"An Illustrated History of Skagit and Snohomish Counties."  Interstate
Publishing Company, 1906.  p. 590.
 
THOMAS GATES

     is one of the men who after participating in the War of the Rebellion found
peace and prosperity in the rich farming land of the Skagit valley. He was born
in Cole County, Missouri, on November 7, 1841, the son of Abel and Mary (Burns)
Gates. The father was born in the old Bay state, July 4, 1787, and had reached
the stature of manhood when the impressment of American seamen precipitated the
War of 1812. Into this cause young Gates threw himself with a will joining
Company A, Fifth Rifle Regiment, in which he was chosen lieutenant, and saw some
of the hardest fighting engaged in against the British at New Orleans, White
Plains and elsewhere; his record on being mustered out showing many deeds of
individual gallantry. The elder Gates was one of the early settlers in Missouri,
where he engaged in the packing business and farmed. He passed through the
stirring times when that state was the battle ground of the slavery question,
when the alignment of sentiment between the North and the South was first
becoming drawn, and closed his life there November 2, 1870. Mrs. Gates died in
Missouri in 1888, leaving five sons: James, Thomas, Samuel, Jasper and Asaph.
Her father also fought in the war of 1812. With the exception of the time he was
in the army, Thomas Gates lived with his parents on the farm, attending school
and working until he came to Skagit county, in 1873, following his brother
Jasper, who had come on to the Puget sound country. Young Gates enlisted in the
Thirty-ninth Missouri infantry as a private. This regiment was in the massacre
at Centralia, Missouri, in which four entire companies were wiped out by the
attacking force, with the exception of four men and one officer. The command did
not participate in any of the great campaigns of the war, but was kept in
reserve in its home state, except once they were taken down into Tennessee and
back to home. Mr. Gates was mustered out in July, 1865. On his arrival in Skagit
county, Mr. Gates went to work for a short time on Whidby island, but returned
and worked in the only logging camp which at that time existed in the Skagit
valley. In 1882 he preempted a place and homesteaded it later. With the
assistance of his children, he cleared forty acres and sold the remainder of the
one hundred and sixty contained in his original filing. When Mr. Gates commenced
operations on this land he had the only wagon in that section of the country,
and no roads to use that on. Those were the days of hard struggles on the part
of the settlers.
    In 1869, in Adair county, Missouri, Mr. Gates married Miss Martha J.
Walters, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Lewis and Betsey (Day) Walters, natives of
Tennessee, who passed the greater part of their lives in Missouri. Four children
have been born to Mr. and Mrs. Gates, Mary Elizabeth, Nellie May, Ira Braxton
and Thomas J. Gates. The Gates farm contains forty acres of land, all under
cultivation and devoted to a general farming proposition, amply stocked with
horses and cattle. Mr. Gates is a member of the Grand Army of the Republic and
says that he is not ashamed to be called a Jefferson Democrat. His life has been
one of earnestness and endeavor, and as he recalls the vicissitudes through
which he has passed, it is with a feeling of deep satisfaction and gratitude
that he has been permitted to accomplish as much as he has amid such varied
conditions.

     
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Submitted to the Washington Biographies Project in September 2007 by Diana
Smith.  Submitter has no additional information about the person(s) or family
mentioned above.