A PICNIC AT FORT ABRAHAM LINCOLN

I'm going to try to post a couple more pictures.

This is a picnic in 1875. Standing in the center of the picture, of course, in the white hat, arms crossed is the General. To his right is Myles Keogh and to his left, Dr. Lord. Seated between Keogh and Custer wearing a dark hat and scarf is Libbie. Below her on the ground is Maggie without a hat. To the left in the white hat and dark shirt is Maggie's handsome husband, Jimmi Calhoun and next to him on the ground is Boston Custer. On the other end, in the chair is "Fresh" Smith and in the white hat above him is Tom Custer. William Cooke has the long side whiskers. The two girls in between Cooke and Tom are Nellie and Emma Wadsworth, visitors. The lady sitting very straight in white with the big hat is not named in all the books. I think she might be Nettie Smith since her husband is present.

MORE ON 7TH CAV WIVES

After writing about 100 pages, I re-read them and started thinking about who I put at Fort Abraham Lincoln when the news came in on July 5. I went back to the notes I had put together last summer and realized I had some things wrong. When I rechecked the sources, I think I got it right. Or as near as I can with the resources I have access to.

I wish I could get to the libraries at Fort Abraham Lincoln and the Museum at Monroe to look at Libbie's papers.

Reading Katie Gibson's description of July 5th, I realized that I had misread it. She was at Fort Rice along with Kate Benteen, Lotte Moylan and Eliza DeRudio. She actually mentioned these four as being with her that evening. They had heard the news but didn't have the details especially if their husbands had lived. They decided to spend the night together, except, she wrote those who had children. In that list would be Mrs. Benteen and Mrs. DeRudio. The others slept on the floor and the way she described it, it sounds as though there were more than just Lotte and Katie. At daybreak the entire post heard the steamboat whistle and they all tore down to the traders' which also served as the post office.

I think Mrs. Godfrey was also at Fort Rice. She told her husband that she also couldn't sleep. She was at home - they had kids although I don't know how many at that point - anyway, at dawn someone tapped on her window. She asked if her husband had been killed and the person said, "No, dear, your husband is safe and Mrs. Moylan is safe but all the rest are killed."

Other wives who might have been at Fort Rice are Alice McDougall, Grace Edgerley, and Meda Mathey. Their husbands all survived with Reno and Benteen. So at Fort Abraham Lincoln besides Libbie Custer were Maggie Calhoun, Annie Yates, Nettie Smith, Mollie McIntosh, Frannie DeWolf and Eliza Porter. All their husbands were killed.

Libbie writes of a "young wife" sobbing in her lap.

Frannie DeWolf's husband was Acting Assistant Surgeon and only transferred to Fort Abraham Lincoln in March of 1876 so the other women didn't know her well and she then. She was a hospital matron when she met James DeWolf at Camp Warner in Oklahoma Territory. That does not sound to me like someone who would sob in another woman's lap.

Eliza Porter's had been in the regiment since October 1969. From 1872 to 1874 he was with the Northern Boundary Survey up near Canada. They had two boys. She left as soon as she could after learning of the lieutenant's death. His body was never found although his bloody coat with two bullet holes in it was found in the empty Indian camps. Married in 1869, she wasn't a new bride.

I think the new bride was probably Maggie Custer Calhoun, especially considering her emotional and physical collapse afterwards. She spent almost a year suffering terrible migraine headaches, reduced to almost permanent invalid status. Happily, she was able to find her way out of her grief.

So with Libbie on that hot evening of July 5 was Maggie Calhoun, Mollie McIntosh, Nettie Smith, Annie Yates and Emma Reed, Armstrong's niece. Of these women, Annie was the only one with three kids, George (4), Bessie(2) and Milnor just 1. Unhappily, he was retarded, evidently from the rough time Annie had birthing him.

Also, I had considered that Lotte Moylan and Alice McDougall were at FAL because they are in one of the famous photos of officers and wives gathered on the steps of the Custer House, but knowing the Lotte was definitely at Fort Rice, it follows that they had come together to FAL at the time of the photo.

WHEN SHE CAME BACK

One of the facts I've been chasing down for some time is where Libbie lived when she returned to Monroe on August 4, 1876. The books were all a little vague saying she lived with the elder Custers on the "old homestead" or she lived in her house on South Monroe and 2nd Street or they lived in their own house or out at Nevin Custer's farm.

I wrote the Monroe Historical Society as well as Steve Alexander who with his wife lives in the Bacon house in it's new location. It has been moved around a bit and remodeled and he and his wife are working to restore it.

He suggested I order a research journal called "The Greasy Grass" published by the Custer Battlefield Historical and Museum Assoc. vol 17, May 2001. I ordered it and finally almost two months later, I have it.

It has reprints of the actor Lawrence Barrett's letters to his wife. He as GAC's best friend and was on tour in the Midwest in the fall of 1876. He took time to travel to Monroe to see Libbie. He was very nervous about the visit and tried to talk his wife, Mollie, into coming all the way from Massachusetts to Michigan so he wouldn't have to see Libbie alone.

This was in October and the visit must have been harrowing. He had his own grief to deal with for he cared a great deal for Custer. But here was the whole family - Mother Maria was in bed, still to sick to get up. But Father Custer, Maggie and niece Emma were all there.

In the Bacon house in Monroe. Barrett stopped at "the only hotel" and walked to the house, which he describes as "A neat wooden house with a porch, and in the midst of an unkept garden."

Problem solved. She was in her house with the elder Custers and Maggie. As Emma's parents lived only a few blocks away, I don't think she was living there. He doesn't mention Annie Yates, who other books say stayed with Libbie and Maggie. But she had three little kids so I imagine she found some place to live pretty fast. She did stay in Monroe for about a year before going to her family. Anyway, by October, she was gone.

What a miserable environment, a whole house full of grieving people.

HAIR FACTS

I was doing a little research about fashion in 1876. I'm pretty good with costume history, but I was trying to get clear in my mind what Libbie and the other women would have been wearing and then what her mourning clothing would be like. While I was checking the Internet, I found a couple of sites that discussed hygiene, including hair.

I thought this was interesting: because people had to wash their hair with soap and it made hair really dry, they didn't do it very often. Instead, they would give it 100 brush strokes to both get the oil distributed to the ends and get rid of dust or whatever. They used scented oils.

They really like the glossy, oily look, which of course, would hold their complicated styles better than freshly washed hair. It wasn't until the invention of modern shampoos in, I believe, the 1950's, that washing your hair often became a practice.

I'd go so far as to say that wasn't typical until the '60's with the notion that clean, natural hair was the fashion. I know my friends and I gave up curlers, hair dryers and, especially getting your hair "done" in about 1966.

Of course, women, and men, in the late-19th Century could use hot curling irons, fake hair and hair oils and potions. Well, people through out history probably figured out how to do that.

I think it was Libbie who wrote that army ladies (officers' wives) would get to town after several months on a post and discover their hair style was very much out of fashion. They would send their husbands out to buy extra hair. They used braids and curls and even pieces for the front.

I guess their hats or the caps they wore in the morning or evening would cover whatever.

WHAT THEY WERE CALLED

If you've watched movies that feature Custer, you'll have noticed that nobody seems to know what to call him. George? Armstrong? General?

He was a Brevet Major General, but his rank in the U.S. Army was Lieutenant Colonel. During the Civil War, the US didn't give out any medals except the Medal of Honor which was only awarded for deeds very much above and beyond. It also mattered whether the promotion came from the regular army or the volunteer army.

Custer's younger brother, Tom, won two, the only man to do so during the war.

Officers were awarded brevet ranks for specific events; they also were of course moved up when the men above were moved up. I won't go into all the detail because it's pretty complicated. After the war, when everyone reverted back to their regular army rank - and pay.

But being status conscious, officers were called by their brevet rank. It could be a mine field for newcomers to the military society. The bars on the man's shoulder straps didn't tell you what to call him. Tom Custer, for instance was a brevet colonel but his straps said lieutenant. His big brother was a brevet major general but his rank was lt. colonel. Most everybody called him general.

By the way, Libbie's pension was that for a lt. colonel, $30. Friends petitioned Congress to give her the upgrade to a general's which would add $20. She eventually got it.

Anyway, back to the names. Custer's family called him Autie which was his baby nickname. when he tried to say Armstrong. It took me some reading, especially of letters, to nail down the fact that his friends and even acquaintances called him Armstrong, not George.

His men evidently called him all kinds of things, not the least of which was Iron Butt because he could stay in the saddle for hours.

Something else I've noticed is the spelling of nicknames, which everybody had. Instead of ending a nickname like Jimmy with a "y" as we would, they spelled it with an "i", for men and "ie" for women. Hence Libbie with an "ie" instead of a "y' as we would have it now. Of course, Jimmi would probably be assumed now to be a girl's nickname.

WHEN THEY MET

First, you have to know that the Bacons and Custers were from opposite sides of the tracks, both economically and politically. When the Custers moved to Monroe from Ohio, they came as farmers; Father Custer was a blacksmith. Libbie's dad was a Judge, a businessman and even at one point a member of the state legislature.

If he hadn't been in uniform, it might have been quite impossible for Custer to cross the divide between him and Libbie. Her father defined an eligible suitor as being well-off financially, from a good family and to have a college education. (Characteristics that Thomas Weir shared; he became a good friend and confident of Libbie's which maybe her husband more than a little jealous.)

Libbie and Autie met, formally, at a Thanksgiving party in 1862 at a friends. But he claimed that he first encountered her when they were children and this story has become part of the Custers legend.

Here's how it goes: she was a seven-year old swinging on the gate of the picket fence in front of her house. Along came ten-year old Armstrong and Libbie calls out, "Hello, you Custer boy!" which was a pretty audacious thing for a proper young lade to do.

As Lawrence Frost wrote in "General Custer's Libbie", "Surprised at her own impertinence, she blushed and ran into her house.

Darling story, but Libbie claimed she didn't remember it. I'll bet she didn't want to own up to what she would have seen as too impetuous. Her parents would not have been pleased. But you have to wonder if that little moment planted the seed in Autie that led to his concerted pursuit of Libbie almost twenty years later.

WHERE LIBBIE LIVED

In the twenty-five years after 1876, she moved 10 times. She usually always had at least one servant. At the end of her life, a couple lived with her, the husband had an outside job and did handyman jobs. She often lived with a companion.

1876 - She lived in Monroe for about a year. It is confusing where exactly. Writers say she lived with the Custers, which could mean Nevin - the remaining Custer brother - and his wife on their farm. Armstrong had helped his brother buy the property so the two couples were co-owners. Libbie later sold her half to Nevin and Ann. Anyway, I've also read that Libbie, Maggie Custer and Annie Yates and her three kids went from the train to the "homestead" which could mean the Bacon house in town or the Custer farm out of town. I've also read that the elder Custers lived in the Bacon house, but where was Libbie's step-mother living?

Well, I'm writing a novel so I have permission to decided who lived where. I decided that the three widows went to the farm, which would mean better privacy for them then Libbie and Maggie went to the Bacon house, where the step-mom, Rhoda Bacon, stayed for a couple of weeks then returned to her house in another town. She didn't own the house which was left to Libbie. I put the elder Custers at the farm, mainly because I didn't want to write a whole lot with them. They were difficult. Real characters, which is another topic.

In the spring of 1877, Libbie went to visit the Russells in Newark, NJ. They were Rhoda's married nephew and his wife. She had visited them when she was in D.C. during the war.

From New Jersey, she found a job and a basement flat in - of course - Manhattan. Where else does anyone go from Jersey? The flat was actually furnished rooms at 122 Madison Ave, which was close to her part-time job the Society of Decorative Arts.

In the fall of '77, she went back to Monroe to settle Armstrong's estate. His funeral was Oct. 10 at West Point.

Later in Oct, 77, she moved to the Glenham Hotel on Fifth Avenue when the Society moved to 34 E. 19th. St.

She evidently moved again when the Society moved to 28 E. 21st St in 1881, but I couldn't find where.

In 1885 she moved to the Stuyvesant Apartments at Third and 18th. St. She also bought a rental apartment at 148 E. 18th. St. She also decided to sell the Monroe House, which took until 1890.

That summer, she started going to the Catskills, to the Onteora Artists' Colony.

1890 She lived at 41 E. 10th. St.

1892 She bought a house in Lawrence Park at 20 Park Avenue. This was in Bronxville, one of the first suburban developments in NYC.

1898 She bought a cabin at Onteora. She loved sleeping in a tent at her summer places. Reminded her of the summer under canvas with Autie.

She actually owned a second house in Lawrence Park.

1922 She bought an apartment at 71 Park Avenue near 38th. It was close to the Cosmopolitan Club at W. 40th. St., a woman's club she helped co-found. She could walk there and did so at least once a week.

That's not 20 in 25 years, but it's what I've put together so far.

In her old age, she developed bad arthritis - see sleeping in tents above! - and began spending winters in Florida. She also traveled all over the world, always with friends.