Patrick McLene Gass was born at Falling Springs on June 12, 1771, to Mary McLene and Benjamin Gass, grew up in a Scotch-Irish family that moved from Maryland to western Pennsylvania and then to Catfish Camp, and developed the physical strength, quick learning, and frontier survival skills that later distinguished him. In 1792 he took his drafted father's place in Virginia's Captain Caton's Company of Rangers and fought under General “Mad Anthony” Wayne, then made a hazardous keelboat trip to New Orleans, saw President Washington preparing troops for the Whiskey Rebellion, apprenticed as a carpenter in Mercersburg, met the young James Buchanan there, enlisted as an Army private in 1799 under General Alexander Hamilton, and while stationed at Kaskaskia in 1803 met Captain Meriwether Lewis, who selected him in January 1804 at age 32 as the oldest member chosen for the Corps of Discovery after interceding with Captain Bissell. Gass kept a journal throughout the expedition despite little formal schooling, was elected sergeant on Aug. 22, 1804 after the death of Sgt. Charles Floyd in what was the first vote west of the Mississippi held by Americans, led construction of Camp Dubois, Fort Mandan, and Fort Clatsop, built canoes, huts, and wagons, took part in Lewis's failed iron boat experiment on June 23, 1805, commanded the main body during part of the return in March 1806, and reached St. Louis on Sept. 23, 1806 after two years, four months, and ten days on an 8,000-mile journey marked by extreme temperatures, hunger, disease, and wilderness dangers. One of the few members of the expedition able to read and write, he entrusted his journal to Wellsburg teacher David McKeehan for editing and publication, and when it appeared in 1807 it became the first public account of the expedition, popularized Jefferson's phrase “Corps of Discovery,” was translated into French and German, printed in England, sold for $1 a copy, and later survived only in print after the original handwritten journal was destroyed in an 1893 flood. Gass returned to military service in 1807 and served in western frontier conflicts and in Canada through 1815, fighting in the War of 1812 at Lundy's Lane where a splinter from a falling tree cost him sight in one eye. After decades of adventure and military service he settled in Wellsburg and Pierce's Run, worked as a brewery manager, ferry tender, millworker, caretaker, stray horse hunter, and farmer, married Maria Hamilton at age 60, had seven children in fifteen years before her death from measles in 1847, traveled unsuccessfully to Washington in 1855 to seek pension reform for older soldiers, volunteered for the Mexican War, tried to enlist in the Union Army during the Civil War at age 91, and died on April 2, 1870, at age 98 as the last surviving member of the Corps of Discovery, after a life that spanned from before the Revolutionary War through the Civil War.