Gravestone Now Marks Final Resting Place Of Rickshaw Inventor

The grave of a man who might have invented the rickshaw finally has a proper marker. The great-great-grandson of Jonathan Goble has lugged the gravestone to Goble’s gravesite in Bellefontaine cemetery in St. Louis. Goble was a member of Commodore Perry’s expedition that opened Japan to western trade in 1854. He returned to Japan as a Baptist minister. Legend has it that he invented the rickshaw to help transport his ailing wife, who eventually died in Japan. Goble eventually returned to the United States and died in St. Louis in 1896.