Ebenezer Gray 1808-1884

GRAY, BOLEN

Posted By: Sharon Elijah (email)
Date: 12/20/2018 at 08:51:18

17 April 1884 - The Local Record

Died April 1st, at his residence four and a half miles northeast of Springdale, Ebenezer A. Gray, aged seventy-five years, four months and twenty-eight days.

And thus has passed away an early settler, one long identified with Cedar County history.

Deceased was born Nov. 3rd, A.D. 1808 in Harrison county, Ohio, and spent the intervening years to manhood in that vicinity. Leaving youth behind he became in many respects a remarkable man and a type of that class forming the bulworks of good society, or that dauntless in the face of difficulties help wheel along the car of progress, causing the wilderness to blossom as the rose, and substituting good government and order where all before was lawlessness and waste. Possessed naturally of strong will, courage and a spirit of perseverance, he early imbibed traits which with these marked his subsequent career and rendered possible that state of usefulness and prosperity following in the course of his long and some what eventful life.

On Feb. 23rd, A.D. 1833 he joined his fortune with those of Eliza Bolen, a woman of his own station and nativity, and who still survives to mourn his loss. This union proved singularly appropriate in all respects that go to make up the true marriage relation, for the peculiarities of disposition and character marked in the one, found their counterparts in the other, and these mingling and blending formed a current of ? capacities, extending the channels of either life to an extent hereto unknown. But even at the best, men like Mr Gray find small scope for their faculties in narrow limits of other settled states, and seizing the spirit of emigration seek in newer fields the broader sweep their energies demand and the subject of this sketch was no exception to the rule. So accordingly in 1839 he removed with his family to Iowa, then a Territory landing in Muscatine in April of the same year. Here for a time he left the rest and cast about for a locality suited to his means and tastes. Leaving the small trading post behind, a vast expanse of thicket and prairie stretched before with settlements few and far between and where Indians roamed in native state or plied their savage warfare. Journeying on, he came to Cedar county and made a selection of a site on the western banks of its beautiful river, preempting the lands between. Here amid the solitudes of nature and the sound of waters ever murmuring in the ear, he built his cabin of logs, removed his family and began life in earnest the struggles of frontier life. Trials and privations followed in natural order and he pursued his labors with a wary eye or slept at night with barricaded doors and arms at hand, for fiend in human form and worse than savage foe ever follow the advance guard of civilization to harass the lonely settler and rob him of his hoarded gains. Anon we see him on his way to the great and sales at Dubuque fording streams treading trackless prairies to secure the right and title to his domains which were now in market, and performing the same office for others who were unable to do it for themselves or whose claims were placed in peril. Later in order to increase his scanty store, we find him plying the craft of gunsmithing among the Indians, living among their wigwams or submitting to their ways. But amid all these dangers and hardships was formed the nucleus of a home about which should cluster all the joys and blessings usually falling to the lot of man. A home where friends were welcomed, way-farers cheered, the afflicted found comfort and the weak were sent on their way rejoicing towards a stronger and better life. The resolute determined on the man conquered, for in process of time, difficulties were removed, a comfortable residence arose above the cabin of logs and competence placed him beyond the reach of want or further exertion. Children came to bless his lot, five of whom remained to see him leave the shores of time while three were waiting to welcome him to the harbor of eternity.

His creed was that of the Friends, a denomination to which he once belonged, and his whole compass of conduct seemed based on the principles of love and good will towards man. But while in the midst of usefulness and the anticipation of a happy old age, he was stricken by a lingering malady that sapped his vital powers and clouded his intellect. But his sufferings are now over and he is at rest. Long will he be missed from his place, and time alone can dry the mourner's tear. But though the places which have known him will know him no more forever, though the worn body has returned to earth and the weary feet have ceased their wonderings, though the right arm has lost its cunning and the busy brain its devise, the spirit once animating these, still remain abroad in our midst, pointing to heights yet unattained, to progress still in store, and radiating through our own, the lives of generations to come, for in God's wisdom no good dies with its occasion. JOSEPHA