Leaving Ft. Bridger, I now travel to the site of my grandmother Newcombe's birth in 1883.

 

The California Trail

The main California Trail route from Ft. Bridger would take the traveler northwest to Ft. Hall in Idaho. From there, one would go through City of Rocks to follow the Humboldt River to western Nevada near Pyramid Lake.

I took the Salt Lake Cutoff route. Modern highway I-80 allowed me to join the cutoff north of Salt Lake City and just south of Ogden. I-84 now follows the cutoff path around the northeast part of Great Salt Lake and into Idaho.

1869 - Promontary Point - the Golden Spike

I left I-84 just before entering Idaho to follow a path that was important in 1869, the path of the first transcontinental railroad to Promontary Summit, UT, where the Golden Spike ceremony joined the Central Pacific and Union Pacific Railroads.

 

Today, Utah highway 30 lies just north of the original Central Pacific route to the Nevada border.

Park Valley, UT - City of Rocks, ID, on the California Trail is at the upper left

I stopped for the night near a wide spot in the road called Park Valley where a rancher and his wife rolled out the welcome mat and even treated me to a barbeque party with neighboring ranchers.

How did I know them?

It turns out the rancher's wife is a family history researcher for the area. She had noticed on my family tree website that I had several Rowse and Gross family connections in the area. She contacted me by email, and asked if I could clarify the relationship of a grave marker she had located with the Rowse name on it.

We determined that the party was a cousin of my grandmother, born the same year (1883). He died as an infant. When I told her that my grandmother had been born in Terrace, now a ghost town, she said that she was familiar with the area as they rounded up stray cattle there from time to time. She then said she and her husband could guide me there if I was ever in the area. I showed up on their doorstep in July of 2012.

The Gross and Rowse families

Elizabeth Ann Rosevear Grose is my great-grandmother. Census records indicate that she emigrated from Cornwall, England to Utah with her parents in 1871. She was 10 years old at the time.

But wait, she was later married in Cornwall ???

My records showed that she married Jonathan Rowse in 1880, in Cornwall. It took some digging to find out that her mother had died in Utah in 1878. Thomasine Rosevear Grose was buried in the nearby Kelton, UT graveyard next to her brother John.

 

 After his wife's death, Joseph Gross packed up the family and returned to Cornwall where Elizabeth then met and married Jonathan Rowse. The couple emigrated, Elizabeth for the second time, in 1880. Both had family members already in the area.

Jonathan worked for the railroad in the maintenance shops at Terrace. The couple had two daughters, Charlotte, born in 1881, and Mary (my grandmother) born in 1883.

The trip to Terrace Cemetery

 

My gracious rancher hosts guided me to Terrace, about 36 miles from their ranch. We left at 6:00 AM on a Friday morning and soon I was walking the site. By 8:30 AM we were back at the main road and my hosts left me to go to Salt Lake City for weekend activities. I am forever indebted to them for their hospitality and their help. I never would have found Terrace without them.

Dave and Jeanne Morris at Terrace, UT Cemetery

 Evidence of the railroad's turntable, roundhouse and switch yard at Terrace

We didn't find any evidence of the former town near the cemetery during our visit, but later, as I was viewing satellite images of the area, I found the remains of the railroad maintenance facilities about two miles from the cemetery. I could use GPS to arrive at this spot should I ever want to visit.

Tragedy struck in 1898 when my grandmother was 15

As a young boy I remembered my grandmother's story of her father's death when she was a teenager.

The newspaper clipping the next day read as follows:

TWO MEN FATALLY HURT.

James Rouse, Roundhouse Foreman, and Peter Meaden, Car Repairer, the Victims.
Two men, James Rouse, roundhouse foreman, and Peter Meaden, car repairer, were killed at the Gartney turntable, thirty-seven miles west of Terrace, yesterday. Before the fatality a Southern Pacific engine ran off the turntable and plunged down the embankment, partly burying itself in the sand. The fireman and engineer narrowly escaped by jumping. A wrecking train came out from Terrace, and while to raise the wreck, the cable broke and struck Rouse and Meaden, with terrific force, crushing their skulls. Both men died in a very short time. The bodies were both taken to Ogden. The men were Masons, and the funerals will be conducted under the auspices of that organization.
Deseret Evening News, Salt Lake City, UT, Thursday, August 25, 1898, page 2

As often happens, Jonathan's last name is misspelled, and I guess he was using his middle name James, but I know it's the right guy because grandma told me so. The 1900 census showed Elizabeth and the two girls living in Ogden at the time.

The girls marry

Older sister Charlotte married Charles Gorman in Ogden in 1902.

My grandfather Newcombe emigrated from Nova Scotia in 1901, and was working the railroad from Ogden west. I don't know where he met my grandmother, but the two were married in 1904 in Carlin, NV, at the home of Mr and Mrs Gorman.

I'll continue following my Newcombe grandparents in the next segment.