David Green Gose
b. 8 January 1869, Martinsville, Morgan County, Indiana, to David and Sarilda C. (McDaniel) Gose
d. 17 June 1944

m. 1894, Mercer County, Missouri
Margaret Ellen “Ellie” Ewing
b. 10 May 1869, Mercer County, Missouri, to James Scott and Nancy Abigail (Austin) Ewing
d. 7 December 1958, Spickard, Mercer County, Missouri

Children with Margaret Ellen Ewing:

• Zelma Rena (b. 27 August 1897)
• Coda Scott (b. 15 May 1903)
• Edra Fern (b. 8 October 1909)

David moved with his parents to Mercer County, Missouri, in a covered wagon when he was eight years old.

In 1893, before he married, David Gose joined his brother Perry and two men who were to become his brothers-in-law, Samuel Madison and John Franklin Ewing, on the Cherokee Strip Run. John found land and homesteaded there, but Dave, Sam, and Perry returned to Missouri where Dave farmed. In 1918, he and a partner, Lawrence Austin, developed a coalmine on a tract of land on the Austin farm that furnished coal for a number of years for Spickard and the surrounding areas. Then in 1919, Dave bought the Ballew Grocery, Hardware, and Implement Store in Spickard, Grundy County, Missouri.

Looking for investment possibilities in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, Dave took Ellie and Edra and a nephew of Ellie’s with him on a train trip to Texas. This was the time of the great influenza epidemic, and many of the people on the train contracted influenza. On the way home, Ellie was hospitalized in Kansas City, and later Dave also became ill.

In the 1920’s Dave owned a movie house in Spickard, Missouri. His son Coda and Willard Tracy ran the projector; daughter Zelma took tickets, daughter Edra ushered, and niece Blanch McDaniel played the piano for the silent movies.

Submitted by:
Dawne Slater-Putt, from Grundy (MO) Gleanings, vol. 10, number 1, fall 1993, pp. 3-4