George Milton Moser (born 1830) married Elizabeth Bailey (born 1839) who was a neighbor of his in Tennessee, sometime around 1858. Their daughter, Emily Alice Moser, was born in Tennessee in 1862. They soon moved to Kentucky, and George served in the Union army for several months during the Civil War. They were still living in Kentucky when Elizabeth gave birth to a son named Anderson in 1865. In 1867 another daughter, Sarah, was born. Later that year the little family moved to Arkansas. While living there, another daughter, Lorra, was born in 1868.
While living in Arkansas, the Mosers became acquainted with Robert and Eleanor White. The two families joined a wagon train in 1873 and headed west. Somewhere in Oklahoma the wagon train made camp where the water was impure. Some of the party became ill and several children died, including two Moser children. One of them must have been five-year-old Lorra, but I don’t know who the other Moser child could have been. The Whites lost a four-year-old girl. It was becoming late in the season, and the disheartened group returned to Arkansas.
In July of 1874 Elizabeth gave birth to another daughter, Eva, in Arkansas.
Another wagon train started west in 1876. Both the Moser and White families were again in this group. By this time, Elizabeth was pregnant again.
Somewhere along the way some of the people in the wagon train turned back, leaving only the Moser and White families to proceed to Idaho.
At Laramie, Wyoming they met a man who told them about the Council Valley and how it was a sportsman’s paradise with grass waist high, plenty of water, fish and wild game. This sparked their interest and evidently convinced them to make Council Valley their destination.
They arrived at Boise at the end of August.
From the Idaho Statesman, September 2, 1876: “Mr. Robert P. White, of Dover, Pope County, Arkansas, with his wife and two children, arrived here Sunday evening. Mr. George Moser and family, wife and four children, came with him. They came with ox teams and were five months and eight days on the road; lost one yoke of oxen but otherwise had very good luck, and their cattle are in fair condition. They intend to stop here and would like to get work in town, and another spring get farms to work. They appear to be good rustlers and we trust they will find employment and realize their full expectations in coming to this favored country.”
The Whites, indeed, stayed in Boise until the following summer, but the Mosers went on north to the Council Valley.
At that time, valleys along the Weiser River had been settled as far north as Indian Valley. The difficulty of getting a wagon over the hills along the Middle Fork of the Weiser had prevented settlement of the Council Valley. It would be interesting to know why the Mosers were determined to establish a home here after they realized its remoteness. One thing that had to have been on their minds was that trouble with Indians was far from over in the region, and they would have recently become aware of Custer’s disaster in Montana just four months earlier.
How Elizabeth managed to endure the arduous months-long journey while pregnant, we can only imagine. Somewhere along the way (probably near Falk’s Store on the Payette River) only two weeks before their arrival in the Council Valley in October of 1876, she had given birth to a girl they named Mary Ida. So the last part of her odyssey involved caring for a newborn. Her oldest surviving daughter, Emily would have been 14, so she would have helped with the baby and caring for two-year-old Eva.
The Mosers were able to get their two ox-drawn wagons up the south side of what we now know as Mesa Hill, but the steeper north side that dropped off into the Middle Fork was a bigger challenge. George went back to Indian Valley and borrowed a plow, with which he made a ditch down the side of one of the ridges in a way that enabled him to put the upper wagon wheels in that ditch to keep the wagons from overturning as they descended the ridge. That crude trail, improved into a road that became known as the “Moser Grade,” continued to be the only road leading to Council Valley until about 1920.
There was already an established pack trail up the Weiser River and on to the gold camps at Warren and Florence, so the Mosers probably followed it anyplace where it was wide and level enough for a wagon. And that pack trail almost certainly followed an ancient Indian trail.
As the Moser family came to the present-day site of Council, that ancient trail forked, just after crossing a small creek that flowed down from the eastern foothills and ran between two small, rocky hills. At this point, one fork of the trail angled northwest to cross the Weiser River and proceed up Hornet Creek and on to the Snake River.
The other fork turned east before immediately turning north around the east foot of the hill, very much like Galena Street does today. This fork of the trail went on to Meadows Valley, Payette Lake, Warren, etc. That trail north was well traveled. Since Warren had swollen to a population of about 5,000, pack trains of up to 100 animals sometimes traveled this route, just to supply the town with flour from John Cuddy’s mill near present-day Cambridge.
Continued next week.
100 years ago
March 21, 1924
A. J. Adams bought the Cambridge Barbershop of from Fred Newman.
A girl was born to Mr. and Mrs. Charles Fry of Mesa on March 17.
Died: Mrs. Maria Flory, wife of H. A. Flory, 3 miles from Cambridge. Burial in the Cambridge Cemetery.
Died: Alfred Schmid, age 33, at his parents’ home in Goodrich on March 15. He was born in Germany and came to Goodrich with his parents in 1900. He is survived by his parents, one sister, Mrs. Earl H. Gallant, and one brother, William, all of Goodrich. Burial in the Salubria Cemetery.
Died: John L. Frymyer, a prominent rancher near Cambridge for many years. He was born in Virginia in 1861 and came to Idaho in 1900.
A boy was born to Mr. and Mrs. Jack Keithly on March 20 at Ontario.
Midvale – “The post office at Wilburus has been moved from the McFadden place to the George Walker place.”
Married at Weiser: Mr. Jacob Schwabauer of Cambridge and Mrs. Roucher of Canada.
75 years ago
March 24, 1949
At a meeting of the County Committee on School Reorganization, a plan for the reorganization of the Midvale-Cambridge, Indian Valley area was approved. The plan was accepted by the County School Reorganization Board at a meeting held in Weiser Tuesday night.
A girl was born to Mr. and Mrs. Rex Neramore at Council.
A girl named Copen Ruth was born to Mr. and Mrs. Robert McPherson at Weiser on March 20.
Arco, Idaho has been chosen by the Atomic Energy Commission as the site for a national atomic energy reactor testing station.
“Due to the fact that there was no frost on the ground when snow came last fall, not much flooding resulted when the huge piles of snow and the deep snow on the level areas melted this spring. The south slopes of the hills are already green and stock men will soon turn stock out to the hills for grazing.”
Mrs. Caroline Campbell of New Meadows has been visiting at the homes of her daughters, Mrs. R. T. Whiteman and Mrs. Charles Organ.
49 years ago
March 20, 1975
Died: Marie Jelinek Cada, 84, at the Weiser nursing home. Born in Czechoslovakia in 1890, she came to the United States in 1911. She married Tony Cada in 1912 at Parma, and they moved to Crane Creek near Midvale in 1913.
Married in Boise on March 5: Harold Johnson and Gladys Manning, both of Indian Valley.
25 years ago
March 25, 1999
The Cambridge High School sophomore class is planning a mural located on the outside of the gym by the main entrance. Pictured will be a bulldog with “Home of the Bulldogs” around it. They also plan a sign located in the field in front of the elementary school.
Local schoolchildren performed a Missoula Children’s Theater play, “The Fisherman and His Wife.”
Died: Paula Diane Shaw Dunham, 37 of Indian Valley.
Died: Thelma Francis (Moore) Whitaker. Born at Athena, Oregon in 1908, she was a nurse at Council, Idaho and Ontario, Oregon and the surrounding areas.
