Mr. Rose came to Carthage in the fall of 1866 and purchased a house on Lincoln street.

In the spring of 1867 he sent for his family in Indiana. They came to St. Louis by train and from there traveled by boat to Malta Bend, Saline county, Missouri. There they purchased a team of horses and wagon, then overland with their household goods to Carthage.

Mr. Rose was with the Davison (or Davis)-Murphy Company Store for a short time after moving to Carthage. The firm later moved to Joplin so he established the Rose Mercantile Company which he conducted until his 1901 death, however, operating another twenty-eight years at same location.

Census: 1870, age 37 Marion township, Jasper county, Missouri with wufe, her brother & three children, wealth of $4,000 real estate & $7,000 personal, a clerk in store.

Census: 1880, age 47, Carthage, Jasper county, Missouri with wife & five children on north Lincoln street, a dry goods merchant.

~ Member of 1st Board of Directors of Carthage's first Y M C A in 1890.

Census: 1900, age 67 Carthage, Jasper county, Missouri with wife, a department store merchant.

Photo at right courtesy of the Powers Museum of Carthage, shows store's last location after first on the north side near east end, then the west side near the center, then south side near east end and finally around 1882 to new building at northeast corner of what now are, Main & Third streets, on the north side of town's square following the north side devastating fire of the 1880s in the Danton Block, once housing the 1890 created Y M C A on 2nd floor when building was owned by James Luke. His store having served the pepole for a total of nearly sixty years, almost fifty at last location which later housed Dryden Reynolds hardware store for many of the later years.

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OBITUARY
CARTHAGE EVENING PRESS
DECEMBER 14, 1901

R. H. ROSE HAS PASSED AWAY
OLDEST AND MOST SUCCESSFUL MERCHANT IN CARTHAGE

HEART FAILED AT MIDNIGHT

Pioneer Dry Goods Man and Sunday School Worker Died Quietly as He Had Lived
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R. H. Rose, the pioneer dry goods merchant of Carthage, died at midnight last night from heart trouble and the entire city mourns his departure.

Mr. Rose was at the store yesterday cheerful and ambitious as ever, predicting a record breaking business for today. At 5 o'clock he went home, ate supper, and sat at his open grate reading. He retired about 10 o'clock, and at 11 p.m. awoke with a cough, got up and took some cough medicine, laid down again, then got up with the remark that he couldn't get his breath, dressed himself and went downstairs where Mrs. Rose fixed his chair for him at the fire. She called their son-in-law and daughter, Mr. and Mrs. Fred Hodson who live next door, and they called Dr. Rhoads by telephone. Mr. Rose soon lay down on the parlor lounge and when the doctor arrived just at midnight and suggested a hypodermic injection, the heart being very weak. "You're running the job," said Mr. Rose characteristically, and he arose and pulled off his own coat to bare his arm. Five minutes after the injection, at 12:10, he said: "I can't get my breath," and he quietly passed away, apparently without any suffering, and with far less distress than he experienced in a similar attack about 6 weeks ago.

Anticipating such an emergency after his previous serious attack, Mr. Rose formed the R. H. Rose Mercantile Company that, for one reason, the store should go right ahead the day after his funeral. Furthermore he wished his many faithful employees to share in the continued prosperity of the enterprise they have helped to build up.

The name R. H. Rose has come to be a local synonym not alone for business integrity and honor, but for unbounded courtesy and respect for his employees. To him his store force was one large family who he rejoiced to befriend and take personal pride in. Thus as in his public life, he was a man of the people. Ostentation was not one of his traits.

He was the oldest dry goods merchant, not only of Carthage but of the southwest. In 1866 Mr. Rose came here from LaPorte, Indiana and in 1867 moved here with his family. He was first employed by a pioneer firm of Davis & Murphy on the site of his present store, but in March 1873 he opened up a small dry goods store of his own about where A. B. Deutsch is now located, subsequently he moved to the west, then to the south side, and in 1882 back to this present corner, where the small dry goods shop had grown into an immense department store employing 30 to 35 people.

When Mr. Rose first came to Carthage he bought his present residence site at Central and Lincoln, and has lived there ever since. While he was in Indiana after his family Mr. Rose was elected superintendent of the First Methodist Sunday school, then meeting in the old courtroom, later a saloon building, on the west side of the square, and he has been faithfully identified with the Sunday school ever since, as either superintendent or assistant superintendent, going the last year in his carriage to the church, feeling unable to walk. He was ever zealous as a Christian worked and active in the affairs of the Methodist Church.

Reginald Heber Rose was born at Lynchburg, Virginia, September 15, 1832. On New Year's Day just 40 years ago he was married to Miss Doshea Early who survives him. Their children have been;
Heber who died at 19
Elizabeth
G. A.
Robert and
Anne who is now Mrs. Fred Hodson
There is an aged sister of Mr. Rose in New Jersey that could not come here.

Miss Elizabeth, who is at Terre Haute, Indiana and Robert at New York City