Mr. Gifford Dies

Secretary of State's Father Been Failing.

Pioneer of Nez Perce

Early Settled on Reservation, Leaves Large Family - Body Will Be Brought Home.

Boise, Dec. 19 - Seth Gifford, father of Secretary of State Gifford, died at noon today at the home of his son, 1212 Fort street. Mr. Gifford had been in ill health for several days but had appeared to be on the way to recovery when death came. Death resulted from heart disease, and the intest attack came one night while Mr. Gifford was on duty as night caretaker of the state house.

He called his son, and it was found advisable to remove him to the hospital where he had remained until Friday. Finding that the attack seemed to be passing and feeling that the patient would recover more rapidly at home, the physician allowed him to leave the hospital. Saturday morning he appeared in better appetite than since his attack and went out for a bit of fresh air and exercise. It was but a short time after he came in that he passed away.

Mr. Gifford was of those pioneers who followed the frontier westward. Born in Morgan county, Ohio, November 28, 1847, he was only a child when his parents moved in 1850 to Cedar county, Iowa, where Mr. Gifford grew to manhood. Though but a lad of 16 he enlisted toward the end of the civil war and served until its close.

In 1885 he moved to the Black Hills in South Dakota, and ten years later came on to Idaho, where he was among the first to settle on the Nez Perce reservation. He sold the tract he took up there and platted the townsite of Gifford, near Lewiston, where he lived until three years ago, when he came to Boise with his elder son.

One brother, John, living in Minneapolis; two sisters, Mrs. Ruth Malone, of West Liberty, Iowa, and Mrs. Eliza Swart, of Griswold, Iowa, and eight children survive him. The children are W. L. Gifford, Boise; Mrs. D. D. Middleton, Sodaville; Mrs. W. F. Davis, Lewiston; Mrs. Arthur Chasteen, Gifford, and Burton, Bonnie, Millie and Frances, all of whom are living at Gifford.