Kit Carson County, Colorado
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Kit Carson County Pioneers:

Peter Gruber , 8 South 49 West

Peter cash-claimed a quarter in 28, 8S 49W in 1891. He also had a record of a timber claim, but it wasn't completed, per BLM records.

Possibly the Peter Gruber in 1900 Lewis County, Missouri, farming, born July 1860 in MIssouri, married twelve years to Lizzie M. Oct 1862 Missouri. margaret Oct 1888, homas Nov 1889, Walter Oct 1896 and George March 1898 were all born in Missouri.
His obituary, per # 5081671, said he lived his entire life -1860-1938 in Lewis County.
But he could have made the trip to Colorado to file a cash claim....

ANOTHER POSSIBLE
"Among the old-time snake hunters and peddlers of rattlesnake oil was Peter “Rattlesnake Pete” Gruber (1858–1932). As related in Arch Merrill’s Shadows on the Wall (1952), Pete was born in Oil City, Pennsylvania, the eldest of a pioneer oil refiner’s nine children. He would later claim, that, while a boy hiking in the local hills, he had come upon an old Indian woman from the Seneca reservation. Dragging behind her on a rope a big dead rattlesnake, she explained to Pete how she would extract the fatty oil, which was used to treat rheumatism, stiff joints, even earache—among other afflictions. Impressed by the boy’s interest, she even gave him the snake’s skin. Pete later learned from the Indians how to capture the rattlers, and from the medicine men how to use them for various folk remedies.
When his father left the oil business, “Rattlesnake Pete,” as he was now known, joined him in his new venture, operating a restaurant and saloon. Soon, Pete began to create a museum in the emporium. He displayed caged rattlers, then added a miniature oil well display—hand-whittled, painted, and assembled by Pete and his dentist friend “Doc” Reynolds. When a flood and fire struck Oil City in June 1892, Pete removed to Rochester where he established his own combined saloon and museum of curiosities (see second picture, a 1907 postcard). "

1901 The Strand magazine





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