After his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, Patrick Gass worked at many jobs, first in Ohio and then in what is now West Virginia.
Still a bachelor at age 60, he accepted a construction job from a man named Hamilton, at Wellsburg, and soon eloped with the man's 20-year-old daughter Maria. The couple settled in a rented cabin and Gass began farming.
They had seven children, six of whom survived into adulthood. When their last child was a baby, Maria died during a measles epidemic at age thirty-six.
Patrick was then seventy-five, but raised the children alone. Until nearly the end of his life, he walked four miles into Wellsburg to pick up his mail. He died at age ninety-nine, the last member of the expedition to die.
--Brock-Perry
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