1. Josiah Gregg was an American merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author of Commerce of the Prairies, about the American Southwest and parts of northern Mexico.
17 Facts About Josiah Gregg
1. 2.
Josiah Gregg was born on July 19,1806, in Overton County, Tennessee, the youngest son of seven children of Harmon and Susannah Gregg.
3.
At age 18, Gregg was a schoolteacher in Liberty, Missouri until moving again with his family to Independence a year later in 1825.
4.
Once he arrived in what would later become the New Mexico Territory, Josiah 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.
5.
Josiah 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.
6.
Josiah Gregg briefly settled as partner in a general store with his brother John and George Pickett in Van Buren.
7.
Josiah Gregg began to work his travel notes into a manuscript and visited New York in the summer of 1843 to find a publisher.
8.
Josiah Gregg's book Commerce of the Prairies, published in two volumes in 1844, is an account of his time spent as a trader on the Santa Fe Trail from 1831 to 1840 and includes commentary on the geography, botany, geology, and culture of New Mexico.
9.
Josiah Gregg wrote about local people and described Indian culture and artifacts.
10.
Josiah Gregg graduated two semesters later on March 9,1846.
11.
Josiah Gregg had previously planned to enter business with Susan Shelby Magoffin's husband Samuel, so he left his effects and collections in Saltillo and traveled to the east in 1847 to buy merchandise; upon arrival he received a message from Magoffin, who had changed his mind.
12.
Josiah Gregg found and collected other plants, many of which were previously unknown, on a trip to Mexico between 1848 and 1849 with Wislizenus.
13.
Josiah Gregg sent the specimens to his friend, botanist George Engelmann, in St Louis, Missouri, to be identified.
14.
In 1849, Josiah Gregg joined the California Gold Rush by sailing from Mazatlan to San Francisco, eating canned food for the first time and remarking in a letter that he liked it.
15.
Josiah Gregg left field notes with his former partner Jesse Sutton and gave Sutton instructions what to do with them if he did not return from what might turn out to be his last trip.
16.
On November 5,1849, a party of ill-provisioned miners led by Josiah 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.
17.
Josiah 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.