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:''Not related to John Gregg, Confederate general and namesake of Gregg County, Texas'' Josiah Gregg (19 July 1806 – 25 February 1850) was a merchant, explorer, naturalist, and author of ''Commerce of the Prairies'' about the American Southwest and Northern Mexico regions. He collected many previously undescribed plants on his merchant trips and during the Mexican-American War after which he went to California. He reportedly died of a fall from his mount due to starvation near Clear Lake, California, on 25 February 1850 after a cross-country expedition which fixed the location of Humboldt Bay. ==Early years== Josiah Gregg was born on 19 July 1806 in Overton County, Tennessee, the youngest son of seven children of Harmon and Susannah (Smelser) Gregg.〔Palmquist, Peter E., Thomas R. Kailbourn, (Pioneer Photographers from the Mississippi to the Continental Divide ), Stanford University Press, 2005, page 287, ISBN 9780804740579, accessdate 10 March 2013〕〔Anderson, H. Allen, (Gregg, Josiah ), Texas State Historical Association Handbook of Texas Online, accessed 17 February 2013.〕 Six years later his family moved to Howard County, Missouri.〔 At age 18, Gregg was a school teacher at Liberty, Missouri until moving again with his family to Independence a year later in 1825.〔 In Liberty, he studied law and surveying until his health declined from "consumption and chronic dyspepsia" in 1830.〔 Because of his failing health, Gregg followed his doctor's recommendation and traveled to Santa Fe, New Mexico on a trail beginning at Van Buren, Arkansas in a merchant caravan in 1831.〔 Once in what would become New Mexico Territory in 1850, 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 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 natural history and human culture 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.".〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Josiah Gregg」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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