36. Mystery Monday: Moses and the Gold Rush

    On page 48 of his 1937 genealogy, George W. O'Neill says that Moses A. O'Neill, son of John and Anne Horton O'Neill, "made a trip to the far west in quest of gold and after some years returned rich, rich in experience, and with a limited amount of the yellow earth."
    We know nothing of this period of Moses' life--where did he go? did he prospect in California?
He would have been 16 when gold was discovered in 1848. So that is our mystery for today: What happened to Moses in his trip to the West? He returned to Kansas and became a physician--and how did that happen, too?

Moses O'Neil Headstone, Douglas Co., KS