this and similar school-houses young Mosier got Webster's Elementary Spelling-Book "by heart," and made considerable advancement in all the English branches excepting grammar, which indeed was not taught, or even thought to be of practical use. His deficiency in the last mentioned branch, however, was fully made up by the precepts and example of his kind and judicious mother, and in a manner, too, far more agreeable and efficient than that exhibited by the schoolmaster of those days. During the six years he attended school in Missouri he now remembers but two students whom he ever heard reciting grammar lessons. Another feature of the times worth recalling is the fact that some of the wealthy slaveholders sent their children to school on horseback, sometimes two on the same animal, and generally attended by a negro body servant.

When the head of the family was absent the Indians often visited the house; and Mr. Mosier remembers standing when a child by his mother, while she held in her arms his baby brother, and looking at the window panes against which the wild people of the forest pressed their noses and painted faces, peering in to see what they could. On leaving they

But it was in these wilds that Mr. Mosier's love for nature, inherited through generations from the first settlements on the American continent, was sharpened by contact with almost everything belonging to the wildest pioneer life. He was able to ride a horse at the age of four, and when six years of age he went for the cows in the thickest tangles of vines and shrubs along the brooks and streams, often returning with them in the dusk of the evening, greeted with the yells of panthers and howls of wolves and other strange and indescribable noises made by creatures of the forest; but these solitary trips were even a pleasure to him rather than a task.

As he grew up and the "abolitionism" of his parents became known, the pro-slavery element made it more and more disagreeable for them, so that in the year 1847 the father made a trip to Iowa in search of a more favored locality, finding a suitable place about two miles from Fort Des Moines (now within the city); and when the land came into market soon afterward he entered the tract with land warrants, at the rate of 62 to 87 1/2 cents an acre. During the ensuing autumn and spring he moved his household effects and all his family to the new home, following the military trail between Council Bluffs and Fort Des Moines. Cyrus, then ten years of age, having had his imaginations raised to a high pitch by descriptions of the magnificence of steamboats, and having learned that such wondrous structures ran up the river to Raccoon Forks, ran ahead of the teams by which the family were moving to a high bluff now known as Van Hill and looked down to the junction of the rivers to see one of the monsters, if perchance one should be there in motion; but sad was his disappointment when he found that the water was too low for steam navigation, though considerably higher than it is generally at the present day. The town of Des Moines consisted of two rows of double log houses and a few scattered cabins, of poor construction. The soldiers had evacuated the cabins, and part of them were occupied by settlers.

At their new Iowa home young Mosier aided in fencing the land and cultivating it. He helped to break the ground where now stands the city hall. Also he learned practical mechanics to a considerable extent, of his father. At this point also, he enjoyed far better school privileges than in Missouri, attending district school three to five months each year until 1855-6, when he was sent to a select school at Des Moines where, under private teachers, he also studied algebra, surveying, Latin, German and botany. In the summer of 1857 he prepared himself for the profession of school-teaching, which he followed in winter for five years thereafter. During the year 1860-1 he taught the highest-grade public school in East Des Moines. In 1866 he was elected to the office of County Superintendent of Schools of Polk county, which then included also the superintendency of the city schools.

During the summer and autumn of 1859, with four other young teachers, he read and recited Blackstone and Chitty, and he was acting clerk of the moot court that had been organized for the benefit of young lawyers and students at the capital. He soon decided, however, that the legal profession was not to his taste; but the training thus obtained, in connection with the knowledge he had acquired of the higher branches already mentioned, was all utilized in the profession he did choose for life, namely, that of Law Reporter. Meanwhile he qualified himself for verbatim reporting by making himself proficient in phonographic short-hand, attaining ultimately a speed of 225 words to the minute, which is about up to the highest notch. Many stories are told of stenographers surpassing this, but they are either exaggerations or in some other way misleading. In 1864 Mr. Mosier was ap pointed short-hand reporter for the district court at Des Moines, presided over by Hon J. H. Gray,- thus being the first one appointed

to such a position in the State of Iowa, and this was before there was any law requiring such an appointment. Then, accepting the position of Law Reporter, in 1866, he continued therein for twenty years, resigning in 1886, by which time he had a corps of sixteen phonographers and type-writers. In 1889, on the day before he left with his family for the far West, he was surprised with the present of a fine gold watch, suitably and most beautifully engraved, from the bench and bar of Polk county.

During his term as Law Reporter he also had a large amount of work in the United States courts here. He was special commissioner of the United States Court of Claims to take testimoriy in the matter of alleged frauds in the Mississippi river improvement at Rock Island, and served at intervals for two years.

In April, 1889, Mr. Mosier moved with his family to Washington Territory, where he had many adventures in the deep, wild forests. Soon after his arrival he took his family in Indian canoes, manned by Indians, and ascended the Snohomish river for three days. After disembarking they had to walk on a mountain trail for sixteen miles, making six miles of the trail themselves, and camping without tent. On the second day (fifth day out) they reached a small cabin. They spent the summer in the Cascade mountains, and early in December descended the river to the town of Snohomish on tide water.

Receiving a commission as special land agent from the Department of the Interior at Washington to examine 2,600 cases of suspended land entries on the Pacific coast, he left his family at Snohomish and repaired to California in the execution of his new duties, and was absent a year; and during this time he traveled back and forth between old Mexico and Vancouver's Island by rail and sea, looking after lands and gathering testimony concerning their entry, and in these trips visited all parts of California, becoming thoroughly acquainted with that wonderful country. During the next year, 1890, he spent eight months in New Mexico, traveling throughout its extent in the same service, and from there he returned to the State of Washington, with headquarters at Seattle. Here he took out the first corps of surveyors upon the Olympic range to survey suspended entries.

Subsequently he received orders from Hon. T. H. Carter, then Commissioner of the General Land Office and now Senator from Montana, to explore the Mount Ranier region for the purpose of obtaining the necessary information in regard to the propriety of making a timber reservation there. The idea of making this reservation was originated by Mr. Mosier. A "national park" had been previously suggested by other parties; but before Congress could carry out any plan for a park here the region would have been denuded of its timber and beauty by organized bands of timber and land thieves. Mr. Mosier spent two years exploring this section of Washington and obtaining the opinions of citizens of the Sound cities as to the feasibility of making a reservation which should range entirely around the mountain and constitute an evergreen frame, as it were, for this awfully grand snow-capped peak.

Loading a mule with a dog tent, blankets, bacon, flour, coffee, and a few other necessaries, a 5x7 kodak, an aneroid barometer, thermometer, field-glass, level, forty-four six-shooter, repeating rifle, etc., he walked behind the faithful little animal from the settlements at sea-level to the timber line on the mountain, which was generally about 8,ooo feet above the sea, and camped alone at night, proceeding to points fifty to a hundred miles from civilization. In the daytime he had to cross swollen glacial rivers alone, which are always dangerous even when help is at hand. But he could not retreat; all his work lay before and above him. When the shades of night

draped the earth with their mysterious pall and the stars shone out like electric lamps from the black depth of space, the ominus silence being broken only by an occasional scream of the mountain lion and the mysterious notes of night birds and other anilnals, also the sound of grinding rocks forced by an avalanche sweepmg the timber and everything before it down the mountain side, reverential awe which language cannot express, rather than fear, took possession of Mr. Mosier's mind.

He made numerous trips of this kind, starting from different sides of the mountain, the last being from North Yakima, on the eastern side of the Cascades, during which time he camped in deep snow for three days, his horse pawing down through the snow to the earth to obtain his provender, which consisted of the nutritious grasses buried so deeply.

To the ordinary observer it would seem that such extreme out-door life would have been impossible, following immiediately a period of more than twenty years devoted to court work, where close confinement and steady application were so absolutely necessary to the discharge of duty. The secret lies in the fact that Mr. Mosier had all his life been an enthusiastic sportsman, going annually hundreds and sometimes thousands of miles to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, hunting and fishing and the romance of camp life. To shoot antelope on the plains of Texas and Mexico, to climb the Rockies in quest of mountain sheep, goats, bears and black-tail deer, or to shoot water-fowl and grouse about the lakes and fields of the Dakotas, afforded him the necessarv exercise for health as well as opportunity to indulge his passion for the study of nature. It was this that especially prepared and fitted him for the hardships and daring exploration we have mentioned in connection with the topographical survey of the Mount Rainier region, now Pacific Reserve.

In his explorations Mr. Mosier gathered specimens of all the herbaceous plants, mosses, shrubs and trees that he saw, from the salt marshes at sea level to the glaciers between 10,000 and 12,000 feet above. These specimens he forwarded to the Forestry and Bo~ ical Divisions of the Agricultural Department at Washington. The fauna and flora of this region are worthy the attention of the whole scientific world. He photographed natural scenery, trees and other plan'ts, cascades, rocks, avalanches and glaciers, plains a mountains, and even the ocean; and when in December, 1892, he in made his final report; the Interior Department, recommending the reservation of about 1,6oo square miles, or 1,000,000 acres of land, about and on Mount Ranier, he attached as exhibits more than 100 copies of these photographs. He holds that the Government should never have parted with any of these vast tracts of timber lands, the revenue from which would have paid the total operating expenses of the Government, tariff or no tariff.

This grand mountain region, with its icebound peaks, its smoldering volcanoes, it's craters, its crags, its mimic battlements and towers, its precipices, its deep chasms, its steeps, its lakes, its brooks and rivulets an rills, its waterfalls, its fleecy snows, its crin kled drifts, its crevasses and net-work of deep, fissures and chasms and gorges, its columns of basaltic rock, its moraines, its piles of manny angled rocks, its record of the fiery work of volcanic forces, its heaps of scoriae, its volcanic ash-beds, at times garlanded with the choicest plants and flowers, its blooming shrubs, its fragrant wild roses, its nameless mosses, its tall cedars and hemlocks and firs and pines, its' yews and spruces and arbor-vitaes, its smooth barked alder trees, its fallen monarchs, its strings of wild vines, its bowers, its brakes and graceful ferns, its sedges and rushes, its mallows and orchids, its tangled wild-woods, its shrubs with blazing flower and fruit, its sub-alpine trees, its enchanting parks, its colonnades of balsam firs and pines and larches, its grassy lawns, its undulating tables, its clumps of exquisitely beautiful trees, its nooks and

meadows, its wooded hills with their green slopes and flecks and patches of mid-summer snows of purest white, its dizzy heights and fearful depths, its bursting avalanches and roaring cataracts, its milk-white glacial rivers, grinding boulders, falling rocks with their reverberating echoes, moaning winds, screaming panthers, soaring eagles, wild goats, deer, bear, beaver, marmot and hare, its partridge and grouse and quail and ptarmigan, wild ducks and geese and heron, its song-birds, its bees and myriad insect life, its fishes, its murmuring waters, its mineral springs, its clear blue skies, its starry depths, its clouds, its zigzag lightnings and loud-rolling thunder, its calms, its storms and tempests, its sunshine and shade, its sunrise over mountains of purple and gold and silver sheen, its glorious sunsets, its weird, creeping shadows, its hallowed gloom, its peaceful solitude, its many voices of nature, exciting reverential awe, its peaceful solitude, its many voices of nature, exciting reverential awe, its peacful solitude- all these and much more that language cannot express, impel me to again urge that this reservation be made for the benefit of the people of the State of Washington, of the United States and of the whole civilized world."

As to military affairs, we may observe that Mr. Mosier was commissioned Adjutant of a battalion in I 864, organized at Des Moines to repel an invasion by the Rebel general Price from Missouri. He commanded the company five months, while a private taking his turn on guard and all other duties that devolved on a private soldier, until he received his commission as Captain. Was twice offered promotion, but preferred to stay with his company, which he did until after the war was over, being discharged in January, 1866, at San Antonio, Texas. During its service his company traveled 10,750 miles, participated in fifteen battles and many skirmishes, losing in killed and wounded sixty-five per cent of its number. Some of the battles in which he was engaged were Chickamauga, Mission Ridge, Kenesaw mountain, Peachtree creek, Atlanta, Jonesboro, Lovejoy, Franklin, and Nashville. He always commanded his company on every march and in every engagement. One brother of our subject, Lieutenant Oliver, lies in a soldier's grave, and his other brother, of the name of Cross, was a private in the Union army, in many engagements, finally taken prisoner and confined for nine months at Andersonville and six months' in other rebel prisons.

In the autumn of 1861 Mr. Mosier married Miss Rachel A., daughter of Samuel and Rachel Bell, and they have had four sons and three daughters. Lenore, the eldest, married H. L. Devin and resides at Sedro, Washington; she has three daughters living and one son deceased. Blanche is married, has two children and is now a teacher in the Des Moines public schools. Albert G. lives at Seattle, Washington, where he is a civil engineer at present engaged on the ship canal there; he was formerly division engineer on the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad, as early as twenty years of age. He has aided in building the Seattle, Lake Shore & Eastern Railroad, and also theGreat Northern across the Cascades. In I 893 he married Bessie, daughter of General Reno. He is now thirty years of age. Cyrus A., Jr., is the name of the son who died in 18y;. Charles R., now sixteen years old, is a student at Drake University. Lucy R. is attending the high school in Des Moines; and Mac Henry, the youngest, is also at school.

Immediately after his marriage Mr. Mosier built his residence,-16 x 24 and a story and a half high,-with his own hands, cutting the logs, sawing them, framing the whole structure and finishing it, building the chimney and plastering one room. No American excepting a frontiersman would have the ambition to do this; and this was all done during the hard times of the war period. After all, that was the happiest period of Mr. Mosier's life.