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None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead: The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

“General Custer has elements of character which will develop…and, dear girl, some of that development rests with you.”

Elizabeth Custer’s friend Laura Noble about her relationship with George – January 1864

Elizabeth paraded proudly around a small table set with a pristinely polished silver tea service and silver dinnerware. The elegant tea service came from the men in George’s command, the 7^th Michigan Cavalry. The dinnerware was a present from the 1^st Vermont Cavalry. Both were not only generous wedding presents, but also a show of support for the boy General and his leadership skills.

Elizabeth adjusted a vase of wild flowers in the center of the plates and cups then stood back to admire the scene. Hanging over the table was large photograph of George, resplendent in a crisp uniform. Elizabeth smiled at the image the staring back at her. Eliza Brown, the Custer’s capable cook and maid, watched the delighted bride through a crack in the kitchen door continue to fuss with the items on the table in an effort to make everything as perfect as she could.

Outside the sturdy, two-story farm house in Culpepper County, Virginia near the small town of Stevensburg, where Elizabeth and her new husband made their home, a myriad of troops were hustling about. George rode into the winter encampment of the Union Army barking orders at his regiment to get to their bunks and prepare for the evening meal. Hundreds of soldiers rushed about doing the duties they were ordered. Many of the men that made up the crude post were young and eager, others were much more senior with gray hair and weathered faces. Elizabeth noted that George was an imposing figure among the troops, his uniform hung well on his tall frame. His saber and scabbard were strapped to his waist and held in place with a silk sash.

Before swinging easily out of his saddle George scanned the area beyond the prairie road leading to the campsite. In the near distance he could see numerous furrows of jet-black glistening sod and a lone farmer guiding a plow being pulled by a mule team over the soil. Smoke from a chimney on a house next to the field lifted lazy blue wreaths into the sky. George called out to one of his older officers and issued instructions Elizabeth could barely hear. She glided over to George’s side just as the soldier left to carry out his job. “Do they obey you?” she asked. “Yes,” George replied laughing, “and I shall reduce you to subjection sometime.” Elizabeth laughed out loud at the notion.

To learn more about Elizabeth Bacon Custer and her marriage to George Armstrong Custer read

None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead: The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

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None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead: The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

“Oh, Wifey, Wifey! One of those mustached, gift-striped and button critters will get our Libby yet.”

Judge Daniel Bacon to wife, Rhoda about the many young soldiers calling on their daughter Elizabeth

A full moon hovered over South Monroe Street and beams of light from the gigantic orb filtered though a cluster of clouds. Twenty-two year old George Armstrong Custer stumbled through the scene helped along by a friend who steadied his walk and kept him from falling. Both men were dressed in the uniform of the 5^th Cavalry and both had been drinking. George was drunk. It was late and apart from the two inebriated soldiers the street was deserted. It was the fall of 1861 and numerous leaves dropped off the massive trees lining the thoroughfare and drifted across the path the men followed.

George was making his way to his sister, Ann Reeds’s home where he had been staying while recovering from a slight illness contracted after the Battle of Bull Run. George had carried dispatches to the Union troops holding their position against the Confederate Army lined up along Bull Run Creek near a railroad center called Manassas Junction in Virginia. The battle ended when the Northern Army was ordered to fall back toward Washington. The retreat was marred by a downpour of rain that left George suffering with chills and fever. In a short time he was sent back to Monroe to recuperate, George’s condition improved and he ventured out to local taverns where his friends gathered.

Arm and arm with his school chum, an intoxicated George and his buddy staggered down the roadway, singing at the top of their lungs. The commotion woke his sister and she raced to the front window of her house, followed closely by her husband and children, to see who was disturbing the quiet, respectable neighborhood. George weaved back and froth over the stone street, laughing at his obvious lack of balance.

Judge Bacon, who had been standing on his porch smoking his pipe, noticed the pair of soldiers making their way toward the Reeds. He recognized George Custer’s tall, lanky frame and watched him wave goodbye to the friend who escorted him safely home. Disgusted by the behavior of a prominent military figure, the Judge marched back into his own house and closed the door hard behind him.

George was unaware that Judge Bacon had witnessed the scene. He also had no idea that Elizabeth was gazing out of her upstairs bedroom window at the same moment. At the time she wasn’t surprised at the sight, having seen other young men who’d had too much to drink, she consider his actions standard fair.

To learn more about Elizabeth Bacon Custer and her marriage to George Armstrong Custer read

None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead: The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

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The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

On June 27, 1876, Captain Frederick William Benteen spotted a cluster of white objects lying in a heap on a hill north of the Bighorn River in southern Montana. Benteen, a 42-year old career Army officer with a shock of white hair combed dramatically back over his long, bare forehead and harassed face, urged his horse slowly toward the knoll. A party of dutiful soldiers followed along behind him, their angry silence filled the air. As Captain Benteen inched his horse cautiously onto the site it became clear that the achromatic objects lying motionless in the tall grass were the remains of General George Custer_* and his regiment. The flesh and bones of 210 members of the 7^th Cavalry lay strewn over a mile of bloody ground. All of the bodies except for General Custer’s had been stripped naked and were mutilated.

Captain Benteen climbed down off his horse and made his way to General Custer’s body, stepping over dead soldiers pierced by arrows and lances in the process. George Custer’s ghostly frame was riddled with a number of injuries, not the least of which was a gunshot wound to the left flank and left temple. Benteen studied the bodies around him noticing that not only did the Indians in the fight leave George’s remains in tact, but left his socks on his feet. They had not scalped him either – his short, wavy hair was undisturbed.

“There he is, God damn him,” Benteen said coldly to members of his battalion now digging graves to bury the dead. “He’ll never fight anymore.” Benteen had known the popular boy General for more than ten years and he never liked him.  He thought George was overly proud and impulsive. The Captain removed a piece of paper and the stub of a pencil from a pocket on his uniform, wrote George’s name on it, and nailed it to the wooden stake marking the spot where the General fell. “I went over the battlefield carefully with a view to determine how the fight was fought,” a distressed Benteen wrote in a report two days after the conflict. “I arrived at the conclusion I have right now – that it was a rout, a panic, till the last man was killed…. George himself was responsible for the Little Big Horn action, and it is an injustice to attribute the blame to anyone else.”  Benteen had been in George’s command and ordered to reinforce his beleaguered troops at the Battle of Little Big Horn. For reasons that would be debated the rest of his life, Benteen did not come to George’s aide.

During the battle, Elizabeth Bacon Custer was only a few hundred miles away, in the Dakota Territory, waiting bravely for news of the expedition. The escalation of the Great Sioux War had brought the 7^th Cavalry to the frontier, and where George went, Elizabeth followed.

One of the most charming and controversial soldiers the country ever produced, George Armstrong Custer and his equally delightful and charming bride, were devoted to one another and valued the time they spent together in the field and at their never-permanent homes at various Army post. Many times, Elizabeth lived in tents alongside members of the 7^th Cavalry.

Over the twelve years the Custers were together, Elizabeth had lived history. She and George honeymooned in the war zones of the waning years of the Civil Way, and she witnessed the surrender of Robert E. Lee at Appomattox Courthouse and later was given the table at which the terms of surrender were signed. After the Civil War, when George’s regiment was sent to Texas to facilitate Reconstruction and then to the plains states as an “Indian Fighter” Elizabeth began her life on the frontier and experienced the most thrilling events of her life, an adventure that lasted until the memorable day when Custer and his troops made their immortal last stand against the Sioux Indians.

To learn more about Elizabeth Bacon Custer and her marriage to George Armstrong Custer read None Wounded, None Missing, All Dead:

The Story of Elizabeth Bacon Custer.

Only two more days left! Enter now to win two books! Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and the new book More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

When pioneer and businessman Asa Mercer died on August 10, 1917, in Buffalo, Wyoming, few in the ranching community recalled the plan he devised to remedy the lack of single women in the Northwest in the 1860s.

It began with an ad placed in February 24, 1860, that testified to the serious shortage of a desired commodity in Washington Territory. “Attention Bachelors: Believing that our only chance for the realization of the benefits and early attainments of matrimonial alliances depends on the arrival in our midst of a number of the fair sex from the Atlantic States, and that, to bring about such and arrival a united effort and action are called for on our part, we respectfully request a full attendance of all eligible and sincerely desirous bachelors of this community assemble on Tuesday evening next February 28, in Delim and Shorey’s building, to devise ways and means to secure this much-needed and desirable emigration to our shores.”

Signed by nine leading citizens, the advertisement was picked up by other newspapers and reprinted across the country. They had hopes of attracting industrious, young women to the rich and rugged Northwest where a few thousand men were working on making fortunes in timber, fishing, farming, and other endeavors. There were a few favorable responses to the announcement but no solid plan was in place to import the desired commodity to the area.

By 1860, the pioneers in Washington Territory had established thriving communities along Puget Sound and were busy carving out farms and ranches along the coast and toward the foothills of the Cascades. The temperature climate, rich fisheries, and timber resourced proved the raw material upon which to build a comfortable life. The prosperous and clean-living young men populating the region in 1858 were “eager to put their necks in the matrimonial noose.”

In 1860, Asa Shinn Mercer hit upon a scheme to take the next step in the recruitment effort. He would import bachelorettes by traveling to the East Coast, where women were in abundance, and actively promote the unequaled advantages of Washington Territory. That idea and its sequel were part of the fascinating career of A. S. Mercer, who found his own bride among those he recruited for Washington Territory.

To learn more about Asa Mercer and others like him who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

Time is running out! Enter now to win two books! Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and the new book More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.

Wild Bill Hickok had many female admirers in his lifetime, but Agnes Lake Thatcher was the only woman who completely captured his heart. The man known as the “deadliest pistolero in the Old West” often declared to his friends that he preferred being a bachelor. It was a surprise to many when he married a widow several years older than himself. The circumstances that resulted in so great a change were romantically singular and worthy of record.

Mrs. Hickok was born Agnes Louise Messman on August 23, 1826, in Doehm, Alsace, France. Her mother died when she was four years old, and, shortly thereafter, her father took Agnes to America. The Messmans settled in Cincinnati, Ohio, when she was sixteen years old. As a child Agnes was an avid horseback rider. Her father helped mold her remarkable skill into a circus routine. In 1841, Agnes met a circus clown named William Lake Thatcher. He was a native New Yorker and used his connections to secure a job for Agnes with the circus he worked for, the Spaulding and Rogers Circus.

In addition to her impressive equestrian abilities, she also performed daring feats of skill on a tight wire. The August 23, 1907, edition of the New York Times reported that she “made a higher ascent on a wire than any performer of her day in 1858.” By 1859, she was billed the “queen of the high wire” and the most famous equestrienne the American circus had ever known.

To learn more about Agnes Hickok and others like her who left their mark on the American West read Tales Behind the Tombstones: The Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen and More Tales Behind the Tombstones: More Deaths and Burials of the Old West’s Most Nefarious Outlaws, Notorious Women, and Celebrated Lawmen.