Product Code Database
Josiah Gregg (19 July 1806 – 25 February 1850) was an American merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author of , about the American Southwest and parts of northern Mexico. He collected many previously undescribed plants on his merchant trips and during the Mexican–American War, for which he has often been credited in botanical nomenclature. After the war he went to California, where he reportedly died of a fall from his mount due to starvation near Clear Lake on 25 February 1850, following a cross-country expedition which fixed the location of Humboldt Bay.
Because of his failing health, Gregg followed his doctor's recommendation and traveled alongside a merchant caravan to Santa Fe, New Mexico on a trail beginning at Van Buren, Arkansas, in 1831. Once he arrived in what would later become the New Mexico Territory, Gregg worked as a bookkeeper for Jesse Sutton, one of the merchants of the caravan, before returning to Missouri in fall 1833, but by spring he was back on the road to Santa Fe, this time as wagonmaster of a caravan and Sutton's business partner. Gregg brought the first printing press to New Mexico in 1834, selling it to Ramon Abreu in Santa Fe, where it was used to print the territory's first newspaper.Kanellos, Nicolás, Francisco A. Lomelí, Claudio Esteva Fabregat, The Handbook of Hispanic Cultures in the United States, Arte Publico Press, 1993, page 365, accessed 10 March 2013.
By 1840, Gregg had learned Spanish, crossed the plains between Missouri and Santa Fe four times, traveled the Chihuahua Trail into Mexico, and become a successful businessman. On his last trip from Santa Fe eastward, he decided to take a more southerly route across to the Mississippi River. Leaving Santa Fe on 25 February 1840, he was accompanied by 28 wagons, 47 men, 200 mules and 300 sheep and goats. In March the caravan was attacked by Pawnee people near Trujillo Creek in Oldham County, Texas, and a storm scattered most of his stock across the Llano Estacado, but the group continued eastward through Indian Territory to Fort Smith and Van Buren. In the early 1840s, Gregg briefly lived in Shreveport, Louisiana.
Only a few months later, he traveled through the Oklahoma Territory as far west as Cache Creek in the Comanche territory. During 1841 and 1842, Gregg's travels took him through Texas and up the Red River valley, and on a second trip he went from Galveston to Austin and back through Nacogdoches to Arkansas. Along the way he took notes of the natural history and human culture of the places he visited, and profitably sold mules to the Republic of Texas. He briefly settled as partner in a general store with his brother John and George Pickett in Van Buren. He began to work his travel notes into a manuscript and visited New York in the summer of 1843 to find a publisher. In New York he devoted himself to working on his book while staying at the Franklin Hotel at the corner of Broadway and Cortland Streets.Sargent, Charles Sprague, Garden and Forest, Volume 7, Garden and Forest Publishing Company, 1894, page 7, , accessed 10 March 2013, Quote: "He rarely went out, except to the store of his publishers under the Astor House; he never went to the theatre, or, indeed, to any place of amusement. He took no recreation of any kind so far as I could learn. He did not appear to visit anywhere, nor did he appear to have any acquaintances. His heart was wholly in his book; it was his joy by day and his dream by night. His stay and life in the city during its incubation was his great trial. He pined for the prairies and the free open air of the wilderness. New York to him was a prison, and his hotel a cage."
On November 5, 1849, a party of ill-provisioned miners led by Gregg left Rich Bar, a mining camp on the Trinity River north of Helena intending to find "Trinity Bay" by crossing unknown territory and following the line of latitude westward. The roster of the party was: Gregg; Thomas Seabring of Ottawa, Illinois; David A. Buck of New York; J. B. Truesdale of Oregon; Charles C. Southard of Boston; Isaac Wilson of Missouri; Lewis Keysor Wood of Kentucky; and James Van Duzen.
They had been told by Indians that the Pacific Ocean was an eight-day journey, so they provisioned for ten days' rations. A few days past the start, David A. Buck discovered the South Fork Trinity River, where the party encountered a group of Indians who fled from them. The party took smoked salmon from the Indian rancheria and set up camp only a short distance away. That evening eighty warriors arrived at the Gregg party camp, but only a discussion followed; the Indians warned them against following the Trinity to the sea, and said to go westward and leave the river, a trail which later became part of California State Route 299. The party instead followed the river until it became impassable, then went west. By November 13, the provisions were gone and the party began to subsist on deer and smoked game, averaging a day until they got to the redwood forests, after which they averaged only about a day. About six weeks after they started, they emerged from the redwood forests and saw the ocean at the mouth of a watercourse which they called the Little River. After exploring slightly to the north, they turned south along the coast and camped at Trinidad.
Leaving Trinidad, they crossed a large river, but the fed-up members of the exploring party did not wish to wait for Gregg to determine the latitude of the mouth, and so pushed off without him. When he caught up with the group, his temper flared, and they named the river Mad River due to the outburst.
On December 20, 1849, David A. Buck was the first to discover what this party named "Trinity Bay", which a few months later became known as Humboldt Bay. The party walked around the bay and past the site of present-day Arcata, had a Christmas meal of elk meat near the Elk River, and passed through present-day Eureka on 26 December. They reached the bay at a point which would later be both the location of Fort Humboldt and the townsite of Bucksport, named after David A. Buck, the discoverer of the bay.
Three days later, they came upon and named the Eel River, the "Eel" in the name being a misnomer for the Pacific lamprey which local Indians had caught and shared with the party at about where the Van Duzen River, named after James Van Duzen, joins the Eel.
Shortly thereafter, the party argued again about the best way to get back to San Francisco. About from the coast on the Eel River, the group split in two: Seabring, Buck, Wilson and Wood followed the Eel River, while Gregg, Van Duzen, Southard and Truesdale went to the coast. L.K. Wood was permanently crippled by a grizzly bear while stuck in a snow-bound camp. His fellow travelers packed him on a horse and traveled along the South Fork of the Eel southward. When they arrived at Santa Rosa, news of their discovery spread.
Gregg's group fared badly. Wood wrote:
They attempted to follow along the mountain near the coast, but were very slow in their progress on account of the snow on the high ridges. Finding the country much broken along the coast, making it continually necessary to cross abrupt points, and deep gulches and canyons, after struggling along for several days, they concluded to abandon that route and strike easterly toward the Sacramento valley. Having very little ammunition, they all came nigh perishing from starvation, and, as Mr. Southard related to me, Dr. Gregg continued to grow weaker, from the time of our separation, until, one day, he fell from his horse and died in a few hours without speaking—died from starvation—he had had no meat for several days, had been living entirely upon acorns and herbs. They dug a hole with sticks and put him under ground, then carried rock and piled upon his grave to keep animals from digging him up. They got through to the Sacramento valley a few days later than we reached Sonoma Valley. Thus ended our expedition.
Southard's story of burying Gregg after his death may not be the whole truth. Other reports say he died on February 25 near Clear Lake, California, of poor health and the hardships of his journey, while another casts doubt on the story that his companions buried him, instead suggesting he survived at least briefly at an Indian village. In any case, his papers, instruments, and specimens were lost.
About eighty plant names were originally assigned to honor Gregg; as of 2002, 47 Mexican and Southwestern plant species bear the specific patronym .
Gregg's portrait, painted by Herndon Davis between 1950 and 1962, is in the collection of the Palace of the Governors, a New Mexico history museum.
|
|
