Conrad Rose Mansion/Jones & Jones Funeral Home

Conrad Rose: Brusque Manner Hid a Heart of Gold

One of the most prominent “people of our past,” whose influence spanned many facets of the North Central Washington community, was Conrad Rose. Rose served on the city’s first school board and the first Chelan County Commission; he was a member of the Elks service club; he extended credit to scores of people during the Depression, never to be repaid. Historian John Gellatly called him “one of the most public-spirited men Wenatchee has ever had. No good cause was ever turned down, whether it be some project undertaken by the chamber of commerce, a church project, the YMCA, or any other worthy community enterprise.” But it was as a tree fruit wholesaler for which Conrad Rose was best known, because his tireless marketing of Wenatchee-area fruit was crucial to the success of the local tree fruit industry.

Born in Trenton, Missouri on February 6, 1862, Conrad Rose moved to Washington state at age 19 to work as a locomotive fireman on the Northern Pacific Railway. He met and married a young Englishwoman, Elizabeth Milner, in 1885 and the couple settled in Ellensburg. In those days, according to historian L.M. Hull, Conrad was “slender, boyish and bashful.”

Conrad was promoted to engineer in 1887, assigned to the Tacoma-to-Pasco run. One day his train rounded a bend and ran squarely into a huge boulder which had slid onto the tracks. He and his fireman suffered only minor injuries, but the engine was damaged and Conrad was blamed. A few months later, an engine’s brakes failed and Conrad ran his train into the caboose of another. Again, no one was seriously hurt and the incident was not his fault, but Conrad decided he’d had enough of railroading. Not wanting to wait until his name was cleared of all responsibility, as it eventually was, Conrad quit the Northern Pacific. Elizabeth was glad to hear it. She was constantly worried about train wrecks and did not like his frequent absences from home, especially after the birth of their first two sons, Tom and George.

Along with his brother, Conrad made a horseback trip across Colockum Pass to the Wenatchee Valley to investigate new horizons. He purchased 160 acres east of Miller Street (now part of the Grandview Addition) from John Canfor and went back to tell Elizabeth the news. In July 1887 they packed their kids and household goods into a wagon and headed over Colockum for their new home. It was lonely at first for Elizabeth, who was one of only a handful of women then living in Wenatchee, and she was not impressed with the barren landscape and two-room shack.

The couple cleared seven acres of sagebrush and planted wheat, oats, potatoes and a small vegetable garden. With only a trickle of water for irrigation, however, the crops failed. Like the other Wenatchee families, the Roses hauled drinking water in barrels from the Columbia River, summer and winter. They bought food and supplies from Sam Miller’s trading post at the foot of Miller Street, supplemented by garden vegetables and occasionally by venison when Conrad could get away to hunt.

A sympathetic neighbor gave the city-bred Elizabeth a few chickens, including a hen that was sitting on some eggs. “I didn’t know anything about chickens,” Elizabeth later told Wenatchee Daily World reporter Karl Stoffel. “This woman told me to put some kerosene and lard on the setting hen if she got lice. She got the lice all right, but I forgot about the lard. I poured kerosene on the hen and on the eggs. That poor old hen was so patient. She sat, and sat, and sat until she was so skinny and scrawny she could only totter around, but nothing hatched. The kerosene had killed the eggs.”

Neither Rose was cut out for farming. Figuring he was better at selling other people’s farm products than growing his own, Conrad started a small freight-hauling business that entailed frequent trips to Ellensburg. Once when he was gone, Elizabeth woke up in the middle of the night at the sound of the door knob twisting. Conrad’s gun was hanging on the wall. Although she had never shot a gun, she made a lot of noise getting it down from the wall and pointed it at the door. “I would have shot right through the door if that knob had twisted again,” she later said. But the prowler sneaked away.

“I decided I wouldn’t stay alone in that house (with her children) another night. I had a neighbor come to stay with me. She had five children. They were half wild. That was worse than the scare, so I told her she could go home. That night I made a bed for myself and the children on top of a hay stack near the house. We slept there two nights.” (WD World April 25, 1938)

The Roses’ third son, Philip, was born in February of 1890 during one of Wenatchee’s most severe winters on record. Massive snow drifts and temperatures reaching 30 below zero decimated livestock and hampered travel. Conrad burned some of his fence posts as firewood. Philip Rose is considered to be the first white baby born in Wenatchee.

Around this time, the Seattle-based Wenatchee Development Company was acquiring land for the Great Northern Railway to build a line through Wenatchee. Conrad Rose sold the east half of his 160 acres for $1,500. He later agreed to sell another 50 acres to the developers for $5,000. After some arm-twisting, Conrad traded the last 30 acres of his original parcel to the development company for 40 acres of fertile land between Red Apple Road and Russell Street that had a water right from Philip Miller’s ditch; the company sweetened the proposition with an extra $1,000. These land deals put the Roses in an excellent financial position.

Probably learning some tips from pioneer orchardist Miller, who had originally owned the land, Conrad planted 30 acres of his new farm in peach and apricot trees. In 1893 he had a large enough crop to ship peaches on the newly completed Great Northern Railway. Success with this venture led him to broker other fruit sales via rail. Partnering with Leroy Wright, he bought and sold produce with such success that in 1899 he formed the Wenatchee Produce Company. In 1901 they set up headquarters in a small office on Wenatchee Avenue next to the Morris Building.

One day that summer Conrad walked by the railroad depot, consumed in thought. Three young women with suitcases stood at the station, preparing to visit friends in Leavenworth. “Why the frown?” one of them asked him. “My business is getting ahead of my brain,” he replied. He told them he needed someone to keep his books. “I’ll help,” said young Mrs. Barry. Delighted, Conrad escorted her to his old two-horse wagon and took her home to leave her luggage. They returned to the office and she went right to work.

By 1904 the Wenatchee Produce Company was so swamped with trade that Rose purchased a whole city block on North Wenatchee Avenue and built a complex of warehouses, storerooms and sales offices. The property extended 400 feet along the avenue and down to the railroad tracks, where nine freight cars could be loaded at a time. With this efficient shipping enterprise, Wenatchee fruit could be shipped to Seattle and all along the Great Northern line to Minnesota – and the city began to call itself the Apple Capital of the World.

Mrs. Barry did the bookwork in dissolving the partnership of Rose and Wright, then prepared a set of books for Rose alone. One of her record books was Wenatchee’s first loose-leaf ledger. It was a novelty because pages could be removed or inserted; people would come by the office to marvel at it, Mrs. Barry later recalled.

Chelan County commissioner

The Washington state legislature created Chelan County in 1899 from parts of Kittitas and Okanogan counties. The governor appointed Dennis Strong of Mission (now Cashmere), Spencer Boyd of Chelan and Dr. George Hoxsey of Leavenworth as commissioners. Hoxsey chose not to qualify for the position, being too busy with his practice as Great Northern Railway’s physician – so the governor appointed an Entiat man, who also did not quality. Boyd and Strong chose Conrad Rose to be the third commissioner. He took the oath of office on Feb. 23, 1900. The county having little in its coffers, it was a good thing that all three commissioners were extremely frugal and fiscally conservative men, according to John Gellatly, who served as the county’s first auditor and deputy clerk.

I learned first hand the sterling qualities of Conrad Rose. It was here that I learned that there is such a word as a capital NO, as this board chairmaned by Mr. Rose could turn down a request for aid to some group with less qualms than anything I had ever noted before. I am confident that the financial pace set by Mr. Rose and his associates accounts in a large part for the sound financial status which Chelan County has maintained through the years.

Historian L.M. Hull stated that Rose was a very active and influential member of the commission for a number of years. Rose also was elected to the first board of directors of the Wenatchee School District when it was formed in 1905.

Shipping business thrives

Business continued to grow at the Wenatchee Produce Company. Rose expanded his sales inventory to include seed, farm and orchard supplies, fuel, animal feed, and machinery; later he added trucks and Studebaker automobiles. He built warehouses in outlying communities such as Entiat, Cashmere and Malaga. (The Malaga warehouse was a durable building of native stone that still stands today.) After a rail line was extended into Okanogan County in 1914, Rose established warehouses all along the Methow, Okanogan and Columbia rivers wherever orchardists brought their harvest to the railroad. They all knew and trusted Conrad Rose.

Rose had a direct, no-nonsense manner and was not averse to swearing. Some considered him brusque, even grouchy – but he was not one to mask his honest opinion in wishy-washy language. A 1930 interview in the Wenatchee Daily World quoted him as saying he did not attend church and didn’t consider the Bible to be a divine book. He opposed Prohibition and had no sympathy “for the present church lobby which is trying to influence the people’s representatives on the liquor question. If the church has any business, let her attend to her business. Politics and national issues are most certainly out of her line.” (April 2, 1930)

Rose told the newspaper reporter, “If I have any religion it consists in doing good.” By all accounts he was scrupulously honest and generous. Rose Reeves Fuller Mann, who came to Wenatchee in 1891 and became a successful businesswoman, declared, “The spirit of Christmas lived perennially in the heart of Conrad Rose.” She added, “He handled apples for everybody. We never thought of going to anybody else. We would pack those apples and turn them over to Conrad. He was strictly honest. He trusted people and tried to help them.”

In the early 1900s, while excavating for his large warehouse on North Wenatchee Avenue, Conrad struck a vein of water and installed a red hand pump. “It was a great boon, when safe drinking water was a scarcity and most domestic water had to be hauled in barrels from the Columbia River,” said Mrs. Mann, who lived just up the street with her first husband, O.B. Fuller. “Never drink a drop of river water again,” Conrad told her. To guarantee that she and O.B. had fresh water, he often delivered a bucket of freshly pumped water to their home.

Conrad Rose, one of the wealthiest men in North Central Washington, was known for his fairness in dealing with the farmers. Another account in the Wenatchee Daily World describes a typical day. (April 25, 1938)

Mr. Rose sits behind a big desk. The door to the office is always open. Growers come in and talk. He buys and sells their produce. He knows nearly every fruit raiser in the Wenatchee district. He has no agents or buyers in the field. This is how he works: A man with overalls and spray-covered shirt comes in. He’s an old timer. He has a paper bag of something which he lays on the desk. “Good morning, Mr. Rose. I came in to see you about these cherries. The Missus thinks they ought to be picked now. What do you think?” Rose opens the bag, picks out two or three cherries and eats them. “U-m-m. Not quite ready. No hurry. Pick ‘em Monday.” “That’s what I thought. I’ll get some lugs. About what’ll they be worth?” “Good price for Blacks. Annes all the same now. Six cents.” The grower goes out. Rose attacks a pile of papers on his desk. He is short and dynamic and would make an excellent Santa Claus without padding. Most always he presents a gruff and challenging front. To the uninitiated he’s apt to have the appearance of an irritated bruin. Those who know him and know the part he has played in building the fruit industry of the Wenatchee Valley, smile. “It wouldn’t be Conrad Rose if he acted any other way,” they say.

In 1918, when fruit prices crashed, Conrad averted disaster for the valley and the Great Northern by buying all the fruit and placing it in cold storage. Fortunately, prices rose in a few months and he was able to sell the fruit and make a small profit. But it was during the Great Depression that his sense of responsibility toward local growers kicked in. While most shipping companies refused credit to anyone, Rose used his personal fortune to keep the Wenatchee Produce Company open and loaned money to growers who asked for it. He accepted such items as radios, refrigerators, used Studebakers, orchard pumps and sprayers as collateral. Fruit prices were too low for growers to make any profits with which to pay him back, so hundreds of these loans were never repaid. Understanding the grim economic reality, Rose did not hound his debtors. His own fortune dwindled.

At one point Conrad was forced to borrow money from his brother-in-law. Though his family needed flour for bread, Conrad turned his thoughts to an impoverished three-year-old niece in Oregon. Anna Landringham recalled, It was Christmas, followed shortly by my birthday, and I did crave a doll – one with real hair and eyes that opened and closed…. I always wondered how Uncle Conrad knew? Probably, he just understood the needs of little girls…. Who knew that this Conrad Rose had such a tender heart? Who knew he was such a giver of gifts? And that needs of the heart exceed the need for bread? Conrad Rose did! That gift to me … brightened my childhood days and left an irradicable impact. (Dec. 24, 1966)

In 1937 Conrad became ill with cancer. He died on April 24, 1938. Businesses closed shop and some 550 community members attended the funeral service at Elks temple, with rites conducted by past exalted rulers including Ed Ferguson. Among them was John Gellatly, who later wrote: It is common knowledge here in the valley, by those who knew him, that through his methods of operating his fruit and produce business, he saved the homes of many of the smaller fruit growers when times really got tough because of the depression prices which prevailed at given intervals. No client of Conrad Rose ever went hungry, regardless of the prospect of being paid. He was actually too generous for his own good, as the liberal man he had been for the valley lost heavily during the latter days of his life; and it did not seem fair for a man who had done so much for others to gaini so little for himself during the many years in which he had been so active and so public spirited. The name Conrad Rose is synonymous with frugality, integrity, loyalty, patriotic fervor, square dealing, community service and many other characteristic attributes which he, by his daily conduct, built into the well being of Wenatchee for over a half century.

Conrad and Elizabeth Rose had seven children: Thomas, George, Philip, Edward, Mary, and twin sisters Moss and Maud.

SOURCES

Margaret Weed, “Malaga: Little Town in the Heart of Washington,” The Confluence, Spring 2004

John Gellatly

L.M. Hull

Polk Directories. Wenatchee, WA. 1907-2006.

Margaret Weed, “Malaga: Little Town in the Heart of Washington,” The Confluence, Spring 2004

Chris Rader, “Conrad Rose: Brusque Manner Hid a Heart of Gold,” The Confluence, Spring 2012

Hull, Lindley M.. A History of Central Washington - History of the Famous Wenatchee, Entiat, Chelan and Columbia Valleys. Shaw & Borden Company, 1929.