Edward Mosley

Who is Edward Mosley?

Edward Mosley was the second major American trader to arrive in Kansas in the late 1850s, following the arrival of A. J. Greenway in 1852. Mosley arrived with a companion surnamed Moxley, and the two built a trading "ranche" near the intersection of the Osage Trail and the Big Arkansas River, 14 miles northwest of the present location of Wichita.

The pair's substantial trading projects ended with the onset of the American Civil War. Mosley took to waylaying straggling Confederate soldiers and was eventually drowned while attempting to cross the Kansas River with stolen livestock. Mosley was killed by a group of Osage Nation and Cheyenne.

Mosley has a street named after him in downtown Wichita, so named by James Mead, who admired Mosley most out of all frontier traders. Mead described him as "a large, strong man with clear blue eyes and locks of black hair dangling to his shoulders - the most perfect specimen of physical manhood I ever saw."