Excerpt

Zoe Agnes Stratton

Love and the Lawman

Lawman Bill Tilghman opened his eyes to flickering candle-light. He was in a bunk, covered with blankets. His shoulder was aching and stiff with bandages. He was thirstier than he could ever remember. He turned his head slowly and the movement brought a woman’s figure out of the shadows. “How are you feeling?” said a quiet voice. “Thirsty,” Bill mumbled. A tin cup of water was held to his lips. Bill drained it and sighed with satisfaction. In the thin candle-light Bill looked gaunt, his face hawkish, and his hair was grizzled in spots to silver. “You’ve lost a lot of blood,” the woman said, sitting down beside him. “You need to stay put.” Bill closed his eyes, and sleep took him.¹

Golden sunlight was slanting through a window when Bill awoke. His head was clear, his eyes no longer fuzzy. He was hungry as a wolf. There beside him was his wife, Zoe, the woman he had seen by his side the night before. Bill was a United States marshal in the Oklahoma territory. An encounter with a pair of desperate criminals who were trying to smuggle whiskey onto a Native American reservation in 1903 had left him seriously injured. Zoe had tended to his wounds and stayed with him until he was able to get back on his feet.²

The pair hadn’t been married long, but Zoe knew her husband’s job as a lawman was dangerous and was prepared to do all she could to support him. William Matthew Tilghman became a law enforcement officer in 1877. He was, according to his friend and one time fellow lawman Bat Masterson, “the best of all of us.” Bat was referring to all the lawmen in the west. Zoe didn’t disagree.³

Born on November 15, 1880, in Kansas, Zoe Agnes Stratton was twenty-three when she married Bill. He was more than twenty years older than she, but he suited the school teacher turned author perfectly. “He was a Christian gentleman,” Zoe told reporters at the Ada Evening News on April 16, 1960. “He was quiet, kindly, greatly respected, and loved.”⁴

Born on the fourth of July 1854 to an army soldier turned farmer and a young homemaker, Bill spent his early childhood in the heart of Sioux Indian territory in Minnesota. Grazed by an arrow when he was a baby, he was raised to respect Native Americans and protect his family from tribes that felt they had been unfairly treated by the government. Bill was one of six children. His mother insisted he had been “born to a life of danger.”⁵

In 1859 his family moved to a homestead near Atkinson, Kansas. While Bill’s father and oldest brother were off fighting in the Civil War, he worked the farm and hunted game. One of the most significant events in his life occurred when he was twelve years old while returning home from a blackberry hunt. His hero, Marshal Bill Hickok (Wild Bill), rode up beside him and asked if he had seen a man ride through with a team of mules and a wagon.⁶

The wagon and mules had been stolen in Abilene, and the marshal had pursued the culprit across four hundred miles. Bill told Hickok that the thief had passed him on the road that led to Atkinson. The marshal caught the criminal before he left the area and escorted him back to the scene of the crime. Bill was so taken by Hickok’s passion for upholding the law he decided to follow in his footsteps and become a scout and lawman.⁷

Bill Tilghman set out on his own in 1871 and became a buffalo hunter. Using the Sharps rifle his father had given him, the eighteen year old learned the trade quickly and was an exceptional shot. He secured a contract with the railroad’s owners to provide workers laying track to Fort Dodge, Kansas, and the subsequent town that grew close to it, Dodge City, with buffalo meat.

From September 1, 1871, to April 1, 1872, Bill killed and delivered three thousand buffalo. He set an all-time record, surpassing the previous one made by Wild Bill Hickok. Bill Tilghman’s success as a buffalo hunter was due in part to his relationship with the Plains Indians. He never invaded their hunting grounds and treated them with dignity and reverence not commonly displayed by white men.⁸

Bill’s extensive knowledge of the territory prompted cattle barons like Matt Childers to hire him to round up his livestock roaming about the area and then drive them to the market at Dodge. He was exceptional at the job, but his true ambition was to become a law enforcement officer. He was a natural at settling disputes between friends and competitors engaged in heated arguments, a necessity for any policeman. Army colonels and other high-ranking military leaders wanting to help settle differences between themselves and angry Native Americans sought out Bill. Although he would not wage war with the Indians against the United States, he did understand their bitter feeling toward the white men. In hopes of driving the Cheyenne, Crow, and Blackfoot out of the country, the government ordered that their main source of food be slaughtered. The mighty buffalo was hunted to near extinction.

With the buffalo gone, Bill was forced to find other employment. From 1873 to 1878, he worked as a merchant, contractor, land speculator, horse racer, cavalry scout, and livery stable and saloon owner. He ran the Crystal Palace with his business partner, Henry Garris.⁹

The Palace was located on the south side of Dodge City, and refinements to the tavern made the news on July 21, 1877. According to the Dodge City Times, “Garris and Tilghman’s Crystal Palace is receiving a new front and an awning, which will tend to create a new attraction towards [sic] the never ceasing fountains of refreshments flowing within.” Bill also owned and operated a ranch thirteen miles outside of Dodge, one that he would never relinquish.¹⁰

As a proprietor of the Crystal Palace, some of the customers he befriended had questionable, and sometimes criminal, backgrounds. It was guilt by association that led to his arrest on suspicion of being one of the notorious Kinsley train robbers. On February 9, 1878, the Dodge City Times reported that “William Tilghman, a citizen of Dodge City, was arrested on the same serious charge of attempt to rob the train. He stated that he was ready for trial, but the State asked for 10 days delay to procure witnesses, which was granted. Tilghman gave bail. It is generally believed that William Tilghman had no hand in the attempted robbery.” The charges were dismissed four days after the arrest.¹¹

Two months later, Bill was arrested for horse theft. A pair of stolen horses found at his livery implicated him in the crime. A thorough investigation proved that he had not been involved, as reported in the April 23, 1878, edition of the Ford County Globe.¹²

In the spring of 1877, he married Widow Flora Kendall and moved her and her baby to his Bluff Creek Ranch. Tilghman was now a respected family man and cattleman in Ford County. When Bat Masterson was elected sheriff of Dodge City in early 1878, one of his first orders of business was to hire Bill on as his deputy. In spite of Bill’s encounters with the law, he was certain the esteemed Tilghman would be a positive addition to the force. Bat knew about Bill’s reputation with a gun and his knowledge of Kansas and the surrounding territory. He also knew Bill didn’t drink, which meant there’d never be a question of alcohol affecting his judgment. “I’ve seen many a man get killed just because his hand was a little unsteady or slow on the draw, when he had a few drinks in him,” Bill maintained.¹³

Bill was dedicated to his position and approached his law enforcement duties, which included maintaining the office and records, feeding prisoners, and supervising of the jail, with quiet determination. He wasn’t content with solely keeping the peace; he wanted to know all about the legal process and proper methods of gathering evidence.

Unlike his mentor Bat Masterson and his idol Bill Hickok, who focused primarily on apprehending criminals using any means possible, Bill challenged himself to work within the confines of the law. Friend and foe alike appreciated his due diligence.¹⁴

In 1897, Flora Tilghman contracted tuberculosis and went to live with her mother in Dodge City. Her marriage to Bill had been strained for some years. Historical records indicate she didn’t care for Bill being a lawman. She was left alone a great deal. She didn’t like living in Oklahoma where Bill had taken a job as peace officer in the town of Perry. Flora filed for divorce shortly after returning to Kansas. She died three years later from tuberculosis. Flora and Bill had three children together, two girls and a boy. The oldest, Dorothy, was twenty when her mother passed away.¹⁵

Zoe and Bill met in 1900. Her father, Mayo Stratton, and Bill were friends. According to biographer Floyd Miller, “Zoe was not quite like any other girl he had ever known. She rode with the cowhands who worked her father’s ranch, wrote poetry, and had attended college.” Friends and neighbors described her as “a woman who could accomplish anything she set her mind to.” Zoe and Bill began corresponding while she was away at school in Norman, Oklahoma, studying to be a teacher. He proposed to her while she was home visiting her family over Christmas vacation in 1902, and they were married on July 15, 1903.¹⁶

After a brief honeymoon in Kansas City, Zoe moved into the home Bill had shared with Flora. Bill’s children resented their stepmother. Although she wisely did not try to come between them and their father, they never warmed to her. Dorothy especially felt the age difference between Zoe and her father was too great and believed this new woman in his life would eventually leave. The only thing that held them together was pride in Bill and the position he held in the county. According to Floyd Miller, “Bill was an influential man and was daily called up for advice on everything from family quarrels to business ethics.”¹⁷

In addition to teaching school, Zoe was an aspiring author of westerns. Her life with Bill offered great insight into the stories she wrote. It was a rugged, lawless time with numerous renegades roaming the region. Zoe noted in her memoirs that Bill slept with a loaded .45 under his pillow to protect his wife, and eventually the three sons they had together, from fugitives he had once arrested seeking to gun him down. “He was adept at shooting with either hand, but generally carried one six-shooter,” Zoe wrote in her biography about her husband. “Two were too heavy.”¹⁸

While Bill was making a name for himself defending the law, Zoe remained at home at their ranch in Lincoln County, Oklahoma, writing. She penned such published works as Sacajawea, The Shoshoni, Katska of the Seminoles, and Quanah the Eagle of the Comanche. The later book was the most well received of all the titles. She also authored western stories for periodicals such as Lariat Story Magazine and Ranch Romance.¹⁹

Zoe frequently wrote about her husband and the outlaws he apprehended. “He’s given much of the credit for breaking up outlaw gangs that overran Oklahoma in the 1890s,” she shared in articles she authored for the Ada Evening News. She bragged that he single-handedly took in Bill Doolin, a gang leader who swore he wouldn’t be taken alive, by beating Doolin to the draw. Tilghman was alone, too, when he captured Doolin’s lieutenant, Little Bill Raidler. He outshot Raidler with a double-barrel shotgun.²⁰

In addition to being a peace officer, Bill served in the Oklahoma Senate. He was active in the statehood movement and Democratic policies, helped organize the first state fair and was an aide to many governors. By the time Bill was in his early seventies, he’d retired from law enforcement and was focusing on filmmaking. “He had a flair for making movies,” Zoe remembered in her memoirs. Between 1908 and 1915, he made four westerns.²¹

In August 1924, against Zoe’s objections, Bill came out of retirement to become city marshal of a booming Oklahoma oil town called Cromwell. It was here that he met his demise.

For a short while it appeared as if Marshal Tilghman was going to successfully reform the spot state investigators called “America’s wildest town.” “Cromwell – paradise of the oilfield huskies, is being cleaned,” the article on the front page of the Manitowoc Herald News read. “In this town of 300 persons, state agents claim they found wide-open gambling, 200 dope peddlers, and many dance halls in which girls danced for 15 cents a dance to the tune of weird jazz music, and “choc” beer was sold. Hijackers, bootleggers, and suddenly rich oil men played for high stakes around the tables in clapboard huts. One out of every three houses in town was a home of ill fame, state investigators contend.”²²

“Federal officials have stepped in, drying up the town and breaking up the narcotic traffic. Then the governor and Judge Crump, backed by the businessmen, decided to hire Bill Tilghman as town marshal.”

“Though Bill is along in years he is just as ‘hard’ as he was in his younger days, the officials say. Bill has closed-up the saloons, a lot of the dance halls, and put the dope settlers on the run, in one week alone he and Deputy Sheriff Aldrich ushered 65 dancing girls out of town.”²³

On November 1, 1924, a drunken prohibition officer named Wiley Lynn shot and killed Bill. Bill suspected Lynn of being corrupt and was in the process of gathering evidence to arrest him when he was slain. Lynn surrendered to authorities and admitted to the crime. He stood trial in federal court for the murder on May 20, 1925, and was acquitted. The jury found that his extreme drunkenness interfered with his judgment and exonerated him from the crime.²⁴

Bill Tilghman was buried in Oak Park Cemetery in Chandler, Oklahoma. According to biographer Floyd Miller, “Zoe stood alone at his gravesite for a long while recalling the words her husband had spoken his last weekend home. She had urged him to set the date for his retirement and he had said, “Other men will set that date.”²⁵

In tribute to her husband, Zoe wrote a book about the life of the intrepid, quick-drawing lawman in an almost lawless society. The book was entitled Marshal of the Last Frontier: The Life and Service of William Matthew Tilghman. Zoe died of natural causes in June 1964 and was buried next to Bill. She was almost eighty-four years old when she passed away.²⁶

 

Love Lessons Learned by Zoe Agnes Stratton

1. Dazzle him with your smarts and be unique. Friends and neighbors described Zoe as being “unlike any other woman Marshal Tilghman had ever met.”

2. Appreciate his years of experience on the job and the job he wants to take on. Bill’s first wife would have preferred that he not had gone into law enforcement. Zoe objected only to the danger he exposed himself to and not the work itself.

3. Zoe was an author of western books and in many respects Bill was her muse. Being his wife’s inspiration endeared her to him.

4. Be willing to take to take on his family from a previous marriage. Zoe moved into the home Bill shared with his first wife and tried to make a life with his children, but they didn’t receive it well. Still, she tried.

5. Accept that justice needed a firm hand in the Old West and that your husband was that hand.

Annie Ripley, Elizabeth Fry, & Sara Haight
A Bride in Yosemite

At the turn of the century Yosemite Valley, in particular the area known as Bridalveil Falls, was referred to as the “show place of the Sierras.”  Artists from every medium thought the falls cascading down more than six hundred feet of rock wall into the valley  to be so beautiful that it was considered selfish for anyone who looked on the splendor of the setting not to share the pleasure with others using whatever talent they were given.  Among the many famous guests who visited the most prominent waterfall in the Yosemite Valley were General Ulysses S. Grant, Horace Greely, General William T. Sherman, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.  Naturalist John Muir entreated the public to visit the spot often.  According to his memoirs he challenged park patrons to “climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”  He assured them that “nature’s peace will flow into you as sunshine into trees.” ¹

It’s not unusual that couples chose the stunning Bridal Veil Falls as the backdrop for their nuptials.  The first bride to plan her wedding at the spot was a prominent young woman from Los Angeles.  According to the August 6, 1901, edition of the newspaper The Boston Globe, the ceremony was “so incredible it defied description and started a trend in civil unions held at the majestic National Park.”  The momentous occasion highlighted in The Boston Globe article was duplicated by hundreds of betrothed couples in the early 1900s.  “With a mighty altar and the generous diapason of an incomparable waterfall furnishing the melody of a bridal march Miss Annie Ripley of Los Angeles and Henry C. Best of San Francisco were wed in the valley a few days ago,” The Boston Globe article continued.   “It was the first marriage ceremony performed in Yosemite, and for solemnity and picturesqueness it was surpassingly notable.” ²

One hundred guests of the bride and groom were present and walked with them over trails and under trees to the place where the water crashed upon the rocks beneath the towering cliffs on either side of Bridalveil.  “The day was a superb one and the scene one of matchless beauty,” The Boston Globe article continued ³

“Miss Ripley was prettily attired in a mountain costumes and the man who was to be made her husband had set aside the customary garments and wore camping attire as well.  Their look was fitting for the setting.

The Yosemite populace made a holiday of it all.  Men and women were brilliantly dressed and formed an attractive group when they arrived at the base of the falls a half an hour before noon.  The Bohemian string orchestra was in attendance and rendered exquisite melody from a natural choir loft on a gigantic rock.

As the prospective bride and groom walked toward the altar-like stone on which the ceremony was to take place the orchestra began the melodious wedding march.  The music of the stringed instruments at times was lost in the roar of the falling water, and the efforts of the well-intentioned melody makers were almost futile in comparison with the strength of the storm of sound nature had provided.

At the rock altar stood Rev. Walter Freeman of Portland, Maine, who was a guest at the hotel in the valley.  The bridal couple passed through the semi-circle of friends and took their position before the clergyman.  Miss Ripley was accompanied by Miss Helen Ripley, the bridesmaid, and Mr. Durrell attended the groom.  The words of the marriage ritual were spoken, and Mr. and Mrs. Best returned to receive congratulations from friends, family, and witnesses.

The entire party then proceeded to the hotel where an elaborate wedding breakfast was served.  Late in the afternoon Mr. and Mrs. Best left the valley in a stage profusely decorated with white ribbons.  They would spend their honeymoon among the giant sequoias of the Mariposa big tree grove.

Henry C. Best was a well-spoken artist and was formerly employed by newspapers in San Francisco.  He had come to Yosemite three months prior to paint scenery in the valley.  He was a director of the Press Club in San Francisco.” ⁴

The scenic wedding of Annie Ripley and Henry Best was the first recorded ceremony performed at Yosemite, but William Chapman Ralston and his bride Elizabeth Fry were among the first to honeymoon at the park.   The wedding journey from the Ralston’s villa in San Mateo County to Yosemite was written about quite extensively by wedding guests and Bay area newspapers. ⁵

On May 20, 1858, William Ralston, a banker, business owner, and investor in the Comstock mine, and debutant Elizabeth “Lizzie” Fry were married in San Francisco.  He was thirty-two and Lizzie was twenty-one.  According to the September 30, 1888, edition of the San Francisco Examiner, the afternoon wedding was held at the Calvary Church on Bush Street.  “The church was crowded with their friends,” the newspaper article noted, “and the bride, a pretty brunette looked charming in a most becoming wedding costume.  A short reception followed at the home of Mrs. Darling at North Beach, and then the ladies of the party donned Bloomer dresses and all departed for a honeymoon camping-out frolic in the Yosemite Valley.” ⁶

Sarah Haight, a member of the bride’s party, was among the guests to accompany the newlyweds to the park.  She recorded in her journal that “three steamers, the Helen Hesley, the Sierra Nevada, and the Orizaba, carrying selected family and friends left the wharf at four o’clock in the afternoon.”  “As the boats pulled away from the harbor,” Sarah continued, “hearty cheers were offered up to the happy couple and a salute was fired from the Sierra Nevada and the Orizaba.  After traveling five days, first by steamer and then donkey, the wedding party passed through a cave which deposited the sojourners at the mouth of a cave which spilled out onto the Yosemite Valley.  Looking up at the rock the stone formation around resembled a theatre with its side scenes.  There were grotesque faces and bats and owls carved in rock, but when you change your position the resemblance would vanish.” ⁷

Sarah described the wildlife in the area which included a variety of birds, lizards, and fish.  There were obstacles along the path that impeded their progress in some spots.  Pine trees had fallen, and ferocious winds had covered crude trails with limbs and leaves, and little mountain brooks.  At one point, Sarah, along with the bride and groom and other guests, tried to walk the steep ascent to the top of a mountain.  After two miles they were too tired to go on and boarded their donkeys again.  In the evenings the group slept in tents that were erected for them and dined on meals prepared over a campfire.  “No supper that I ever ate tasted half so good as that one, the long ride having given us very good appetites,” Sarah wrote in her journal. ⁸

On the morning of May 25, 1858, William Ralston, his new wife, Sarah, and the other guests arrived at the foot of the mountains.  Sarah remembered that it was one of the “most magnificent prospects” she had ever beheld.  “The summits were so beautiful,” she wrote in her journal, “green level prairie with a little stream flowing through its midst and the trees were all like orchard trees.  So cultivated did it look that we could scarcely believe that it was not cultivated.  Above it on the opposite side toward a mountain covered with pine trees, and still beyond that rose another and another, range on range, and the last were covered with snow.  How grateful the cold wind coming from the snow felt in the noon, and the snow was so pure and white that you could scarce distinguish it from the clouds resting midday on their sides. ⁹

Looking back of us we could see the coast range of mountains at a distance of two hundred miles and conspicuous among them was Mount Diablo.  How that glimpse of the old veteran carried me home to my own room, where it is the first thing I can see on looking out of my window in the morning. ¹⁰

The road had been getting gradually wilder and the hills sterner.  Immense granite rocks rest on the mountain above the trail with a threatening aspect.  In some places they appear to have fallen and carried large pine trees along with them.  In one place I saw where a large pine tree had torn up a rock in its fall, exactly as a dentist extracts a tooth with his pincers.  These afternoon, when about two miles from the entrance of the valley, we saw the Bridalveil, the first fall in the valley.  It looked like a silver thread in the distance and relieved the solemn grandeur of the surrounding hills,” Sarah recalled in her published journal. ¹¹

After a short stop to enjoy the scenery, the wedding party continued on.  “We rode through beautiful green meadows, under the shady branches of trees, and the fragrance of the wild honeysuckle was a pleasant exchange for the reflection of the sun’s rays from the great white rocks,” Sarah remembered in her journal.  “We rode through beautiful green meadows, under the shady branches of trees, and the fragrance of the wild honeysuckle was a pleasant exchange for the reflection of the sun’s rays from the great white rocks.  To the right of us was what is called a ‘Cathedral’ in the gothic style, and where could there be a church more magnificent?  We rode on, at our left ‘El Capitan,’ a man wrapped in a Spanish cloak with a slouched hat.  We drew rein on the banks of the Merced, where it was very still and deep, and lay down on our blankets under the protection of the ‘sentinel.’  Never did the beauty of the Twenty-Third Psalm present itself so before me.  I had been frightened and disturbed and was very weary, and the words, “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures; he leadeth me beside the still waters. – Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil; for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff they comfort me,” filled me with quiet and peace.  We had been walking through the valley of the shadow of death, as it seemed.  By my request the camp was called ‘Stillwater Camp.’ ¹²

From the camp we were not in sight of either of the falls, though we could hear very plainly.  A large fire was burning.  All the party was tired and stretched themselves out in various postures, but I was so happy and so occupied with the beautiful scene that I could not sleep.  Behind me was the Sentinel – it was only by lying on my back that I could see its summit 4,000 feet above me.  The valley was in shade when the mood began to shine on the Sentinel’s great bald head.  I watched the moonlight creeping softly downwards until it was about half-way down its sides, and then I saw the moon itself advance hesitatingly above the brow of the opposite rocks.  The hesitated advance withdrew and then came boldly forward.  She was closely followed by a star that advanced trembling to the edge of the rocks, rose and fell several times, then followed her mistress.  Gradually the moonlight advanced and covered the whole camp and shone on the beautiful river.” ¹³

Not long after the deluxe wagon train honeymoon, the Ralstons moved into a mansion William built for Elizabeth in San Mateo. ¹⁴

In August 1915, newlyweds Seth and Evelyn Bovial traveled from Janesville, Wisconsin, to celebrate their union.  Evelyn was completely taken with Yosemite.  She spent evenings writing about the day’s trek through the park.  Seth complained that his new wife was neglecting him.  Married on August 28, 1915, in Milwaukee, Seth hoped Evelyn’s focus would be solely on him.  “Some things are too beautiful not to write about,” she recalled in her journal, “the trip must be noted for posterity’s sake if nothing else.” ¹⁵

Soon after Evelyn submitted a detailed account of her venture to the September 9, 1915, edition of the Janesville, Wisconsin newspaper The Janesville Daily Gazette, Seth filed a petition to the court to have the marriage annulled.  He was convinced the lack of attention Evelyn paid him was indicative of how she would treat him in the future.  Thus, Evelyn Bovial was the first woman to have lost a husband for recording the extraordinary sights of Yosemite. ¹⁶

Tom King followed five, spirited, fast-moving horses into a dense line of trees seven miles outside the town of Fredonia, Kansas. It was a stifling hot, August day in 1894. The ground the criminal’s horse’s hooves pounded into was cracked and dry. Sweat foamed around the animal’s neck and hind quarters. Low hanging branches on brown, thirsty trees slapped at them as they passed by. King, dressed in worn trousers, chaps, flannel shirt, a large brimmed hat, and a tan duster, skillfully maneuvered his ride around limbs that had fallen and lay about on the path they raced along.

King and his roan were directly beside the five horses as they broke through the other side of the copse of trees. His horse leapt over a cluster of large boulders standing between the rider and the open prairie. Tom leaned back in the saddle as his horse jumped to let the wind strip off his coat. In that moment Tom and the horse were in mid-air, and the coat trailed behind him like leather wings.

From a crude camp in the far distance, Fredonia Sheriff H.S. McCleary watched Tom and his mount keep pace with the horses. The lawman cast a glance at the deputies standing on either side of him. Their eyes were fixed on King. If not for the fact that the authorities were there to arrest King for horse stealing, they might have felt compelled to congratulate him on his equestrian skills. They had apprehended King’s partner, Ed Bullock, at the thieve’s camp, placed a gag around his mouth, and handcuffed him to the back of a wagon. The ground around the vehicle was strewn with provisions that had once been packed inside the wagon. One of the items was a large trunk. The sheriff and his men had been searching for something, and the hunt appeared to have concluded with the trunk. The lock on it had been busted; the trunk was opened, and an assortment of stolen jewelry, resting on a long tray, gleamed in the sunlight.

Bullock tugged at the handcuffs in a desperate attempt to break free. He wanted to warn King about what was waiting for him. King led the ill-gotten horses into the camp, realizing too late the law had found him. The sheriff leveled his gun at the outlaw, and King slowly dismounted. He surrendered his weapon without having to be asked. The sheriff took a few steps toward King, studying his face as he walked. The sun and wind had darkened King’s complexion, and at first glance he appeared to be a mixed-blood Cherokee Indian. Sheriff McCleary asked him how old he was, and King told him his age was twenty-five. The sheriff scrutinized King’s face then told him to remove his hat. In that moment it was clear that the notorious Tom King was really the woman named Flora Mundis. Her lashes and small features gave her away.

Ed Bullock wasn’t a man either. She was Jesse Whitewings. Both women were from the Cottonwood Creek bottoms of West Guthrie, Oklahoma. Flora has been arrested twice in the last two years but managed to escape before standing trial for her crimes. Knowing her history Sheriff McCleary wasted no time taking the two women to his jail in Canadian County. He would not make the same mistake other lawmen had who were too intimidated by the fact that the wanted horse thieves were indeed ladies but was going to treat them like the criminals they were.

According to the August 17, 1892, edition of the El Reno, Oklahoma, newspaper, the El Reno Democrat, that once the women were locked up the sheriff recognized how difficult it would be for his deputies to follow his example. “There is something ominous to the atmosphere of the jail here…a death-like quietude and a tip-toe carefulness about the place not common of men used to handling hardened criminals. The officials appear awkward and confused, and the turnkey is beside himself. The famous woman, who has caused so much trouble in the past, is going to cause much more in the immediate future. The jailers have arranged it so that a physician is near at hand…although some believe the event will take place without accident.”

Flora Mundis was born Flora Quick in Johnson County, Missouri, in 1875. Her father, Daniel Quick was a wealthy rancher and farmer. He was married twice and fathered fifteen children. Flora was the youngest daughter and his favorite child. She possessed considerable talent, and at fourteen Daniel enrolled her into Holden College, a school for the arts in Holden, Missouri. In less than a month, Flora had left school and returned home. She didn’t like being confined to a classroom and preferred instead to ride her horse around the family estate.

Flora’s father died in 1880. The twenty-four acres of land he owned as well as $13 thousand in personal property was divided equally among his children. Daniel named his oldest son executor of his holdings, and, in addition to taking charge of the finances, he assumed responsibility for his siblings. He decided to send his head-strong sister Flora to a school in Sedalia, Missouri. He hoped that while there she would settle down and marry a man of good, moral character. Flora did the exact opposite.

After a brief stay in school, she dropped out and married an older, disreputable man named Ora Mundis. Family and friends warned Flora that he was untrustworthy and only after her part of her father’s estate. She didn’t believe them. She thought Ora was exciting. The couple spent their evenings in Holden visiting the saloons along the main thoroughfare of town, drinking and gambling. The newlyweds quickly bored with the nightly routine and decided to leave the area to participate in a hunting expedition. Mister and Missus Mundis returned to Holden a year after they departed. They were heavily armed and boasting about their encounters with the law and how feared they were in the Indian Nation. They warned Holden residents that they were “bad, bad people that were not to be trifled with.” Holden’s city marshal was not intimidated by the pair. He relieved them of their guns they were carrying and strongly suggested they leave town.

Shortly after Flora sold her share of Daniel Quick’s estate she and her husband left Holden and headed for Guthrie. They arrived at the growing Oklahoma rail town in November 1892. Flora was seventeen years old, and Ora was thirty.

The two lived a fast and elaborate lifestyle until the money Flora made from the sale of her father’s estate ran out. Ora left his wife soon after that. Desperate and penniless, Flora turned to prostitution. During the day she could often be seen riding her horse through town dressed in an equestrian costume she had purchased with her inheritance. Her gowns were green and black and according to the September 26, 1893, edition of the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, newspaper the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, she “wore upon her head a black turban trimmed with a gold braid, which glistened brightly in the sun or under the electric lights.” A curious reporter for the Guthrie Daily Leader newspaper sat down with Flora at the saloon where she worked and dared to ask her what had become of her husband. “I don’t know,” she told him. “We didn’t get along well and fought everyday. I suspect he’s better company now,” she offered solemnly.

During Flora’s time in Guthrie, she became good friends with a madam and gambler named Jesse Whitewings and joined her in the criminal act of horse stealing. When they weren’t stealing the animals outright they were trading their services for horses or money to acquire a place to keep their stolen livestock.

Flora’s first tussle with the law did not involve stolen horses or prostitution but a claim of assault she made against a prominent physician in the area. Frustrated that he spurned her advances she falsely charged Doctor Jordan with attacking and trying to rape her. Convinced a jury would believe the teary-eyed, tawny, complicated beauty, Doctor Jordan decided to flee the territory rather than go to court. The allegation caused irreparable harm to Flora’s business. Customers stopped doing business with her because they couldn’t trust her not make accusations against them should she be so inclined. Faced with being a pauper, Flora decided to pursue stealing horses full time. She traded in her fancy clothes for cowboy gear and set off to solidify her position in outlaw history.

During the spring of 1893 she brazenly stole numerous horses from hitching posts outside stores, family farms and ranches. The stolen horses were then taken to Flora’s hideout, and any animal that was carrying a brand was quickly re-branded and sold in an area called Hell’s Fringe. Two, well-known lawmen from Oklahoma City named Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas tracked a few hundred stolen animals to the outlaw’s hideout in Canadian County, and Flora was subsequently arrested.

In June 1893 Tom King was thrown in jail alongside Ernest Lewis. Lewis, nicknamed “the Killer,” was incarcerated for murder and suspicion of robbing a train. King and Lewis became fast friends, and Lewis convinced the horse thief to venture into the train robbing business. King believed the idea had merit and agreed to help his new partner escape the Oklahoma City jail. They would plan a train robbing job on the outside.

On June 27, 1893, Tom revealed her true self to an impressionable guard. She seduced him and locked him in her cell. King then let Lewis out of his cell, and the two fled that area on a pair of stolen horses. The criminals made their way to a place called the Outlet (a sixty-eight-miles- wide strip of land south of the Oklahoma-Kansas border) and immediately set their sights on robbing the Santa Fe train. King hired a friend named Manvel to help them get the job done. At 3:30 in the afternoon on June 29, 1893, the trip set their plan into action.

Carrying a rifle in his coat, Manvel boarded the train in Oklahoma City and hid himself in the smoking car. Manvel was supposed to jump out when the train reached Black Bear Creek between Red Rock and Wharton, overtake the conductor, and order him to stop the train. King and Lewis were waiting at that location to board the vehicle and rob it. The conductor did not let the outlaw get the upper hand. He wrestled Manvel’s gun from him, knocking him out in the process. Manvel was arrested but not before divulging the whereabouts of King and Lewis.

When the train didn’t stop, King and Lewis realized something had gone wrong. They decided to separate and leave the area before law enforcement arrived. Lewis headed to Colorado and King remained in Oklahoma. She abandoned any further thought of robbing trains and returned to stealing horses.

Authorities searched the Oklahoma Territory looking for Tom King. On July 12, 1893, Deputy Robacker of Guthrie, spotted the wanted horse thief at a livery stable in town. She was sitting atop her ride talking with a few men completely unaware she had been recognized by the law. She was arrested and returned to the Oklahoma jail where she had escaped once before.

By August 8, 1893, King had broken out of her cell again and fled to a town twenty miles west of Oklahoma City called Yukon. According the September 26, 1893, edition of the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette, “the case after King was marked by two incidents, one tragic and the other sensational. In the darkness two parties of searchers mistook each other for horse thieves and opened fire with Winchesters,” the article read. “Will Fightmaster, son of the sheriff, was killed. Another party of deputies discovered a young woman in male attire in company with a young man in a secluded spot in the woods. They thought of course they had caught Tom King but this young woman turned out to be a well-known railroad man’s wife out for a lark.”

King was recaptured and hauled back to Oklahoma City. This time the jailer locked her in a steel cage. Her stay at the facility was brief, however. Law enforcement agents in Canadian County demanded the outlaw be turned over to them to be tried for horse theft charges she committed there when her illegal trade had begun.

Deputy Marshals Chris Madsen and Heck Thomas loaded King and several other prisoners onto a wagon and transported them across the Territory to El Reno, another town in Central Oklahoma. The crafty horse thief managed to break out of that jail, too, on December 5, 1893. The headline across the top of the December 8, 1893, edition of the Cedar Rapids Evening Gazette read, “Tom King, the Romantic Horse Thief, Breaks El Reno Jail in her Third Escape; She is Bound to Make a Record!” The article that followed the headline read, “It seems there is no jail that can hold her. Even the Oklahoma City jail, which is considered the strongest in the Territory, yielded before her magic art… She is very cunning and clever. The vigilant officers usually get her, but getting her does not seem to be of much effect in curing the mania with which she is afflicted. She finds the same delight in horse stealing as other women would in reading novels or playing croquet. It is her ambition to be the most famous horse thief of her generation, and already she has taken more of them than any man in the history of the Southwest.”

Included in the search team to recapture King in the winter of 1893 was a pack of bloodhounds. King managed to elude all but one of the dogs. He followed her across the South Canadian and Wichita counties to a point near the Kiowa-Comanche-Apache reservation line. At some point King was able to subdue the animal and prevent it from coming after her again. The December 17, 1893, edition of the Guthrie Daily Leader reported that the hound had been shot at close range. “He evidently had caught her trouser leg,” the article explained, “for beside where the dog lay was a piece of Scotch-Tweed of irregular form and about the size of the sole of a man’s shoe, which is said to be a piece of the suit of men’s clothes which Missus King was allowed to wear in jail.”

Between January and August 1894 Tom kept a very low profile. Rumors that she had formed her own gang and was criss-crossing Oklahoma planning various crimes circulated among law enforcement officers in Guthrie and Oklahoma City. One of the men suspected of partnering with Tom in a series of horse thefts around Tecumseh, Oklahoma, was Bill Dalton. Dalton was a bank robber and the brother of Gratton, Bob, and Emmett of the famous western outlaw gang known as the Dalton Gang.

According to the August 6, 1894 edition of the Austin, Texas newspaper the Daily Light, Bill Dalton participated in a poker game in which he put up Tom’s prized horse as a bet. The incident reportedly went as follows: “Flora Mundis, alias Tom King’s career as a horse thief ended with her arrest on August 7, 1894 in Fredonia, Kansas. She was extradited to Canadian County, Oklahoma and a trial was set. She was visibly pregnant when she went before the judge and although convicted of stealing horses he did not sentence her to serve anytime in jail. King was released on bail and left the Territory.”

Oklahoma lawman Heck Thomas believed King was killed in an attempted bank robbery attempt in southern Arizona. Thomas told a reporter for the Guthrie Daily Leader newspaper that the description and measurements of the outlaw shot at the scene of the crime matched those of the infamous King.

The last anyone heard from Tom King was late April 1896. Oklahoma City attorney and one of King’s friends, D.C. Lewis, received a letter from her that stated she was headed West by train. She promised to visit Lewis around Christmas but never showed. What really happened to Tom King and her child is a mystery.

“No one imagined that Muskogee was to lose a good citizen and the Territory one of the bravest of officers.”

The Indian Journal – December 29, 1886

In the hours leading up to Christmas Day 1886, Muskogee was crowded with trail hands, farmers, drifters and families. Mothers with their children in hand filtered in and out of the various stores that lined Main Street to shop. Upon exiting the businesses they would stop to admire the few displays in the windows. Most of the people visiting the mercantile, restaurants and hotels on December 23 and 24 were primarily interested in horse racing. They hurried back and forth from the two mile long stretch of track outside of town carrying food, alcohol and cash. Men laid money out recklessly on long-legged, sleepy-eyed geldings, some with United States Army brandings on their rump. Spectators stood on either side of the unmarked track anxiously waiting for the races to begin. Horses and riders lined up for the ‘dropped flag’ start. The shouts and cheers from the onlookers nearly drowned out the sound of the animals’ pounding hooves hurrying toward the finishing mark.

Dick Vann was among the enthusiastic group enjoying the festivities. Whenever the horse he bet on won he would celebrate with a round of thunderous applause and a long swig off a half-empty bottle of whiskey. Alf Cunningham had had his share of drinks during the event and he and Dick took turns slapping one another on the back each time their wager paid off and laughing uproariously at their good fortune.

By early afternoon on Christmas Eve both men were well on their way to getting drunk. They were belligerent with anyone jockeying for a better position to see the races than they had and were not immune from spitting in the face of people who celebrated a win when they had lost. Vann had finished off his bottle of whiskey and persuaded Cunningham to return to a place in town that would sell them more bootleg alcohol. Heavy grey clouds hung over the busy hamlet. A great V-shaped mass of ducks and Canadian geese flying south passed overhead of the two as they walked away from the race track. The whole sky was filled with the soft whir of wings. Cunningham removed a gun tucked inside his coat pocket, pointed it at the birds and pretended to shoot. Amused with himself, Cunningham laughed at his playful antics. Vann was too distracted by the sight of Tom Kennard, a Creek Lighthorseman to do more than grin.

Kennard stood in the doorway of the Commercial Hotel surveying the plethora of activity around him. Vann watched the officer carefully, then crossed to the other side of the street to avoid coming in contact with him. Unaware that anything was out of the ordinary at first, Cunningham followed after his brother-in-law. When he spotted Kennard he slowed down. Deciding against continuing on with Vann, he crossed the street to the lawman. Cunningham wore a contemptuous look as he approached Kennard. The bitterness he had for the law grew with magnificent intensity as he drew closer to the Lighthorseman. Kennard, a descendant of black slaves once owned by the Creek Indians, saw Cunningham walking towards him, but did not anticipate any trouble.

Without hesitating, Cunningham jerked his gun out and pointed it at the lawman’s face. He swore angrily at Kennard and threatened to kill him. Neither calm reasoning nor the promise of jail could persuade Cunningham to lower his weapon. A passerby, Mrs. Renfoe (wife of the town butcher), witnessed the exchange, grabbed the pistol and before Cunningham was able to wrench it free, Kennard drew his own gun. He brought the butt of the weapon down hard on the cursing assailant’s head and Cunningham collapsed at his feet. Kennard took the gun away from him and left him where he fell.

Cunningham came to a few hours later. In the near distance he could hear whistling, hand clapping and the sound of horses’ hooves galloping down the race track. The crowd that had congregated in town to celebrate the season had thinned considerably. No one around seemed the slightest bit concerned about whether Cunningham was face down in the dirt or not. People had cut a wide swatch around him to avoid any contact with the known trouble maker. After inspecting the lump on his skull, he got to his feet. He was rattled, but not enough to stay put. He dusted off his clothes then proceeded in the direction of the track.

As the stillness of a starry night crept up on Muskogee, Vann and Cunningham were seen together again wandering in and out of businesses in the process of closing. Cunningham relayed the tale of his encounter with Kennard to Vann and both men were infuriated with the officer and every other Lighthorsemen in the Nation. The memory of what happened to Jess Nicholson and Black Hoyt was still fresh in their minds. The men needed guns to do what they felt needed to be done. They tried to purchase a pistol from Turner & Byrnes’ Hardware, but were turned away by the owner of the store, C.F. Byrnes. Undeterred, they walked to the popular Mitchell House and went inside. Ray Farmer, the owner of the hotel, was too preoccupied with his job to notice the two enter and didn’t see Cunningham steal his shotgun. The two left the establishment determined to use the weapon they had acquired.

City Marshal Shelley Keyes was making his appointed rounds when Vann and Cunningham swaggered out of the Mitchell House in front of him. Cunningham raised the shotgun he was carrying to Keyes’s face. The lawman instinctively held up his hands. Vann eyed the pistol on Keyes’s hip and before the officer had a chance to object, he jerked it out of his holster. They left Keyes with his arms in the air and a bewildered look plastered across his face. He watched them disappear into the alleyways and dark corners of the buildings.

Drunk on the courage the guns gave them, Vann and Cunningham scanned the vicinity for Lighthorseman Kennard. One of Muskogee’s most well-known citizens, Armistead Cox noticed the two men walking down the street and caught a glimpse of the weapons they were toting as they passed by an eatery called King’s Restaurant. Cox wasn’t completely sure, but he thought he saw the butt of the shotgun tucked under Cunningham’s arm with the barrel pointed downward. The men continued on their way and there was no chance for a second look.

Captain Sixkiller was purchasing medicine at Dr. M.F. William’s drugstore when Vann and Cunningham arrived on the scene. The lawman wasn’t on duty, he had plans to take his family to a service at the Methodist church, but first he had to get rid of the headache he was suffering from. He had been sick for one reason or another since late November after returning home from a trip to Fort Smith. In early December, he and Fannie traveled to Vinita to visit family. The hope was that his health would be restored during that time, but they were forced to come home on December 15, 1886, because the captain wasn’t getting any better.

As Captain Sixkiller stepped out into the street he saw the shadowy image of the armed men. They were silhouetted against the light from the hotel and butcher shop across the street. The captain was unarmed and had no reason to believe Vann and Cunningham were carrying weapons. He wasn’t intimidated in the least. As he walked toward the pair one of them called out his name. Vann then shouted, “You’d never do that to me again.” Suddenly Cunningham fired the shotgun at the officer. Captain Sixkiller sprang forward before the full force of the shotgun shell made contact. He knocked the gun out of Cunningham’s hands and fell to the ground. A few pellets had riddled his clothing, but none had penetrated the skin. Before the lawman could defend himself, Vann drew his pistol and fired four times. Blood oozed from the lawman’s chest and head. All four bullets had met their target.

Captain Sixkiller staggered a bit then dropped to his hands and knees. Vann pulled the hammer back on the gun again and shot him one more time. The lawman groaned as the fatal wound fought against every internal organ to keep from working. The captain winched in pain as he exhaled. One of the murderers leaned over his body as he breathed his last breath; when it was over the shooters fled.

Rancher H.B. Spaulding and Armistead Cox were the first to arrive at the scene of the crime, followed by a gentleman named Nip Blackstone and the butcher, Jim Renfro. Cox checked to see if Captain Sixkiller was still alive. He knew by looking at his injured skull it wasn’t possible, but he had to be sure. It was a gruesome sight. The lawman had a hole in his face under his left cheekbone and it was covered with powder burns from being shot at close range. The clothing around his waist was saturated with blood; a pair of bullets was lodged into his abdomen.

City Marshal Keyes watched the men surround the deceased captain from across the street. He was overcome with guilt for letting the renegades get the best of him and take his gun. In an effort to conceal his identity from Vann and Cunningham and anyone else who might have witnessed the exchange, he turned his coat inside out and removed his hat. A reporter for the Cherokee Advocate who spotted Keyes noted “it seemed as though he might like to contract for a cast iron suit of clothes.”

Captain Sixkiller’s lifeless frame was transported to the undertaker’s office and his body was prepared for burial. His wife Fannie and his children learned of the shocking news from the men who handled the lawman’s remains. Fannie was inconsolable. Captain Sixkiller’s killing was a hard truth for the community to accept as well. The loss was immediately felt throughout the entire Indian Nation. Recognized as being the “head and heart of the Indian police,” the public demanded swift justice.

On Saturday morning December 26, writs were issued for the killers and given to four United States marshals, Frank Dalton, Tyson Greenbury, James Campbell and H.J. Hayes. The writs read “Dick Vann and Alf Cunningham feloniously, willfully and premeditatedly, and with malice and forethought, killed and murdered Samuel Sixkiller a Cherokee Indian.” For twenty-four hours the marshals searched vigorously for the murderers but could not locate them. An additional search took place on Monday, December 28, 1886. Captain Sixkiller’s brothers Martin and Luke joined the posse along with three other members of the Lighthorsemen. The men decided to look for the runaway killers in the thick bottoms of Gooseneck Bend, ten miles east of Muskogee. It was the area Vann had traveled to in 1884, when he was trying to escape justice for the attempted murder of John Hammer.

The December 29, 1886, edition of the Indian Journal newspaper reported that after Vann and Cunningham had killed the captain “they ran half leisurely down Main Street, turned the corner and passed the billiard hall as they headed out of town. Saturday night it was noted they attempted to lodge with an acquaintance named John Lowery who objected to them staying with him. Vann tried to change his mind by showing him the pistol he had and in the process the weapon discharged accidentally, the bullet going across the end of his thumb.”

While the police continued their search for killers, several letters of condolence were sent to Captain Sixkiller’s widow and his family. One of the letters Fannie received was from the chairman and secretary of the Missouri-Pacific Railway, Thomas Furlong and John J. Kinney. “Dear Madam: I was deeply pained to learn from this morning’s paper of the sad calamity that had befallen you in the untimely and cruel death of your late husband. My wife and family desire with me to tender you our sincere sympathy in your terrible affliction.” In addition to the letter, Furlong forwarded a resolution adopted by the railroad secret service. The resolution was adopted to express the rail line’s sentiment relative to Captain Sixkiller’s tragic death.

“Whereas, by the hands of murderous assassins our esteemed friend Captain Sam Sixkiller has been taken from our midst, and while submitting to the all-wise and inscrutable Providence, we desire to express our sentiments, respecting this to us an irreparable loss of a tried and true friend, and to the United States Government a brave, honest and competent officer. Therefore, we, the members of the Missouri-Pacific Railway Secret Service Department at St. Louis assembled, deeply deplore the cruel and untimely death of our esteemed friend, Captain Sam Sixkiller, who endeared himself to the members of this department by his uniform kindness and invaluable assistance rendered us in the discourage of our duties, and while our grief in itself is great at the loss of our esteemed friend, we realize that the loss of such an exemplary husband and father is immeasurable, and therefore we desire to convey to his family our heartfelt sympathy in this their greatest hour of affliction.”

More than two thousand mourners attended Captain Sixkiller’s funeral the Sunday after he was killed. The services were conducted at the Methodist Church and the eulogy delivered by Cherokee leaders from Tahlequah. The church could not contain the friends who gathered to pay their respects. According to the December 29, 1886, edition of the Indian Journal, “people from nearly every part of the eastern portion of the territory attended the last rites.”

Newspaper editors throughout the Nation praised Captain Sixkiller for his heroism and courage. An editor for the Indian Chieftain in Vinita wrote in an article that “a man with so little thought of danger should fall by violence seemed in no way strange.” The Indian Journal editor noted “the Captain has done probably more than any one person to free the railroad towns of this Territory of their dangerous and reckless elements, and to him the country owes a great degree the comparative security to life and property that it now enjoys.” In a report made to the Commissioner of Indian Affairs in Washington, Indian agent Robert L. Owen commended Captain Sixkiller noting that “he died a martyr to the cause of law and order and had the respect and confidence of all the decent people in the country particularly of men like Honorable Isaac C. Parker, U.S. Judge of this district….”

The procession that accompanied Captain Sixkiller’s remains to the cemetery was staggering and a testimony to how much people thought of him. The crowd on hand at the graveyard was one of the largest ever assembled in that section of the country.

The men responsible for the death of the revered Captain Sixkiller were two of the most wanted men in the Nation. A $1,500 reward was offered for their arrest. Friends of both Dick Vann and Alf Cunningham made it known that the men had every intention of turning themselves in to authorities and added that the pair were willing to stand trial, even though they believed Captain Sixkiller’s associates would distort the facts in their case and make sure they were prosecuted in the bitter end. Vann and Cunningham wanted to wait ten days before surrendering themselves to the law. The nearly two week span of time was to ensure tempers had cooled and that the public was ready to hear their side of the incident. Numerous officers were on the trail of Vann and Cunningham and were convinced the pair would be apprehended before the ten days had ended.

Vann and Cunningham were charged with the crime of murder by a Creek Indian court. When or if they were caught they were to be turned over to Creek authorities. According to the compact existing between the Creek and Cherokee Nation, the Creek Nation had jurisdiction over the case. If Vann and Cunningham were arrested in the Cherokee Nation they would have to be extradited to the Creek Nation to stand trial. Judge Parker wanted to help bring the fugitives to justice, but as all the parties involved in the murder were Cherokee, the federal court had no jurisdiction in the matter.

After carefully considering the specifics of the case, the Judge determined the only way the federal government could assist in arresting Alf Cunningham would be to go after him for theft. The gun he had taken from the owner of the Mitchell House qualified as stealing, a crime well within Judge Parker’s right to handle. He issued a writ giving his deputy marshals the authority to arrest Cunningham on a larceny charge. The murder charge took precedent over the crime of stealing. If the deputy marshals managed to apprehend Cunningham they would turn him over to the proper court.

While the hunt for the captain’s assassins was in progress, another man was named to the slain lawman’s post. William Fields, a U.S. marshal and the former city marshal of Tahlequah, was Captain Sixkiller’s successor. He was an accomplished officer who knew filling the vacancy left by his beloved predecessor would be a daunting task. Several months after the death of Captain Sixkiller newspapers were still praising his work. “There never was before and there never was afterwards an officer like Captain Sam Sixkiller,” the February 24, 1887, edition of the Muskogee Phoenix reported. “He was as handsome as an Apollo Belvedere; if there is a race born without fear, Sixkiller belonged to it. He had a figure like Mars divestible of immortality. It was worth a hundred miles travel to see Sixkiller seated in his saddle, straight as Tecumseh: perhaps no man ever had a more complete mastery over a horse than the gallant captain.”

Captain Sixkiller’s widow and children struggled with the loss of their loved one. His brothers had joined in the quest to track down his killers and his sisters, sons and daughters helped comfort their mother and care for the family home. A note on a picture of the captain hanging on the wall in the house reminded relatives how he was quickly taken from them: “Captain Sixkiller was gunned down in Muskogee by Alf Cunningham and Dick Vann.”

Chapter Five

Missing Elizabeth

“Daughter, marrying into the army, you will be poor always; but I count it infinitely preferable to riches with inferior society.”

Judge Bacon to Elizabeth Custer – 1866

George Custer raced his stallion, Jack, at full speed over the limitless Alkali grass covered plateau miles away from the main entrance of Fort Riley, Kansas. The foam-flecked animal was inches behind Elizabeth and her fast horse, Custis Lee. Both riders urged their horses on to even greater speed; the cold wind biting at their smiling faces.

George steered his ride along the foot of a high hill. Abruptly reaching a steep decline, he brought his horse to a quick halt. Elizabeth, dressed in a black riding skirt, uniform jacket, and an Excelsior hat, and riding sidesaddle pulled further ahead of her husband. Quickly looking around, George turned Jack in the direction of a narrow trail through a flinty apron of rocks. He followed the crude path as it wound around the hill then suddenly dropped back down and came out the other side of the steep decline in front of Elizabeth. She waved playfully at him. The horses found their rhythm and broke into a smooth gallop. Elizabeth glanced over at George and giggled like a little girl. The two rode on towards a distant, tumbled pile of thunderheads, sooty black at their base and pure white as whipped cream where they towered against the dome of the sky.

They slowed their horses and stopped next to a cluster of rocks. George dismounted and helped Elizabeth down from her ride. Draping their arms around one another they stood quietly staring at the land stretched out before them. “The prairie was worth looking over,” Elizabeth noted in her memoirs, “because it changed like the sea.” “People thought of the deep-grass as brown, but in the spring it could look almost anything else,” she added, “purple, or gold, or red, or any kind of blue. ₁ Often when cloud shadows crossed the long swells, the whole prairie stirred, and seemed to mold and flow, as if it breathed.” In late January 1867, the terrain the Custers admired was winter-defeated, lightless and without color.

George loosened the hold he had on Elizabeth and she noticed his expression changed subtly. As post commander he needed to return to his duties. The responsibilities of coordinating and training more than 960 enlisted men was daunting, but the 27 year old was committed to the task. The occasional outing with Elizabeth gave him incentive to carry on and her a chance to explore the countryside, blissfully unaware of anything other than her husband. “It was delightful ground to ride over Fort Riley,” she remembered years later. “Ah! What happy days they were, for at that time I had not the slightest realization of what Indian warfare was, and consequently no dread.” ₂

George removed a bugle from his saddlebag and gave it a long blast. Several of his greyhound dogs responded to the sound and came running. They eagerly danced around waiting for their master to lead the way. Elizabeth and George rode slowly back to the post. After an hour the sight of a United States’ flag waving over the barracks came into view. Over time the persistent wind had torn the colors into ribbons. By the time George and Elizabeth arrived at the camp a gleam of lemon-yellow light, that had stained the sky above the western horizon, was matched by the glow of the rising moon. ₃

A great swarming of men and horses made their way from one end of the post to the other and back again. Some were on duty and others were in route to the trader’s store for a drink. Alcohol was never in short supply and the soldiers were prone to over indulge, particularly on payday. ₄ Boredom, fear, and loneliness were the chief reasons for drunkenness and drinking wasn’t relegated to a particular rank. George struggled with alcohol until he married Elizabeth. His conversion to Christianity and his wife influenced him to stay sober. Remembering how it made him physically ill made a difference as well. He preached temperance to his troops. Elizabeth noted in her memoirs that George’s attempts to keep his men from drinking were difficult. “His own greatest battles were not fought in the tented field,” she recalled, “his most glorious combats were those waged in daily, hourly fights on a more hotly contested field than was ever known in common warfare.” ₅

While in his presence, George allowed alcohol among his staff, but in moderation. He and Elizabeth would yield to those who enjoyed a glass of wine with friends to toast a promotion or birth. The Custers, however, would not partake. Elizabeth worried that the officer’s appetite for alcoholic beverages might lead to impaired judgment if they came under attack by the Indians. George assured his wife that he had the utmost confidence in his staff and their ability to sober up quickly. “It was on the battlefield, when all faced death together, where the truest affection was formed among soldiers,” he told her. ₆

It was during a social occasion where alcohol was being served at the Custer’s quarters on January 30, 1867, that Frederick Benteen first reported to George. Benteen noted in his memories that the tension between the two men was “quite palpable.” George was surrounded by his loyal staff, among them was his brother Tom, Myles Moylan, George Yates, both of whom served with George during the Civil War, Algernon E. Smith, an old sailor, and Thomas Weir, a veteran of George’s staff in Texas. Benteen was reserved, but respectful. He saluted George and the commanding officer returned the address. The men reminisced briefly about their days with the Union Army. ₇

One of George’s men mentioned that Benteen was not a West Point graduate, nor was he an educated man, and outside of the military, he had no profession. Benteen was annoyed by the remarks, but maintained his composure. George then asked Elizabeth to bring him the scrapbook he had kept from his time in the Civil War and she complied. The veterans poured over the tome recalling various victories. George’s pride disgusted Benteen and he scowled at the young leader’s tales. The conversation grew heated when George produced a copy of the farewell address he gave his troops when the war ended. Benteen snapped back at George insisting that there were numerous generals much more skilled who offered better speeches; one such man was Brigadier General James Wilson. Benteen had fought beside Wilson during the Civil War. ₈

Elizabeth was a bit taken aback by the gruff, near hostile turn of the discussion. Lieutenant Thomas Weir reached out to steady her. Ever so perceptively she gently leaned into his supportive arms. Years after Benteen first saw Elizabeth and Thomas at the Custer’s home, he claimed the pair was more than just friends. The subtle exchange between Thomas and Elizabeth did not miss Benteen’s attention – it was the gesture that sparked his suspicions.

Through gritted teeth Benteen began reciting a portion of Wilson’s farewell address. Elizabeth interrupted the officer, and in an effort to defuse the tension, offered to give him a tour of their quarters. Benteen declined and asked to be dismissed to continue on with his duties. George granted his request and the men parted company with a salute. ₉

George was well aware everyone didn’t like him, but it had no bearing on the job he was assigned to do. The average recruit earned $13 a month and it was George’s job to make sure they were trained for combat. He expected a lot from his regiment and regularly drove the soldiers to their endurance and beyond. The soldiers participated in daily target practice with their Spencer repeat rifles and Colt Army revolvers, horseback riding drills, lessons in tactics and regimental discipline, and basic first aide. The work was tedious and exhausting. Disillusioned by the grueling pace of military life on the frontier, more than 80 enlisted men deserted before they served a full year at Fort Riley. ₁₀

Those men who chose not to desert, but refused to obey orders were sent to the guardhouse. The facility was located outside the garrison and could hold a number of inmates. Disobedient soldiers interned there were nervous that the stockade would be overtaken by hostile Native Americans and they would have no way to defend themselves. Some tried to escape before their fears could be realized. ₁₁ Elizabeth described a unique escape in her journal in the winter of 1867. “For several nights, at one time, strange sounds for such a place issued from the walls,” she wrote. “Religion in the noisiest form seemed to have taken up its permanent abode there, and for three hours at a time singing, shouting and loud praying went on. There was every appearance of a revival among those trespassers. The officer of the day, in making his rounds, had no comment to pass upon this remarkable transition from card playing and wrangling. He was doubtless relieved to hear the voice of the exhorters as he visited the guard, and indulged in the belief they were out of mischief.

On the contrary, this vehement attack of religion covered up the worst sort of roguery. Night after night they had been digging tunnels under the stone foundation – walls, removing boards and cutting beams in the floor, and to deaden the sound of the pounding and digging some of their numbers were told to sing, pray, and shout.

One morning the guard opened the doors of the rooms in which the prisoners had been confined, and they were empty! Even two that wore ball and chains for serious offenses had in some manner managed to knock them off, as all had swum the Smoky Hill River, and they were never again heard from.” ₁₂

George needed desertions minimized, the prisoners in the stockade back in line, and the 7^th Cavalry fully trained by spring 1867. General W.S. Hancock, commander of all the troops in the region had planned a full military campaign against the Cheyenne who were making trouble. “We’ll take a strong force of infantry, cavalry, and artillery out after them,” Hancock informed George. “We’ll try to scare them so they’ll make peace and settle down on the reservation which has been assigned to them. If they won’t, we’ll destroy them.” ₁₃ George had mixed feelings about the Indians. Their ruthless attacks on Army troopers traveling the plains prompted him to refer to the Native Americans as “blood-thirsty savages.” But he was also torn between a soldier’s hatred of an ‘enemy’ and an admiration for why that enemy was fighting him. “If I were an Indian, I often think that I would greatly prefer to cast my lot among those of my people who adhere to the free open plains, rather than submit to the confined limits of a reservation, there to be the recipient of the blessed benefits of civilization, with its vices thrown in without stint or measure.” ₁₄

While George worked steadily to train the soldiers at Fort Riley to be the best on the plains, Elizabeth lamented the fact that he would be leaving for potentially hazardous duty. She was frightened for him and sad that she couldn’t go with him. “My husband tried to keep my spirits up,” Elizabeth wrote in her memoirs, “by reminding me that the council to be held with the chiefs of the war-like tribes, when they reached that part of the country infested with the marauding Indians, was something he hoped might result in our speedy reunion.” ₁₅

The Custers sought relief from the stress of their pending separation by hosting social events for George’s staff and their families. Elizabeth held dinner parties and George invited his officers over to play poker. Benteen attended the soirees, but was highly critical of the couple’s behavior. He claimed that Elizabeth “presided with correctness over the army wives and had no scruples about favoring the wives of her husband’s allies and snubbing those of his enemies.” ₁₆ He also maintained that George was an “inveterate and inferior gambler” and that his habit was obvious. ₁₇

In Benteen’s letter to his friend, Theodore Goldin, written in late February 1867, he sited an example of George losing big at cards. Benteen joined George, Tom Custer, Lieutenant Myles Moylan, and Thomas Weir for an evening of five-hand poker with dime ante and table stakes. At one point in the game only three players remained, George, Thomas Weir, and Benteen. Believing he had a hand that would make up for the money he had lost early in the night, George suggested the stakes be raised to $2.50. Everyone agreed. George’s bad luck didn’t change. By the first morning light, Benteen had won a considerable amount. Thomas Weir lost more than a month’s salary ($150.00), and George’s debt was near double that amount. Neither had the money to cover their bets, but promised to pay Benteen as soon as they could. Benteen claimed he was never received what he was owed from either men. ₁₈

As the time neared for George and his troops to leave the past on their expedition with General Hancock, Elizabeth became more anxious. The Fetterman massacre of December 1866 was fresh on her mind. Eighty soldiers led by Captain William J. Fetterman, were ambushed and killed near Fort Phil Kerney when they left the post to go to the aid of a woodcutting party. More than 1900 Sioux, Cheyenne, and Apache warriors took part in the slaughter. ₁₉

Eight companies, consisting of infantry and artillery soldiers numbering more than 1400 men, would be accompanying George on the expedition, but Elizabeth believed it was too few. Other wives at the camp felt the same way. “No one can enumerate the terrors, imaginary and real, that filled the hearts of women on the border in those desperate days,” Elizabeth wrote in her memoir. “The buoyancy of my husband had only momentary effect in the last hours of his stay…such partings are a torture that is difficult even to refer to. My husband added another struggle to my lot by imploring me not to let him see the tears that he knew, for his sake, I could keep back until he was out of sight.” ₂₀

In late March 1867, General Hancock, George and eight companies of troops marched out of Fort Riley towards Fort Larned. A meeting between the Army officers and the Cheyenne Chiefs to negotiate the transfer of the Indians to the reservation was scheduled for April 10^th. The members of the 7^th Cavalry arrived at the post on April 7^th and helped get the camp ready to receive the Native American council. ₂₁ The day before the meeting was to take place a violent snowstorm blanketed the fort and plains around it. The Cheyenne leaders not only refused to meet at the designated date because of the frigid weather, but also sited their irritation in the army for sending such a large expedition in the first place. General Hancock explained that he and his troops had come only to promote peace, but the Indians didn’t believe him. ₂₂

George was not surprised that the Indians postponed the council. During his time on the frontier he had come to realize no Indian was in a hurry to adopt the white man’s manner of life. “In making this change,” George wrote in his journal, “the Indian has to sacrifice all that is dear to his heart; he abandons the only mode of life in which he can be a warrior and win triumphs and honors worthy to be sought after….” ₂₃

General Hancock twice rescheduled the meeting between the military leaders and Plains Indian Chiefs – each time the date was ignored. Henry Morton Stanley and Theodore R. Davis, two journalists traveling with the cavalry, reported on how frustrated the General was that the Indians repeatedly failed to show. Readers of Harper’s Weekly, the Missouri Democrat, and the New York Herald publications where Stanley and Davis were employed, were informed by George that the Indians were more frightened than belligerent. ₂₄ General Hancock didn’t agree. He viewed their behavior as a “commencement of war.” He ordered George to take his troops and track the fugitives down. ₂₅

Back at Fort Riley, Elizabeth attended church to pray for the safe return of her husband and the other members of the 7^th Cavalry. A small regiment of men had been left behind to guard the nearly deserted post. There were only two women at the camp besides Elizabeth. Each longed for God to protect their loved ones and lived in fear that petitions would not be answered. They ached for word from their husbands that all was well with them, but none came. ₂₆

In addition to her concern for George, a distant grass fire, sparked by lighting was spreading across the prairie, inching its way toward the fort. There was no time for the soldiers to fight the blaze by burning a section of ground between the camp and the approaching fire. “In an incredibly short time we were overshadowed with a dark cloud of smoke,” Elizabeth wrote in her memoirs. “There were no screams, nor cries, simply silent terror and shivering of horror, as we women huddled together to watch the remorseless friend advancing with what appeared to be inevitable annihilation of the only shelter we had. Every woman’s thoughts turned to her natural protector, now far away….”₂₇ Using blankets, gunnysacks and sheets, columns of stalwart soldiers beat the flames back. The fire danced around the post and continued on over the flat plains.

It would be weeks before news of the life threatening fire would reach George. Although Elizabeth wrote her husband daily the letters could not catch up with him as he pursued bands of Cheyenne, Arapaho, Kiowa, and Comanche Indians north. In mid-April 1867, George and his troops arrived at a stage stop called Lookout Station. The trail of Indians they had been following led them to the location 15 miles west of Fort Hays. At first the stop seemed to be deserted, but upon further inspection George discovered the

people who lived and worked at the depot had been brutally murdered. After they were slain their bodies were set on fire. The 7^th Cavalry searched for weeks for the Indian offenders and found only more burned down state stations and slaughtered homesteaders. General Hancock was furious. He ordered George to continue to track the Indians, to kill them when he found them, and in between incinerate any abandoned Indian village they came on. ₂₈

Before George and his men could go any further they needed to stock up on supplies. They held their position at Fort Hays awaiting fresh horses and feed for the animals and food for the field. George quickly sent for Elizabeth to join him at the post. On May 4, 1867, he wrote to tell her, “You will be delighted with the country.” “Bring a good supply of butter,” he added, “one hundred pounds or more; three or four cans of lard, vegetables – potatoes, onions, and carrots. You will need calico dresses, and a few white ones. Oh, we will be so, so happy.” ₂₉

Elizabeth and George were reunited only for a brief time before the cavalry was directed to make their way to Fort McPherson, Nebraska. George was to help lead the expedition, which involved a more extensive search for wanted Indians along the Platte River. ₃₀ The move infuriated Benteen who was already annoyed that Elizabeth was able to join George at the new command post. Not only did he feel he was infinitely more qualified to command the scouting party, but he longed to see his own wife, Kate, who was expecting their second child. The situation was made worse for Benteen when George didn’t consider him for the command position. He chose Thomas Weir instead, promoting him from 1^st Lieutenant to Captain in the process. ₃₁

George overlooked the grumbling and complaining from the soldier for the moment in order to focus on preparations for the long journey ahead. He kissed his wife goodbye on June 1, 1867, and with 350 men and 20 wagons in tow, headed south. While on the trail dissatisfaction among the ranks raised its ugly head. The troops were tired, sick of being on the move, and drinking was again on the rise. George was unable to persuade the men to abandon the habit. It wasn’t until a popular, well-liked officer with the 7^th Cavalry got drunk and then shot and killed himself, that the troops changed their ways. George wrote about the incident in his memoirs on June 8, 1867, “…But for intemperance Colonel Cooper would have been a useful and accomplished officer, a brilliant and most comparable gentlemen. He leaves a young wife, shortly to become a mother. I thank God my darling wife will never know anxiety through intemperance on my part. Would I could fly to her now…but wise providence decrees all.” ₃₂

The problem with drinking had subsided in the unit, but desertion was on the rise. Apprehensive about marching further into hostile territory, 35 soldiers decided to leave their post in a single day. George wrote Elizabeth and told her “severe and summary measures must be taken.” He directed his officers to shoot down the deserters as they fled the camp. A few men were killed and many other were wounded. George felt the extreme measures were necessary to show other troops such treasonous acts would result in harsh punishment. “The effect was all that could be desired,” he shared with Elizabeth. “There was not another desertion as long as I remained in command.” ₃₃

Elizabeth’s letters, sent along with every passing stage finally reached George on the outskirts of Fort McPherson. He barely had time to read them before being summoned to a rendezvous with Sioux Indian leaders on the Southern Plains. George’s meeting with the Indians at their request resulted in their agreeing to relocate to a reservation in the coming days. When William Tecumseh Sherman, Commander of the Division of Missouri from 1866 to 1868, arrived on the scene in Nebraska he was not convinced the Indians would follow through. Frustrated by the unsuccessful attempts to move various Plains Indian tribes onto reservations and under pressure from Washington to stop

the killing of pioneers, Sherman ordered George to “clean out the renegades.” ₃₄

Several weeks had past since George and Elizabeth had been together. Elizabeth kept herself busy with the demands of being an officer’s wife and maintaining the social obligations that would keep morale hopeful. During the tea parties and dinners she would host, she shared stories with the camp inhabitants about the emigrants she and George met en route to the fort. Heavy spirits were lighted by Elizabeth’s recollection of she George contemplating life on the frontier. “How well I remember the long wait we made on one of the staircases of the capitol at Washington, above which hung then the great picture by Leutze,” ‘Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way,’ she noted. “We little thought then, hardly more than girl and boy as we were, that our lives would drift over the country which the admirable picture represents…. The picture made a great impression on us. How much deeper the impression, though, had we known that we were to live out the very scene depicted.” ₃₅

Even in the midst of organizing and implementing a search of the country around the fork of the Republican River, then pressing onward to Fort Sedgwick, Nebraska to receive additional orders, George had one thing on his mind, completing his assignment so he could get home to Elizabeth. His preoccupation with seeing her ultimately clouded his judgment. When the 7^th Cavalry was within 75 miles of Fort Sedgwick, George decided to change course and make for Fort Wallace in western Kansas. Fort Wallace wasn’t that far from Fort Hayes where Elizabeth was staying. Just before the troops arrived at the post George sent couriers out with messages. One was for the commander at Fort Sedgwick asking for further orders and the second was for his wife, George wanted her to join him. “If you get a chance to come to Wallace, I will send a squadron there to meet you,” George urged Elizabeth. “I am on a roving commission, going nowhere in particular.” ₃₆

The courier delivered the message to Elizabeth, but there was no time to respond. Heavy rains in he area and sudden flooding forced her and the civilians with her to higher ground at Fort Riley. ₃₇

Two weeks passed with no word from Elizabeth. An anonymous letter about Elizabeth did reach George, however. The correspondence warned George that he should “look after his wife more closely.” ₃₈ The letter suggested that she was emotionally attached to another man. Immediately following the shocking accusation came news that cholera had broken out at Fort Leavenworth and spread west to Fort Riley. Many people had died from the disease. George was frantic to know if his wife was among them. Rather than carry on with his superior’s orders, which were to “continue after the Cheyenne using Fort Wallace for a base,” George decided to deviate from them. ₃₉

On July 19, 1867, Elizabeth sat alone in her quarters at Fort Riley. Her eyes were bleary from crying over the letters she hadn’t received from George. None of the usual activities in which she regularly amused herself, sewing, reading, painting, etc., held little interest. Elizabeth’s despair ended when George arrived. “The door behind which I paced uneasily, opened, and with a flood of sunshine that poured in, came a vision far brighter than even the brilliant Kansas sun,” Elizabeth recalled in her memoirs. “There before me, blithe and buoyant, stood my husband! In an instant, every moment of the preceding moment was obliterated.” ₄₀

George would pay for his mad dash to see his wife. A discontented captain in his charge and the Colonel who granted him leave from duty, leveled charges against him. The Colonel told authorities that he was not fully awake when George asked him if he could travel to Fort Riley and denied giving him permission. The captain told military officials that he was excessively cruel to the men in his command and sited George’s order to shoot deserters as an example. “I knew my orders,” George admitted to the army’s disciplinary board. “But I made my own decision and acted on it. I think I was right and I’d do the same thing again if I had to. I’ll answer for what I did before the court and take the consequences, whatever they are.” ₄₁

Elizabeth, along with a number of George’s friends and comrades in arms, considered the court martial proceedings, which began in August 1867, to be “nothing but an outbreak of the smoldering enmity and envy” towards him. Among the men who testified on George’s behalf and praised him for his courage and leadership ability were Tom Custer and Thomas Weir. Thomas was close beside Elizabeth during the trail. She sat at rigid attention throughout most of the unpleasant event. There were times while listening to the harsh criticism of her husband she seemed to weaken. Thomas would gently drape his arm around Elizabeth’s shoulder and comfort her. George’s eye seldom left the review board; his posture was straight as a steel ramrod. ₄₂

Benteen watched the scene unfold from the back row of the courtroom. He believed George to be an “over confident braggart” and had failed to make a “meaningful effort” to handle the recent events according to military regulations. Benteen and several other members of the cavalry anticipated that the judge in the trial would find George guilty and that his career in the army would be over. From Benteen’s perspective more than George’s career was in jeopardy. He observed the interaction between Elizabeth and Thomas. It appeared Thomas couldn’t keep his eyes off her and Elizabeth seemed to relish the attention. George seemed wholly unaware, his face set determinedly on the courtroom proceedings. ₄₃

Chapter 5

1. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 213, 380-385

2. Ibid., pg. 241, Frost, Lawrence General Custer’s Libbie pg. 158, Monaghan, Jay Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer pg. 281-283

3. Custer, Elizabeth Mrs. Custer at Fort Riley pg. 4, Fickert, Steve Mrs. Custer on the Plains pg. 2-4

4. Leckie, Shirley Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth pg. 90-92

5. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 397, Frost, Lawrence General Custer’s Libbie pg. 159-160

6. Ibid.

7. Utley, Robert M. Cavalier in Buckskins: George Armstrong Custer & the Western Military Frontier pg. 47, Ladenheim, J.C. Custer’s Thorn: The Life of Frederick Benteen pg. 68-71

8. Ibid.

9. Carroll, John M. A Graphologist Looks at Custer and Some of His Friends pg. 7

10. Frost, Lawrence General Custer’s Libbie pg. 158

11. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 453-455

12. Ibid.

13. Leighton, Margaret The Story of General Custer

pg. 122

14. Custer, George My Life on the Plains pg. 39-47

15. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 484

16. Ladenheim, J.C. Custer’s Thorn: The Life of Frederick Benteen pg. 71

17. Barnett, Louise Touched by Fire: The Life, Death, & Mythic After Life of George Custer pg. 197, Benteen, Frederick Benteen and Goldin Letters pg. 247

18. Ibid., Ladenheim, J.C. Custer’s Thorn: The Life of Frederick Benteen pg. 71

19. Bowman, John S. The American West Year by Year pg. 94

20. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 485

21. Leighton, Margaret The Story of General Custer

pg. 124

22. Ibid.

23. Custer, George My Life on the Plains pg. 17

24. Monaghan, Jay Custer: The Life of General Armstrong Custer pg. 284

25. Utley, Robert M. Cavalier in Buckskins: George Armstrong Custer & the Western Military Frontier pg. 49

26. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 490

27. Ibid., pg 491

28. Custer, George My Life on the Plains pg. 270, Katz, Mark D. Custer in Photographs pg. 149

29. Merington, Marguerite The Custer Story pg. 201

30. Monaghan, Jay Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer pg. 291

31. Ladenheim, J.C. Custer’s Thorn pg. 73

32. Merington, Marguerite The Custer Story pg. 205, Katz, Mark D. Custer in Photographs pg. 149

33. Ibid., pg. 206

34. Monaghan, Jay Custer: The Life of General George Armstrong Custer pg. 292

35. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 596

36. Merington, Marguerite The Custer Story pg. 166

37. Frost, Lawrence General Custer’s Libbie pg. 166-168

38. Ladenheim, J.C. Custer’s Thorn: The Life of Frederick Benteen pg. 70-74, Carroll, John Custer from the Civil War pg. 7, Leckie, Shirley Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth pg. 102

?

39. Utley, Robert M. Cavalier in Buckskin: George Armstrong Custer & the Western Military Frontier pg. 41

40. Custer, Elizabeth Tenting on the Plains pg. 699, Custer, George My Life on the Plains pg. 77-79

41. Frost, Lawrence The Court Martial of General George Custer pg. 41-42, Daubenmier, Judy Empty Saddles: Desertion from the Dashing U.S. Cavalry Montana: The Magazine of the Western History October 1, 2004 pg. 2-4

42. Frost, Lawrence General Custer’s Libbie pg. 171

43. Leighton, Margaret The Story of General Custer pg. 134, Ladenheim, J.C. Custer’s Thorn: The Life of Frederick Benteen pg. 103

Introduction
“If he isn’t a pet with the women he ought to be.”
Female newspaper reporter, J.M.W. observation in an article entitled “Colonel Cody Talks” – 1894

Dear North Carolina Troller, Consider buying the book instead of spending hours everyday on my site reading about Cody.

FOREWORD

Dodge City, Kansas, founded in 1872 when the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad reached a point located five miles west of Fort Dodge, was a wide open, raucous, frontier town that catered first to the Buffalo hunters from 1872 through 1875. Following the demise of the Buffalo trade, the City Fathers went South to entice the Texas ranchers to bring their longhorn cattle to Dodge City where they would receive top prices for their beef. It was during this period, from 1875 until 1885, that Dodge City enjoyed the dubious distinction as the “Queen of the Cowtowns.”

During this reign, Dodge City, also known as the “wickedest little city in America,” was the scene of many famous and some infamous incidents, that would forever pique the interest of writers and create lasting legends of some of the real people who resided here. The year 1878 provided all of the right stuff that would put Dodge City on the map as a wild and wooly cowtown and helped establish its permanent place in the annals of those bygone days.

It was during that year, four young and fearless men in their 20’s and early 30’s, Wyatt Earp, Bat Masterson, Bill Tilghman and Charlie Basset among others, were hired to uphold the law; James “Dog” Kelley was elected Mayor; Marshal Ed Masterson, Bat’s Brother, was shot and killed in the line of duty by an unruly cowboy; J. H. “Doc” Holiday, dentist, office in room 24 of the Dodge House, offered his services with “money refunded if not satisfied, ” his ad promised; Assistant U. S. Deputy Marshal Henry T. McCarty was shot and killed in the Long Branch Saloon; Dull Knife and his band of 340 Cheyenne jumped the reservation at Fort Reno and fled north through western Kansas to their North Dakota homeland; Colonel William H. Lewis, commander at Fort Dodge, was killed in a battle while pursuing the Cheyenne in northwestern Kansas; and a beautiful singer/entertainer, Dora Hand was foully murdered by a young cattle baron who was smitten by her charms.

This book, Thunder Over the Plains, by Howard Kazanjian and Chris Enss, is a masterful job relating the murder of Dora Hand and the subsequent action taken by these four young lawmen to pursue and capture her killer. The authors have done an excellent job in presenting these men as real people who were very good at doing their job not just the mythical icons of the “Old West” that they would later become.

A local historian, Fredric R. Young, in his book, Dodge City Up Through A Century in Story and Pictures, states, “ Much nonsense has been written about Dodge City’s Queen of the Fairy Belles, Dora Hand, but her romantic and novel history is yet to be fully unraveled.”

It is my humble opinion that one hundred and forty years after her death, this gripping and suspenseful book is a beautiful unraveling of her romantic and novel history.

Jim Sherer, Director (Retired)

Kansas Heritage Center & Former Mayor of Dodge City, Kansas

Bethenia Owens-Adair

The Student Teacher

“Nothing was permitted to come between me and this, (getting an education) the greatest opportunity of my life.”

Bethenia Owens-Adair – 1906

Tears streamed down twelve year old Bethenia Owens face as she watched her teacher pack his belongings into a faded, leather saddlebag and slip his coat on over his shoulder. She was heartbroken that the gracious man who introduced her to the alphabet and arithmetic would be leaving to teach school at a far off location. Bethenia’s brothers and sisters gathered around him, hugging his legs, and hanging onto his hands. Mr. Beaufort had boarded with the Owens family during the three month summer school term in 1852 and everyone had grown quite attached to him, especially Bethenia.

Mr. Beaufort smiled sweetly at Bethenia as she wiped her face dry with the back of her dirty hand. Streaks of grim lined her thin features and continued on into her hair- line. Her long, brown locks protruded haphazardly out of the pigtails behind each ear. The dainty ribbons that once held her hair in place were untied and dangling down the back of her soiled, well-worn gingham dress.

The teacher stretched out his hand to Thomas Owens, Bethenia’s father, and then gave her mother, Sarah a squeeze around the neck. He thanked them for their hospitality and then turned his attention to their nine children. He snatched the youngest child off of the floor, tossed her up, and gave the giggling infant a kiss. Mr. Beaufort said goodbye to everyone, but left his farewell to Bethenia for the last. “I guess I’ll take this one with me,” he told her mother. “All right,” Sarah replied playfully. “She is such a tomboy I can never make a girl of her anyway.”

Bethenia blinked away more tears. Mr. Beaufort took her hand in his and led her out the door. The two walked down the dusty roadway to the gate and continued on for a bit without saying a word. Finally, Mr. Beaufort stopped and bent down next to the faithful student. “Now little one,” he kindly said, “you must go back. You are a nice little girl, and some day you will make a fine woman, but you must remember and study your book hard, and when you get to be a woman everybody will love you, and don’t forget your first teacher, will you?” Mr. Beaufort scooped Bethenia into his arms, kissed her cheek, sat her down in the direction of her home, and went on his way. Bethenia hurried back to the house where she found a quiet spot to cry over the loss of the teacher she so worshipped.

“Of course they all laughed at me,” she remembered in her journal years later, “and often times afterward when I was especially rebellious and wayward, which was not infrequently, I would be confronted with, “I wish the teacher had taken you with him,” to which I never failed to answer promptly and fervently, “I wish he had too!”

Bethenia Angelina Owens was born on February 7, 1840 in Van Buren County, Missouri. She was the second to the oldest child born to a cattle family that emigrated to Clatsop County, Oregon in 1843. She was an athletic child who roughhoused with her brothers constantly, challenging them to various feats of strength. She did chores around the homestead that were ordinarily reserved for members of the opposite sex and took great pride in the fact that her father referred to her at times as his “boy.”

Bethenia was a great help to her mother. Although she was rambunctious and could hold her own against the boys, she was more than capable of looking after her younger siblings while her mother and older sister, Diana helped work the ranch. According to Bethenia’s journal, the job kept her busy. She often had one of her brothers and sisters in her arms and more clinging to her. “Where there is a baby every two years,” she wrote, “there is always no end of nursing to be done; especially when mother’s time is occupied, as it was then, every minute,

from early morning till late at night, with much outdoor as well as indoor work. She (Bethenia’s mother) seldom found time to devote to the baby, except to give it the breast.”

By her own account, Bethenia’s childhood was mostly idyllic. When the weather was agreeable she spent most of her time outdoors entertaining the little ones she cared for and running and playing with her favorite brother, Flem. She was fond of hunting hen’s nests and gathering eggs laid in the most unusual places. She also enjoyed visiting with a neighbor lady who taught her how to cook and sew and told her fairytales during the lessons. Bethenia did not realize her education was lacking until her parents suggested that the Owens children attend school, but she was excited about the prospect.

Children over the age of four were the first to be enrolled at the school in Clatsop County. Older boys and girls, 14 or 15 years old, came to class once their chores were completed and took them up again once they were dismissed for the day. School books were in short supply and many of the pupils had to share the limited copies of the readers and spellers with one another. The Owens clan took turns studying from the solitary book they borrowed from a family in a neighboring county.

Mr. Beaufort proved to be an exceptional educator for the young in the small Oregon community. Bethenia was smitten with him from their first meeting. “The new teacher was a find, handsome young man,” she wrote in her memoirs, “who held himself aloof from the young people of his age, and kept his person so clean, neat and trim that the country men disliked him.” He interacted with his students, not only during class time, but a recess as well. He played games with the children and gave them the individual attention needed to learn the daily lessons in reading and writing. He had a particular fondness for Bethenia. Not only did he help her with her school work, but he taught her a great deal about horses. She loved to ride and Mr. Beaufort coached her on the best way to lasso a horse and spring onto its’ back.

The innocent infatuation Bethenia had for her teacher knew no bounds. Her older sister and mother would periodically admonish her for “always tagging him around.” Bethenia wrote that her mother would scold her saying “You ought to know that he must get tired of you and the children sometimes.” Nothing could persuade her from following after Mr. Beaufort every chance she got, however. She would walk two miles to school with him each morning and late in the afternoon she would haul her siblings to the spot where the teacher would be grading papers.

It took Bethenia a long time to recover after Mr. Beaufort left the Owens’ homestead. Several years would pass before she would be able to attend school again. But the fire for learning had been ignited and would ultimately be the key to Bethenia’s success.

Although she would have much preferred to marry a man like Mr. Beaufort, two years after meeting her beloved teacher Bethenia found herself betrothed to one of her father’s ranch hands. She was barely fourteen when she made the acquaintance of Legrand Hill. He had been living in the Rogue River Valley for a year working his parent’s land. He was a handsome man, broad-shouldered and tall. When she looked into her eyes, she saw the promise of a long and happy life. Her parents had selected this man to be her husband and she trusted their decision. On their recommendation she eagerly placed her future in Legrand’s hands.

On May 4, 1854, the petite teenager, dressed in a sky-blue wedding dress, stood next to her groom and promised to be a faithful wife. After the ceremony the pair retired to their home in the middle of 320 acres of farmland Legrand had purchased on credit. The newlyweds lived four miles from Bethenia’s parents and in the beginning, all was right with the world.

Family and friends visited often, helping Legrand work the property and assisting Bethenia as she made repairs to their small log cabin.

Legrand was an avid hunter, and in between planting and tending to the livestock, he spent days in the forest bagging grouse and deer. Before long, Legrand’s hunting trips became an obsession. More often than not, he put off doing chores to track wild game. He idled away so much time Bethenia’s father was forced to complete the job of putting up a good winter house to protect his daughter from the elements. A mere nine months after the wedding, Bethenia had fully recognized in Legrand a “lack of industry and perseverance.”

Legrand was opposed to doing an honest day’s work and because of that, he was unable to pay the $150 mortgage on the farm. The Hills were forced to sell the land and move to Jackson County, Oregon, to live with Legrand’s Aunt Kelly.

Less than a year after the Hills were married, Bethenia gave birth to a boy. The proud couple named the child George. Legrand’s slothful ways, however, did not change with the advent of fatherhood. He continued to fritter away his time, leaving the responsibility of earning an income to Bethenia.

Her parents paid the young mother a visit and were appalled by the “hand to mouth” living situation in which they found their daughter and grandchild. Thomas managed to persuade his son-in-law to return to Clatsop County. He lured the less than ambitious Legrand back with an offer to give him an acre of land and material to build a house.

Legrand’s attitude toward work remained the same in Clatsop County. Against the advice of his father-in-law, he agreed to partner in a brick-making business. He turned what little money he and Bethenia had over to his two partners and then spent all of his time overseeing the venture. He decided against building a home for his wife and child and chose instead to move his family into a tent. A sustained torrential downpour halted the making of the bricks and eventually put an end to the business altogether.

In late November, Bethenia contracted typhoid fever. She was much too sick to care for her baby or work to keep food on the Hill table. Her parents stepped in and moved Bethenia and George out of the damp tent and into their dry home.

Thomas pleaded with Legrand to start construction on a house for his family, but he refused to do so until the deed to the land was turned over to him. When Thomas refused to give in to his request, Legrand became furious and decided to build a house in town instead.

He proved to be a poor carpenter and after four months the home was still not complete. Wife and child were moved in anyway.

Bethenia continued to struggle with her health. The fever had left her weak and unable to do everything she once did. George was sickly too, but was nonetheless a big eater. Legrand had little or no patience with his three-year-old son’s ailments. He spanked him quite frequently for whimpering, and in many instances, was generally abusive toward the toddler. “Early one morning in March,” Bethenia recalled in 1906, “after a tempestuous scene of this sort, Mr. Hill threw the baby on the bed, and rushed downtown. As soon as he was out of sight, I put on my hat and shawl, and gathering a few necessaries together for the baby, I flew over to my father’s house.”

Sarah Owens applauded her daughter’s courage in leaving Legrand. “Any man that could not make a living with the good starts and help he has had, never will make one,” she told Bethenia. “And with his temper, he is liable to kill you at any time.” Bethenia remained at her parent’s home even though Legrand made numerous appeals to win her back. “I told him many times,” she later wrote in her journal, “that if we ever did separate, I would never go back and I never will.”

After four years of living in a difficult marriage, Bethenia filed for divorce. Many Clatsop County residents were shocked by her actions, and her sister advised Bethenia to “go back and beg him on your knees to received you.” The forlorn mother refused. “I was never born to be struck by moral man,” she insisted.

It was difficult at first, but Bethenia and George’s life away from Legrand and his tyrannical behavior proved to be best for mother and son. George thrived under his grandparent’s roof, basking in the constant attention he received from his many aunts and uncles. Bethenia used the time and the renewal of her health to attend school in the nearby town of Roseburg. She could barely read or write and believed the only way to improve her condition in life was to get a full education. At the age of 18 she enrolled in school and shared a third grade class with children who were ten and eleven years younger than her.

She eventually moved out of her parent’s home, and in addition to continuing on with school, focused on a way to support herself and her son. “I sought work in all honorable directions, even accepting washing,” Bethenia noted in her journal, “which was one of the most profitable occupations among the few considered “proper” for women in those days.”

Bethenia’s parents objected to her living on her own. They wanted their daughter to stay home and let them care for her and her baby, but she refused. She did accept the sewing machine her parent’s gave her and after teaching herself how to use it, added mending to her list of services for hire.

In the fall of 1860, Bethenia traveled to Oysterville, Washington to visit a friend and decided to stay in the area awhile and attend school. Well-meaning family members urged her to return to Oregon, but she wouldn’t agree to do so until after she completed the basic primary grades. “I now know that I can support and educate myself and my boy, and am resolved to do it,” she noted in her journal. “And furthermore, I do not intend to do it over a washtub either.”

Bethenia worked her way through primary school by doing laundry for ranch hands. Through books and diligent studying she overcame the hardships associated with a failed marriage and single parenthood. In 1874, she wrote, “Thus passed one of the pleasantest and most profitable winters of my life, while, whetted by what it fed on, my desire for knowledge grew stronger.”

An urgent plea from her sister ultimately persuaded her to leave Oysterville and move back to Clatsop County. Bethenia agreed to help her ailing sister in exchange for the chance to attend and teach school in Astoria.

“Don’t you think I could teach a little summer school here on the plains?” she asked Diana. “I can rise at four, and help with the milking, and get all the other work done by 8 a.m., and I can do washing mornings and evenings, and on Saturdays.” Diana encouraged her to try and Bethenia quickly hopped on her horse and made the rounds to the various neighbor’s homes looking for students.

According to Bethenia’s recollections, “I succeeded in getting the promise of sixteen pupils for which I was to receive $2 for three months. This was my first attempt to instruct others. I taught my school in the old Presbyterian church – the first Presbyterian church building ever erected in Oregon. Of my sixteen pupils, there were three who were more advanced than myself, but I took their books home with me nights, and, with the help of my brother-in-law, I managed to prepare the lessons beforehand, and they never suspected my incompetence. From this school I received my first little fortune of $25; and I added to this by picking wild black berries at odd times, which found a ready sale at fifty cents a gallon.” By 1861, Bethenia had earned enough money to purchase her own plot of land in Astoria and build a house.

No amount of hard work could deter Bethenia from achieving her goal of getting an education. She passed from one class to another, moving on to more advanced courses along the way. She admitted that she made it through not because she was the most cleaver, but because she was determined and perseverant. “At 4 a.m. my lamp was always burning,” she wrote in her memoirs, “and I was poring over my books – never allowing myself more than eight hours sleep.”

Bethenia’s thirst for knowledge did not subside after she graduated from high school. The fondness she had as a youngster for nursing and caring for sick friends and family, sparked a desire to study medicine. Her superior talent in hat design and dressmaking helped her to raise the necessary funds to attend medical school. She became truly committed to the calling after witnessing an elderly doctor’s inability to care properly for a small child. “The old physician in my presence,” she wrote years later, “attempted to use an instrument for the relief of the little sufferer, and, in his long, bungling, and unsuccessful attempt he severely lacerated the tender flesh of the poor little girl. At last, he laid down the instrument, to wipe his glasses. I picked it up saying, “Let me try, Doctor,” and passed it instantly, with perfect ease, bringing immediate relief to the tortured child.”

That momentous event set in motion the course of Bethenia’s new profession.

Words of encouragement for Bethenia’s new aim were few and far between, however. In fact, once she made her career plans known, only two people supported her. One was a trusted physician, who loaned her his medical books; the other was a judge, who applauded her ambition and assured her that she “would win.” Most of Bethenia’s family and friends were opposed to her becoming a doctor. They sneered and laughed and told her it was a disgrace for a woman to enter into such work. Bethenia disregarded their warnings and criticism, and pressed on toward her objective.

Bethenia began her studies at the Philadelphia Eclectic School of Medicine in 1870. Students at the college learned ways to treat the sick using herbs, mineral bathes, and natural medicines. Upon graduation she opened a practice in the Portland area. Several patients sought out her unorthodox method of dealing with sickness and pain, and in no time, her business was making a profit. Bethenia could then afford to send nineteen-year old George to the UC Berkley Medical School. He graduated in 1874.

Although Doctor Owens’s eclectic medical practice was prosperous, she was not satisfied. She pined for more knowledge in her chosen field.

On September 1, 1878, she left Portland for Philadelphia to seek counsel from a professor at her former college. She was advised to attend the University of Michigan, and she left at once to enroll. Her daily schedule was filled with lectures, clinics, laboratory work, and examinations. Bethenia was so engrossed in her studies that she did not hear the bell ring between classes. She never tired of the learning process and she never suffered with a day of sickness.

In June of 1880, Doctor Owens received her second degree. After graduation she traveled with one of her classmates to do field work in hospitals and clinics in Chicago. In the fall of that same year, she returned to the University of Michigan, accompanied by her son. Together, the mother and son doctors attended advanced lectures in obstetrics and homeopathic remedies. At the conclusion of the lectures she and George took a trip through Europe. Afterwards, she settled briefly in San Francisco. It was there she met her second husband.

Before she met Colonel John Adair, Bethenia maintained that she was fully committed to her profession and not interested in marriage. A brief courtship with the handsome Civil War veteran changed her mind. The two were married on July 24, 1884, in Portland, Oregon.

Three years after the wedding, the Adairs were expecting their first child. Bethenia boasted in her journal that she was happier than she had ever been before. Her elation would not last long. “At the age of forty-seven,” she wrote, “I gave birth to a little daughter; and now my joy knew no limit, my cup of bliss was full to overflowing. A son I had, and a daughter was what I most desired…For three days only, was she left with us, and then my treasure was taken from me, to join the immortal hosts beyond all earthly pain and sorrow.”

Bethenia found solace from the grief of her daughter’s death in caring for the sick in her Portland practice. No matter what the weather conditions were, and knowing that there was no other doctor within a 200-mile radius, she never refused a call from a patient. She attended to all those in need, at times traveling through dense undergrowth and swollen rivers.

Never content with being solely a physician, Bethenia became a student again in 1889 and enrolled in a Chicago medical school, seeking a post-graduate degree. After she completed her studies, she returned home to her husband and the teenage son they had adopted. Her practice continued to grow, and before long she found she could not keep up with her professional work and maintain a home for her family.

She chose the practice over her marriage and sent John away to a farm they owned in Astoria. The Adairs’ marriage ended in 1903.

At the age of sixty-five, Bethenia retired from her practice. Her focus shifted from day-to-day medical treatment to research. In addition to her research, she worked as a lobbyist for the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. She remained a staunch social and political activist until 1926, when she died of natural causes at the age of eighty-six.

The impact Mr. Beaufort had on Bethenia’s early years lasted a lifetime. According to her memoirs, he instilled in her a love for learning and was the example of the kind of educator she herself eventually became.

Frances Allen Noyes

Miner on Candle Creek

“If I can’t be in the hills, I would sooner be dead.”

France Noyes – 1928

A cluster of tents dotted a strip of frozen earth at the base of a massive glacier in Skagway, Alaska. Beyond the solid layer of ice was a thick forest that followed the contours of a mountain. The numerous trees that covered the ridge were like deep-pile carpet and the grassy scruff under the timbers were red and yellow with the coming of autumn. A clear, cold stream flowed swiftly from the white peaks, spilling over the layers of compacted snow. Pieces of the iceberg broke off and fell into the freezing water.

Frances Noyes, a pretty, determined woman dressed in a heavy wool coat, thick-soled, knee-high boots, and wool gloves traveled along a gravel trail running parallel to the stream. She stopped momentarily to plunge a gold mining pan into the rocky creek bed and sift through the pebbles. Like hundreds of other miners that rushed to Alaska in 1898 looking for gold, Frances was confident she would discover a fortune. The biting wind and snow flurries that cut across her path did not deter her from her work. She glanced around at the setting and smiled.

She was invigorated by her surroundings. “If there ever was a woman prospector, it was Frances,” Frances nephew William Simonds recalled of his aunt. “She was never as content in her life as she was mining in the Alaskan wilderness.”

Frances and her husband, Thomas C. Noyes, searched for gold along Otter Creek near Skagway from September 1899 to February 1900. She was one of a handful of women miners who dared to brave the sub-zero temperatures of the isolated Klondike. The intrepid female pioneer actually chose mining as her second career. Her first job was as a stage actress. Beautiful and talented, she spent years entertaining audiences in boomtowns across the Old West. One audience member was Thomas Noyes, a man she fell in love with and wanted to marry in spite of his family’s objections. Had he not stood up to his parents she might not have accompanied him on his mining expedition and might never realized her true calling.

“I shall conduct no training school for actresses,” Montana mining tycoon John Noyes declared. He sent his son Tom a withering glare. The boy had obviously been taken in by a pretty face. Mrs. Allen was not the type of woman he had in mind as a wife for his son. She’d been married and divorced, and that scandal had hardly quieted when a new one had erupted.

 

The full weight of his father’s displeasure only strengthened Tom’s resolve. “You have $2,500 in a trust fund that you are holding for me, have you not, Father?”

“Yes.”

“Well, give me that. I will start out for myself, and you can cut me off without a cent.” Tom had loved Frances Allen ever since he first saw her in a theatrical production. His father thought Tom was too young to marry and Frances too infamous to be his bride, but Tom intended to marry her, and soon. Frances clearly was in danger, however, as another would-be suitor from New Orleans was stalking her from state to state and might soon appear in Butte.

Tom did not change his mind, though his father continually dredged up the infamy of Frances’s past, starting with her divorce from Samuel Allen earlier in 1897. The newspapers had reported every titillating development. According to one account Samuel Allen had told his friends that his ex-wife “is a good woman, but has a passion for money, a siren who uses her charms to infatuate men to the point where they lavish their wealth upon her, but she never strays from the straight and narrow path.”

 

 

A report in Spokane’s Spokesman entitled “She’s An Actress, Ex-Prosecuting Attorney Objects to the Life,” claimed, “ The wreck of this family commenced about the time of the society circus at Natatorium Park in 1895, when Mrs. Allen rode two horses bareback. Mr. Allen did not enjoy this exhibition, and the family was never a happy one.”

Tom suspected his father had seen that article. He was certain the electrifying accounts had convinced his father to forbid him to marry the woman he loved. The newspapers, in Tom’s opinion, wrongly made Frances sound like a beautiful but heartless, money-hungry tease. Tom’s father certainly believed this and reminded his son that no respectable woman would flaunt herself on stage unless she was out to snare a rich husband. Tom knew Frances did not care about money. She would marry him with his small trust fund and no prospects of inheriting his father’s huge fortune.

What worried Tom was the threat hanging over Frances’s life. A would-be suitor, Alfred Hildreth, was stalking Frances, and his actions had steadily become more dangerous. At the Leland Hotel in Chicago, Hildreth had lain in wait for five days. The Southerner confronted Frances in the lobby, and witnesses said Frances agreed to dine with him at a downtown restaurant, only to have the impassion man

 

brandish a carving knife while declaring he would do something desperate if she wouldn’t have him. He had followed Frances through several states, and his ardor increased every time he caught up with her. Tom knew Alfred could show up at any time.

Newspapers in Chicago and New York recorded the tales of Hildreth’s obsession. The Chicago Chronicle carried one story that made Tom’s blood boil. “Alfred J. Hildreth loves Mrs. Frances Allen with such true and ardent affection that he has followed her 5,000 miles to prove it. Even though Mr. Allen secured a divorce from his wife because she rode bareback at a charity circus in Spokane, Wash., attired in the reddest of red silken tights, Hildreth says she is dear to him. Mrs. Allen, however, does not return the feeling of young Hildreth, and she has spent many weary hours moving from one city to another to escape the devoted lover.”

The tights had been pink, but Tom didn’t bother to correct the story. Frances Allen belonged to him, and neither Alfred Hildreth nor Tom’s own father was going to stand in the way of a wedding, Tom decided.

Arabella Frances Patchen Allen did not care that Tom’s father disapproved of her life on the stage. She intended to marry his son.

 

Of all the men who had pursued her since she had left Spokane after the fateful circus ride, Tommy was the one she truly loved. Her first marriage had been troubled from the start. On the day of her wedding to Samuel Allen in 1892, when she was barely eighteen, the groom had disappeared. His drunken companions had held a “special session” and voted to continue the wedding anyway, with a different groom. After several good-natured votes were taken among the unmarried men, each of whom had voted for himself, Samuel had finally reappeared, and the vows were spoken.

For a few years she had enjoyed the social life that was part of being married to a prominent lawyer. Samuel had even given his consent for her participation in the charity circus at Natatorium Park, since half the money would go to the family of a boy who had broken his back in a barrel slide. Her husband had stalked out in a rage when he discovered his beautiful young wife in form-fitting tights and short blue skirt, riveting the attention of every person in the place.

Samuel’s outrage had resulted in a huge quarrel, and she’d left his fine home for good that August. By April of the following year, she had succeeded on the stage. If she hadn’t ridden in the society circus, she might still be married to Samuel and living well, she knew, but by leaving

 

Spokane and taking parts in productions in Bradford, Pennsylvania, she’d achieved some success of her own. And her acting career had allowed her to meet Tom Noyes, whom she had fallen in love with and was prepared to marry.

The 1897 wedding of Tom Noyes and Frances Allen did not compare in any way to Tom’s sister’s wedding, which linked two prosperous mining families and was celebrated as the most brilliant wedding ever held in Montana. Tom and Frances were married in a small, quiet ceremony. By the time Tom’s sister, Ruth Noyes, married Arthur Heinz, Tom and Frances were already mining together in Skagway, Alaska, at the foot of a glacier on Otter Creek.

Tom knew he was a lucky man. Not many women would have smiled through the bitter cold and long darkness of an Alaskan winter. Unlike the California Gold Rush, few women had hurried to the rush in the frozen northland. But his petite, flirtatious Frances was one of a handful of women truly interested in mining. She loved the open country and the freedom from the society that had scorned her.

Frances was as eager as Tom to move on when Otter Creek didn’t provide the wealth they were seeking. They headed for wide-open, lawless Nome, located at the edge of the Seward Peninsula on the Bering Sea.

 

Gold had been discovered at Anvil Creek, and by the spring of 1900, somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand “stampeders” had come to Nome.

Camped above the tide line with thousand of others, Frances, who stood approximately 2 inches shorter than 5 feet tall, helped shovel sand into the portable rockers used to sift out the fine gold. Many people believed that the ocean was depositing gold at high tide. Tents and rockers stretched for miles along the beach.

Tom was appointed to a four-year term as a U.S. Commissioner for the Fairhaven District of Alaska, and soon Frances and Tom were again moving in the upper circles of society, albeit a much more flamboyant elite than the stuffy and conventional social strata they’d left behind. Tom’s knowledge of mining and his impeccable character, dubbed “pure gold” by one of the men he worked with on several claims, earned report in lawless Nome.

Tom wanted to find the Alaska mother lode, and Frances always followed where he led. He learned from one of the native people in the area that gold was easier to get on Candle Creek. Frances put away her silks and lace and followed Tom hundreds of miles north to Candle Creek, where they staked several claims.

 

Frances experienced “mushing” by dogsled and began to learn more and more about prospecting.

Alaskan newspapers covered some of the adventures of the prospecting newlyweds, reporting that they endured “perilous trips, lost trails, climbs over glacier fields, where steps had to be cut with an ax.” More than once Frances was credited with saving her husband’s life. Their claims paid off, and Tom became known as “King of the Candle.” He started a band and built a home for himself and Frances, where anyone was welcome.

In 1902 Tom’s father died, and Tom inherited an interest in a hotel in Seattle. Success piled on success, and Frances and Tom began to alternate between harsh conditions and adventures in Alaska and society teas and balls in Seattle and Butte.

In 1905 Tom and Frances adopted a half-Eskimo girl, Bonnie who was approximately five years old. During the winter she attended school in Butte; in the summer she often returned to Alaska with her parents.

As their success in Candle grew, Tom conceived of a plan to bring water to the rich placer diggings. In the autumn of 1907, he left for New York to obtain $200,000 to finance the completion of the Bear Creek ditch. Frances stayed at Candle to manage their interests.

 

He’d barely arrived in New York when a financial panic hit, jeopardizing the nation’s economy. No bank would loan him money for a project in Alaska, and funds were so tight Tom had to pawn his watch and jewelry to pay his hotel bills. Tom’s bank in Candle and the bank in Nome were threatened with a run by frightened customers eager to get their money into their own hands.

In an unprecedented feat of courage and strength, Frances once again came to her husband’s rescue, only this time she saved his financial life. Pawning her jewelry to raise ten thousand dollars, Frances mushed across the frozen Artic tundra in the dead of winter. The story was printed in the Seattle Times and many other newspapers. “With only a driver for her team of malamutes, she started out across the hundreds of miles of ice and snow, the thermometer so low it almost faded from view. Through the short days and into the nights this brave woman trudged on through the snow. Many days were needed for the journey, but the news that the money was coming had spread a better feeling in Nome and the bank was able to weather the storm until relief should arrive. The journey made by Mrs. Noyes was one of the most heroic ever attempted by a woman on her own initiative in the far North, and when she reached Nome she was accorded a welcome that was commensurate with her feat.

The bank was saved, and a woman had been the agent.”

Unfortunately, two years later Tom’s bank failed, and his claims at Candle were lost. Tom had made a critical mistake – failing to use his official bank title when he signed checks – that left him personally liable when the bank failed. Tom and Frances retreated to Tongass Island near Ketchikan. In 1913 Tom ventured out to try his luck during a stampeded to the Shushana gold strike. Shortly afterward, Frances joined him. There the harsh conditions of the Alaskan goldfields took their final toll.

Although they met with some success, one of the prospecting trips they took resulted in disaster. Days on the trail in temperatures as low as fifty degrees below zero with little shelter and poor food left Tom a “physical wreck.”

On December 15, 1915, Tom was hospitalized in Port Simpson General Hospital in British Columbia. Frances slept on a cot in his room, watching over and caring for him. Later, with Frances and his mother at his side, he was taken to a hospital in St. Louis, but he died of pneumonia on February 2, 1916.

Stunned and heartbroken, their fortune gone, Frances returned alone to Tongass Island. She received a letter that spring from one of their former partners who recalled Tom and Frances’s early days at Otter Creek.

“Nearly 17 years ago you said goodbye to me on the platform at Seattle and you knew that you were saying farewell to a friend who would have done anything for you. I have not altered. I am just the same William you knew at Otter Creek and in our little camp at the foot of the glacier.”

The letter goes on to remember Tom.

“I shall never realize that Tommy is dead. Since I left you I have been in many places and had dealings with many men, but I have never come across another Tommy, he was just pure gold. I was trying to think last night if I could remember him being out of temper or cross, but I could not, and we had some trying times. It is a great thing to have had a partner in life who you can look forward to meeting, to whom you can hold your hand out to and look straight in the eye and say “Tommy, I am glad to see you.”

Perhaps there may be another Klondike for us beyond the clouds; if there is I could ask for nothing better than my two dear friends of the glacier should be my partners again.”

The writer advised Frances not to return to Alaska, but the woman who had married at eighteen, divorced at twenty-three, and married again that same year to a man she cherished despite the scorn and anger of her father-in-law, returned to the northern land she loved.

She kept body and soul together by managing the Nakat Inlet cannery store, but her love of the Alaskan wilderness eventually lured her away from civilization. She went back to prospecting, where everything she’d learned from her beloved Tommy allowed her to prosper.

Frances married again at the age of forty-five, to William Muncaster, who was 15 years younger. Despite the age difference, Bill had been smitten for years with Frances. He’d sent her love letters and stopped in to visit her between trips to survey Alaska for the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Bonnie accompanied Frances and her new stepfather on their honeymoon trip to Alaska’s goldfields.

Frances and William lived in a cabin on Wellesley Lake. They prospected and often went on fishing and hunting trips even when the temperature dipped to fifty below zero. Tom’s memory, however, never faded from Frances. Visiting a place she and Tom had stayed during the Shushana gold strike, she wrote in her diary, “Everything looks different. Everything is different.”

One that never changed was Frances’s love of prospecting. She and William visited their claims until 1946, when Frances was seventy-two years old and living in Haines, a small town in southeastern Alaska.

 

The woman who scandalized Spokane with her daring ride in pink tights, the actress who caused a mining tycoon to shun his heir, the woman who saved her husband’s bank with a grueling trek across the frozen northland, the unlikely prospector who loved Alaska so much she spent fifty-four years there, died on October 28, 1952. William Muncaster provided the press with clippings and stories about her life in Alaska. He wrote a final letter for the local newspaper.

Dear Sir,

Please publish this letter, for I wish to thank with all my heart all the people, young and old alike, in the town of Haines, Alaska, and the adjoining vicinities North, South, East and West for the unbelievable 100 percent respect shown by them as Mrs. Frances Mucaster’s final rites. I thank you.

William Muncaster

Frances Allen Noyes

Miner on Candle Creek

“If I can’t be in the hills, I would sooner be dead.”

France Noyes – 1928

A cluster of tents dotted a strip of frozen earth at the base of a massive glacier in Skagway, Alaska. Beyond the solid layer of ice was a thick forest that followed the contours of a mountain. The numerous trees that covered the ridge were like deep-pile carpet and the grassy scruff under the timbers were red and yellow with the coming of autumn. A clear, cold stream flowed swiftly from the white peaks, spilling over the layers of compacted snow. Pieces of the iceberg broke off and fell into the freezing water.

Frances Noyes, a pretty, determined woman dressed in a heavy wool coat, thick-soled, knee-high boots, and wool gloves traveled along a gravel trail running parallel to the stream. She stopped momentarily to plunge a gold mining pan into the rocky creek bed and sift through the pebbles. Like hundreds of other miners that rushed to Alaska in 1898 looking for gold, Frances was confident she would discover a fortune. The biting wind and snow flurries that cut across her path did not deter her from her work. She glanced around at the setting and smiled.

She was invigorated by her surroundings. “If there ever was a woman prospector, it was Frances,” Frances nephew William Simonds recalled of his aunt. “She was never as content in her life as she was mining in the Alaskan wilderness.”

Frances and her husband, Thomas C. Noyes, searched for gold along Otter Creek near Skagway from September 1899 to February 1900. She was one of a handful of women miners who dared to brave the sub-zero temperatures of the isolated Klondike. The intrepid female pioneer actually chose mining as her second career. Her first job was as a stage actress. Beautiful and talented, she spent years entertaining audiences in boomtowns across the Old West. One audience member was Thomas Noyes, a man she fell in love with and wanted to marry in spite of his family’s objections. Had he not stood up to his parents she might not have accompanied him on his mining expedition and might never realized her true calling.

“I shall conduct no training school for actresses,” Montana mining tycoon John Noyes declared. He sent his son Tom a withering glare. The boy had obviously been taken in by a pretty face. Mrs. Allen was not the type of woman he had in mind as a wife for his son. She’d been married and divorced, and that scandal had hardly quieted when a new one had erupted.

 

The full weight of his father’s displeasure only strengthened Tom’s resolve. “You have $2,500 in a trust fund that you are holding for me, have you not, Father?”

“Yes.”

“Well, give me that. I will start out for myself, and you can cut me off without a cent.” Tom had loved Frances Allen ever since he first saw her in a theatrical production. His father thought Tom was too young to marry and Frances too infamous to be his bride, but Tom intended to marry her, and soon. Frances clearly was in danger, however, as another would-be suitor from New Orleans was stalking her from state to state and might soon appear in Butte.

Tom did not change his mind, though his father continually dredged up the infamy of Frances’s past, starting with her divorce from Samuel Allen earlier in 1897. The newspapers had reported every titillating development. According to one account Samuel Allen had told his friends that his ex-wife “is a good woman, but has a passion for money, a siren who uses her charms to infatuate men to the point where they lavish their wealth upon her, but she never strays from the straight and narrow path.”

 

 

A report in Spokane’s Spokesman entitled “She’s An Actress, Ex-Prosecuting Attorney Objects to the Life,” claimed, “ The wreck of this family commenced about the time of the society circus at Natatorium Park in 1895, when Mrs. Allen rode two horses bareback. Mr. Allen did not enjoy this exhibition, and the family was never a happy one.”

Tom suspected his father had seen that article. He was certain the electrifying accounts had convinced his father to forbid him to marry the woman he loved. The newspapers, in Tom’s opinion, wrongly made Frances sound like a beautiful but heartless, money-hungry tease. Tom’s father certainly believed this and reminded his son that no respectable woman would flaunt herself on stage unless she was out to snare a rich husband. Tom knew Frances did not care about money. She would marry him with his small trust fund and no prospects of inheriting his father’s huge fortune.

What worried Tom was the threat hanging over Frances’s life. A would-be suitor, Alfred Hildreth, was stalking Frances, and his actions had steadily become more dangerous. At the Leland Hotel in Chicago, Hildreth had lain in wait for five days. The Southerner confronted Frances in the lobby, and witnesses said Frances agreed to dine with him at a downtown restaurant, only to have the impassion man

 

brandish a carving knife while declaring he would do something desperate if she wouldn’t have him. He had followed Frances through several states, and his ardor increased every time he caught up with her. Tom knew Alfred could show up at any time.

Newspapers in Chicago and New York recorded the tales of Hildreth’s obsession. The Chicago Chronicle carried one story that made Tom’s blood boil. “Alfred J. Hildreth loves Mrs. Frances Allen with such true and ardent affection that he has followed her 5,000 miles to prove it. Even though Mr. Allen secured a divorce from his wife because she rode bareback at a charity circus in Spokane, Wash., attired in the reddest of red silken tights, Hildreth says she is dear to him. Mrs. Allen, however, does not return the feeling of young Hildreth, and she has spent many weary hours moving from one city to another to escape the devoted lover.”

The tights had been pink, but Tom didn’t bother to correct the story. Frances Allen belonged to him, and neither Alfred Hildreth nor Tom’s own father was going to stand in the way of a wedding, Tom decided.

Arabella Frances Patchen Allen did not care that Tom’s father disapproved of her life on the stage. She intended to marry his son.

 

Of all the men who had pursued her since she had left Spokane after the fateful circus ride, Tommy was the one she truly loved. Her first marriage had been troubled from the start. On the day of her wedding to Samuel Allen in 1892, when she was barely eighteen, the groom had disappeared. His drunken companions had held a “special session” and voted to continue the wedding anyway, with a different groom. After several good-natured votes were taken among the unmarried men, each of whom had voted for himself, Samuel had finally reappeared, and the vows were spoken.

For a few years she had enjoyed the social life that was part of being married to a prominent lawyer. Samuel had even given his consent for her participation in the charity circus at Natatorium Park, since half the money would go to the family of a boy who had broken his back in a barrel slide. Her husband had stalked out in a rage when he discovered his beautiful young wife in form-fitting tights and short blue skirt, riveting the attention of every person in the place.

Samuel’s outrage had resulted in a huge quarrel, and she’d left his fine home for good that August. By April of the following year, she had succeeded on the stage. If she hadn’t ridden in the society circus, she might still be married to Samuel and living well, she knew, but by leaving

 

Spokane and taking parts in productions in Bradford, Pennsylvania, she’d achieved some success of her own. And her acting career had allowed her to meet Tom Noyes, whom she had fallen in love with and was prepared to marry.

The 1897 wedding of Tom Noyes and Frances Allen did not compare in any way to Tom’s sister’s wedding, which linked two prosperous mining families and was celebrated as the most brilliant wedding ever held in Montana. Tom and Frances were married in a small, quiet ceremony. By the time Tom’s sister, Ruth Noyes, married Arthur Heinz, Tom and Frances were already mining together in Skagway, Alaska, at the foot of a glacier on Otter Creek.

Tom knew he was a lucky man. Not many women would have smiled through the bitter cold and long darkness of an Alaskan winter. Unlike the California Gold Rush, few women had hurried to the rush in the frozen northland. But his petite, flirtatious Frances was one of a handful of women truly interested in mining. She loved the open country and the freedom from the society that had scorned her.

Frances was as eager as Tom to move on when Otter Creek didn’t provide the wealth they were seeking. They headed for wide-open, lawless Nome, located at the edge of the Seward Peninsula on the Bering Sea.

 

Gold had been discovered at Anvil Creek, and by the spring of 1900, somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand “stampeders” had come to Nome.

Camped above the tide line with thousand of others, Frances, who stood approximately 2 inches shorter than 5 feet tall, helped shovel sand into the portable rockers used to sift out the fine gold. Many people believed that the ocean was depositing gold at high tide. Tents and rockers stretched for miles along the beach.

Tom was appointed to a four-year term as a U.S. Commissioner for the Fairhaven District of Alaska, and soon Frances and Tom were again moving in the upper circles of society, albeit a much more flamboyant elite than the stuffy and conventional social strata they’d left behind. Tom’s knowledge of mining and his impeccable character, dubbed “pure gold” by one of the men he worked with on several claims, earned report in lawless Nome.

Tom wanted to find the Alaska mother lode, and Frances always followed where he led. He learned from one of the native people in the area that gold was easier to get on Candle Creek. Frances put away her silks and lace and followed Tom hundreds of miles north to Candle Creek, where they staked several claims.

 

Frances experienced “mushing” by dogsled and began to learn more and more about prospecting.

Alaskan newspapers covered some of the adventures of the prospecting newlyweds, reporting that they endured “perilous trips, lost trails, climbs over glacier fields, where steps had to be cut with an ax.” More than once Frances was credited with saving her husband’s life. Their claims paid off, and Tom became known as “King of the Candle.” He started a band and built a home for himself and Frances, where anyone was welcome.

In 1902 Tom’s father died, and Tom inherited an interest in a hotel in Seattle. Success piled on success, and Frances and Tom began to alternate between harsh conditions and adventures in Alaska and society teas and balls in Seattle and Butte.

In 1905 Tom and Frances adopted a half-Eskimo girl, Bonnie who was approximately five years old. During the winter she attended school in Butte; in the summer she often returned to Alaska with her parents.

As their success in Candle grew, Tom conceived of a plan to bring water to the rich placer diggings. In the autumn of 1907, he left for New York to obtain $200,000 to finance the completion of the Bear Creek ditch. Frances stayed at Candle to manage their interests.

 

He’d barely arrived in New York when a financial panic hit, jeopardizing the nation’s economy. No bank would loan him money for a project in Alaska, and funds were so tight Tom had to pawn his watch and jewelry to pay his hotel bills. Tom’s bank in Candle and the bank in Nome were threatened with a run by frightened customers eager to get their money into their own hands.

In an unprecedented feat of courage and strength, Frances once again came to her husband’s rescue, only this time she saved his financial life. Pawning her jewelry to raise ten thousand dollars, Frances mushed across the frozen Artic tundra in the dead of winter. The story was printed in the Seattle Times and many other newspapers. “With only a driver for her team of malamutes, she started out across the hundreds of miles of ice and snow, the thermometer so low it almost faded from view. Through the short days and into the nights this brave woman trudged on through the snow. Many days were needed for the journey, but the news that the money was coming had spread a better feeling in Nome and the bank was able to weather the storm until relief should arrive. The journey made by Mrs. Noyes was one of the most heroic ever attempted by a woman on her own initiative in the far North, and when she reached Nome she was accorded a welcome that was commensurate with her feat.

The bank was saved, and a woman had been the agent.”

Unfortunately, two years later Tom’s bank failed, and his claims at Candle were lost. Tom had made a critical mistake – failing to use his official bank title when he signed checks – that left him personally liable when the bank failed. Tom and Frances retreated to Tongass Island near Ketchikan. In 1913 Tom ventured out to try his luck during a stampeded to the Shushana gold strike. Shortly afterward, Frances joined him. There the harsh conditions of the Alaskan goldfields took their final toll.

Although they met with some success, one of the prospecting trips they took resulted in disaster. Days on the trail in temperatures as low as fifty degrees below zero with little shelter and poor food left Tom a “physical wreck.”

On December 15, 1915, Tom was hospitalized in Port Simpson General Hospital in British Columbia. Frances slept on a cot in his room, watching over and caring for him. Later, with Frances and his mother at his side, he was taken to a hospital in St. Louis, but he died of pneumonia on February 2, 1916.

Stunned and heartbroken, their fortune gone, Frances returned alone to Tongass Island. She received a letter that spring from one of their former partners who recalled Tom and Frances’s early days at Otter Creek.

“Nearly 17 years ago you said goodbye to me on the platform at Seattle and you knew that you were saying farewell to a friend who would have done anything for you. I have not altered. I am just the same William you knew at Otter Creek and in our little camp at the foot of the glacier.”

The letter goes on to remember Tom.

“I shall never realize that Tommy is dead. Since I left you I have been in many places and had dealings with many men, but I have never come across another Tommy, he was just pure gold. I was trying to think last night if I could remember him being out of temper or cross, but I could not, and we had some trying times. It is a great thing to have had a partner in life who you can look forward to meeting, to whom you can hold your hand out to and look straight in the eye and say “Tommy, I am glad to see you.”

Perhaps there may be another Klondike for us beyond the clouds; if there is I could ask for nothing better than my two dear friends of the glacier should be my partners again.”

The writer advised Frances not to return to Alaska, but the woman who had married at eighteen, divorced at twenty-three, and married again that same year to a man she cherished despite the scorn and anger of her father-in-law, returned to the northern land she loved.

She kept body and soul together by managing the Nakat Inlet cannery store, but her love of the Alaskan wilderness eventually lured her away from civilization. She went back to prospecting, where everything she’d learned from her beloved Tommy allowed her to prosper.

Frances married again at the age of forty-five, to William Muncaster, who was 15 years younger. Despite the age difference, Bill had been smitten for years with Frances. He’d sent her love letters and stopped in to visit her between trips to survey Alaska for the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Bonnie accompanied Frances and her new stepfather on their honeymoon trip to Alaska’s goldfields.

Frances and William lived in a cabin on Wellesley Lake. They prospected and often went on fishing and hunting trips even when the temperature dipped to fifty below zero. Tom’s memory, however, never faded from Frances. Visiting a place she and Tom had stayed during the Shushana gold strike, she wrote in her diary, “Everything looks different. Everything is different.”

One that never changed was Frances’s love of prospecting. She and William visited their claims until 1946, when Frances was seventy-two years old and living in Haines, a small town in southeastern Alaska.

 

The woman who scandalized Spokane with her daring ride in pink tights, the actress who caused a mining tycoon to shun his heir, the woman who saved her husband’s bank with a grueling trek across the frozen northland, the unlikely prospector who loved Alaska so much she spent fifty-four years there, died on October 28, 1952. William Muncaster provided the press with clippings and stories about her life in Alaska. He wrote a final letter for the local newspaper.

Dear Sir,

Please publish this letter, for I wish to thank with all my heart all the people, young and old alike, in the town of Haines, Alaska, and the adjoining vicinities North, South, East and West for the unbelievable 100 percent respect shown by them as Mrs. Frances Mucaster’s final rites. I thank you.

William Muncaster

Frances Allen Noyes

Miner on Candle Creek

“If I can’t be in the hills, I would sooner be dead.”

France Noyes – 1928

A cluster of tents dotted a strip of frozen earth at the base of a massive glacier in Skagway, Alaska. Beyond the solid layer of ice was a thick forest that followed the contours of a mountain. The numerous trees that covered the ridge were like deep-pile carpet and the grassy scruff under the timbers were red and yellow with the coming of autumn. A clear, cold stream flowed swiftly from the white peaks, spilling over the layers of compacted snow. Pieces of the iceberg broke off and fell into the freezing water.

Frances Noyes, a pretty, determined woman dressed in a heavy wool coat, thick-soled, knee-high boots, and wool gloves traveled along a gravel trail running parallel to the stream. She stopped momentarily to plunge a gold mining pan into the rocky creek bed and sift through the pebbles. Like hundreds of other miners that rushed to Alaska in 1898 looking for gold, Frances was confident she would discover a fortune. The biting wind and snow flurries that cut across her path did not deter her from her work. She glanced around at the setting and smiled.

She was invigorated by her surroundings. “If there ever was a woman prospector, it was Frances,” Frances nephew William Simonds recalled of his aunt. “She was never as content in her life as she was mining in the Alaskan wilderness.”

Frances and her husband, Thomas C. Noyes, searched for gold along Otter Creek near Skagway from September 1899 to February 1900. She was one of a handful of women miners who dared to brave the sub-zero temperatures of the isolated Klondike. The intrepid female pioneer actually chose mining as her second career. Her first job was as a stage actress. Beautiful and talented, she spent years entertaining audiences in boomtowns across the Old West. One audience member was Thomas Noyes, a man she fell in love with and wanted to marry in spite of his family’s objections. Had he not stood up to his parents she might not have accompanied him on his mining expedition and might never realized her true calling.

“I shall conduct no training school for actresses,” Montana mining tycoon John Noyes declared. He sent his son Tom a withering glare. The boy had obviously been taken in by a pretty face. Mrs. Allen was not the type of woman he had in mind as a wife for his son. She’d been married and divorced, and that scandal had hardly quieted when a new one had erupted.

 

The full weight of his father’s displeasure only strengthened Tom’s resolve. “You have $2,500 in a trust fund that you are holding for me, have you not, Father?”

“Yes.”

“Well, give me that. I will start out for myself, and you can cut me off without a cent.” Tom had loved Frances Allen ever since he first saw her in a theatrical production. His father thought Tom was too young to marry and Frances too infamous to be his bride, but Tom intended to marry her, and soon. Frances clearly was in danger, however, as another would-be suitor from New Orleans was stalking her from state to state and might soon appear in Butte.

Tom did not change his mind, though his father continually dredged up the infamy of Frances’s past, starting with her divorce from Samuel Allen earlier in 1897. The newspapers had reported every titillating development. According to one account Samuel Allen had told his friends that his ex-wife “is a good woman, but has a passion for money, a siren who uses her charms to infatuate men to the point where they lavish their wealth upon her, but she never strays from the straight and narrow path.”

 

 

A report in Spokane’s Spokesman entitled “She’s An Actress, Ex-Prosecuting Attorney Objects to the Life,” claimed, “ The wreck of this family commenced about the time of the society circus at Natatorium Park in 1895, when Mrs. Allen rode two horses bareback. Mr. Allen did not enjoy this exhibition, and the family was never a happy one.”

Tom suspected his father had seen that article. He was certain the electrifying accounts had convinced his father to forbid him to marry the woman he loved. The newspapers, in Tom’s opinion, wrongly made Frances sound like a beautiful but heartless, money-hungry tease. Tom’s father certainly believed this and reminded his son that no respectable woman would flaunt herself on stage unless she was out to snare a rich husband. Tom knew Frances did not care about money. She would marry him with his small trust fund and no prospects of inheriting his father’s huge fortune.

What worried Tom was the threat hanging over Frances’s life. A would-be suitor, Alfred Hildreth, was stalking Frances, and his actions had steadily become more dangerous. At the Leland Hotel in Chicago, Hildreth had lain in wait for five days. The Southerner confronted Frances in the lobby, and witnesses said Frances agreed to dine with him at a downtown restaurant, only to have the impassion man

 

brandish a carving knife while declaring he would do something desperate if she wouldn’t have him. He had followed Frances through several states, and his ardor increased every time he caught up with her. Tom knew Alfred could show up at any time.

Newspapers in Chicago and New York recorded the tales of Hildreth’s obsession. The Chicago Chronicle carried one story that made Tom’s blood boil. “Alfred J. Hildreth loves Mrs. Frances Allen with such true and ardent affection that he has followed her 5,000 miles to prove it. Even though Mr. Allen secured a divorce from his wife because she rode bareback at a charity circus in Spokane, Wash., attired in the reddest of red silken tights, Hildreth says she is dear to him. Mrs. Allen, however, does not return the feeling of young Hildreth, and she has spent many weary hours moving from one city to another to escape the devoted lover.”

The tights had been pink, but Tom didn’t bother to correct the story. Frances Allen belonged to him, and neither Alfred Hildreth nor Tom’s own father was going to stand in the way of a wedding, Tom decided.

Arabella Frances Patchen Allen did not care that Tom’s father disapproved of her life on the stage. She intended to marry his son.

 

Of all the men who had pursued her since she had left Spokane after the fateful circus ride, Tommy was the one she truly loved. Her first marriage had been troubled from the start. On the day of her wedding to Samuel Allen in 1892, when she was barely eighteen, the groom had disappeared. His drunken companions had held a “special session” and voted to continue the wedding anyway, with a different groom. After several good-natured votes were taken among the unmarried men, each of whom had voted for himself, Samuel had finally reappeared, and the vows were spoken.

For a few years she had enjoyed the social life that was part of being married to a prominent lawyer. Samuel had even given his consent for her participation in the charity circus at Natatorium Park, since half the money would go to the family of a boy who had broken his back in a barrel slide. Her husband had stalked out in a rage when he discovered his beautiful young wife in form-fitting tights and short blue skirt, riveting the attention of every person in the place.

Samuel’s outrage had resulted in a huge quarrel, and she’d left his fine home for good that August. By April of the following year, she had succeeded on the stage. If she hadn’t ridden in the society circus, she might still be married to Samuel and living well, she knew, but by leaving

 

Spokane and taking parts in productions in Bradford, Pennsylvania, she’d achieved some success of her own. And her acting career had allowed her to meet Tom Noyes, whom she had fallen in love with and was prepared to marry.

The 1897 wedding of Tom Noyes and Frances Allen did not compare in any way to Tom’s sister’s wedding, which linked two prosperous mining families and was celebrated as the most brilliant wedding ever held in Montana. Tom and Frances were married in a small, quiet ceremony. By the time Tom’s sister, Ruth Noyes, married Arthur Heinz, Tom and Frances were already mining together in Skagway, Alaska, at the foot of a glacier on Otter Creek.

Tom knew he was a lucky man. Not many women would have smiled through the bitter cold and long darkness of an Alaskan winter. Unlike the California Gold Rush, few women had hurried to the rush in the frozen northland. But his petite, flirtatious Frances was one of a handful of women truly interested in mining. She loved the open country and the freedom from the society that had scorned her.

Frances was as eager as Tom to move on when Otter Creek didn’t provide the wealth they were seeking. They headed for wide-open, lawless Nome, located at the edge of the Seward Peninsula on the Bering Sea.

 

Gold had been discovered at Anvil Creek, and by the spring of 1900, somewhere between twenty and thirty thousand “stampeders” had come to Nome.

Camped above the tide line with thousand of others, Frances, who stood approximately 2 inches shorter than 5 feet tall, helped shovel sand into the portable rockers used to sift out the fine gold. Many people believed that the ocean was depositing gold at high tide. Tents and rockers stretched for miles along the beach.

Tom was appointed to a four-year term as a U.S. Commissioner for the Fairhaven District of Alaska, and soon Frances and Tom were again moving in the upper circles of society, albeit a much more flamboyant elite than the stuffy and conventional social strata they’d left behind. Tom’s knowledge of mining and his impeccable character, dubbed “pure gold” by one of the men he worked with on several claims, earned report in lawless Nome.

Tom wanted to find the Alaska mother lode, and Frances always followed where he led. He learned from one of the native people in the area that gold was easier to get on Candle Creek. Frances put away her silks and lace and followed Tom hundreds of miles north to Candle Creek, where they staked several claims.

 

Frances experienced “mushing” by dogsled and began to learn more and more about prospecting.

Alaskan newspapers covered some of the adventures of the prospecting newlyweds, reporting that they endured “perilous trips, lost trails, climbs over glacier fields, where steps had to be cut with an ax.” More than once Frances was credited with saving her husband’s life. Their claims paid off, and Tom became known as “King of the Candle.” He started a band and built a home for himself and Frances, where anyone was welcome.

In 1902 Tom’s father died, and Tom inherited an interest in a hotel in Seattle. Success piled on success, and Frances and Tom began to alternate between harsh conditions and adventures in Alaska and society teas and balls in Seattle and Butte.

In 1905 Tom and Frances adopted a half-Eskimo girl, Bonnie who was approximately five years old. During the winter she attended school in Butte; in the summer she often returned to Alaska with her parents.

As their success in Candle grew, Tom conceived of a plan to bring water to the rich placer diggings. In the autumn of 1907, he left for New York to obtain $200,000 to finance the completion of the Bear Creek ditch. Frances stayed at Candle to manage their interests.

 

He’d barely arrived in New York when a financial panic hit, jeopardizing the nation’s economy. No bank would loan him money for a project in Alaska, and funds were so tight Tom had to pawn his watch and jewelry to pay his hotel bills. Tom’s bank in Candle and the bank in Nome were threatened with a run by frightened customers eager to get their money into their own hands.

In an unprecedented feat of courage and strength, Frances once again came to her husband’s rescue, only this time she saved his financial life. Pawning her jewelry to raise ten thousand dollars, Frances mushed across the frozen Artic tundra in the dead of winter. The story was printed in the Seattle Times and many other newspapers. “With only a driver for her team of malamutes, she started out across the hundreds of miles of ice and snow, the thermometer so low it almost faded from view. Through the short days and into the nights this brave woman trudged on through the snow. Many days were needed for the journey, but the news that the money was coming had spread a better feeling in Nome and the bank was able to weather the storm until relief should arrive. The journey made by Mrs. Noyes was one of the most heroic ever attempted by a woman on her own initiative in the far North, and when she reached Nome she was accorded a welcome that was commensurate with her feat.

The bank was saved, and a woman had been the agent.”

Unfortunately, two years later Tom’s bank failed, and his claims at Candle were lost. Tom had made a critical mistake – failing to use his official bank title when he signed checks – that left him personally liable when the bank failed. Tom and Frances retreated to Tongass Island near Ketchikan. In 1913 Tom ventured out to try his luck during a stampeded to the Shushana gold strike. Shortly afterward, Frances joined him. There the harsh conditions of the Alaskan goldfields took their final toll.

Although they met with some success, one of the prospecting trips they took resulted in disaster. Days on the trail in temperatures as low as fifty degrees below zero with little shelter and poor food left Tom a “physical wreck.”

On December 15, 1915, Tom was hospitalized in Port Simpson General Hospital in British Columbia. Frances slept on a cot in his room, watching over and caring for him. Later, with Frances and his mother at his side, he was taken to a hospital in St. Louis, but he died of pneumonia on February 2, 1916.

Stunned and heartbroken, their fortune gone, Frances returned alone to Tongass Island. She received a letter that spring from one of their former partners who recalled Tom and Frances’s early days at Otter Creek.

“Nearly 17 years ago you said goodbye to me on the platform at Seattle and you knew that you were saying farewell to a friend who would have done anything for you. I have not altered. I am just the same William you knew at Otter Creek and in our little camp at the foot of the glacier.”

The letter goes on to remember Tom.

“I shall never realize that Tommy is dead. Since I left you I have been in many places and had dealings with many men, but I have never come across another Tommy, he was just pure gold. I was trying to think last night if I could remember him being out of temper or cross, but I could not, and we had some trying times. It is a great thing to have had a partner in life who you can look forward to meeting, to whom you can hold your hand out to and look straight in the eye and say “Tommy, I am glad to see you.”

Perhaps there may be another Klondike for us beyond the clouds; if there is I could ask for nothing better than my two dear friends of the glacier should be my partners again.”

The writer advised Frances not to return to Alaska, but the woman who had married at eighteen, divorced at twenty-three, and married again that same year to a man she cherished despite the scorn and anger of her father-in-law, returned to the northern land she loved.

She kept body and soul together by managing the Nakat Inlet cannery store, but her love of the Alaskan wilderness eventually lured her away from civilization. She went back to prospecting, where everything she’d learned from her beloved Tommy allowed her to prosper.

Frances married again at the age of forty-five, to William Muncaster, who was 15 years younger. Despite the age difference, Bill had been smitten for years with Frances. He’d sent her love letters and stopped in to visit her between trips to survey Alaska for the Coast and Geodetic Survey. Bonnie accompanied Frances and her new stepfather on their honeymoon trip to Alaska’s goldfields.

Frances and William lived in a cabin on Wellesley Lake. They prospected and often went on fishing and hunting trips even when the temperature dipped to fifty below zero. Tom’s memory, however, never faded from Frances. Visiting a place she and Tom had stayed during the Shushana gold strike, she wrote in her diary, “Everything looks different. Everything is different.”

One that never changed was Frances’s love of prospecting. She and William visited their claims until 1946, when Frances was seventy-two years old and living in Haines, a small town in southeastern Alaska.

 

The woman who scandalized Spokane with her daring ride in pink tights, the actress who caused a mining tycoon to shun his heir, the woman who saved her husband’s bank with a grueling trek across the frozen northland, the unlikely prospector who loved Alaska so much she spent fifty-four years there, died on October 28, 1952. William Muncaster provided the press with clippings and stories about her life in Alaska. He wrote a final letter for the local newspaper.

Dear Sir,

Please publish this letter, for I wish to thank with all my heart all the people, young and old alike, in the town of Haines, Alaska, and the adjoining vicinities North, South, East and West for the unbelievable 100 percent respect shown by them as Mrs. Frances Mucaster’s final rites. I thank you.

William Muncaster