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.

WHO WAS AT FORT ABRAHAM LINCOLN?

Yesterday, I had to stop and get out my research to find out who exactly was at Fort Abraham Lincoln when the news of the battle arrived.

Here's what I've found so far, and I am sorry I'm only listing officers' wives and families. There were between 26 and 29 widows, including those of the Indian scouts and about 28 children. On the morning of July 5, 1876, three officers arrived at the Custer House to tell Libbie. Staying at the house were Margaret Custer Calhoun, Custer's little sister who was married to Lt. James Calhoun, Emma Reed, Custer's niece, whose brother Henry Armstrong, called Autie Reed, was in the field with the Seventh, and Mary Adams, the African-American maid, whose sister Maria was actually in the field with the regiment. She stayed at the camp on the Yellowstone.

After hearing the news, Libbie declared that she would go with the men to tell the other widows. So, at the post were Annie Yates and her three very young children, Nettie Smith, Mollie McIntosh for sure. Frannie DeWolf, Eliza Porter, wives of the regiment's medical men were possibly there. Their husbands were killed.

In Libbie's first book, "Boots and Saddles or Life in Dakota with General Custer", she writes of the rumors that arrived at the post within hours of the battle, probably brought person by person over the 500 miles by the Crow and Arikara scouts. They had also heard from the East that there were many more Indians gathering together then first thought. On the day of the battle, June 25, a Sunday, the women gathered together for an improvised church service - there was no chaplain at the post - they tried to sing hymns but hadn't the heart for it.

Of course, she may also be applying hindsight, but there seemed to be a sense that there was cause for the usual anxiety.

She writes: "I remember the grief with which one fair young wife threw herself on the carpet and pillowed her head in the lap of a tender friend." As usual, in her books, she doesn't tell us the name, darn her. But looking at the wives who I can't place, there are Alice McDougall, Grace Edgerley and Meda Mathey, all of whose husbands also survived. Alice was married in '72 and Grace Edgerley in Oct. of 1875. Meda Mathey's husband, Gus, was with the pack train so she was probably at Fort Rice.

Note to self: find out her wedding date!

Grace Harrington was, I believe still in the east because her husband, Henry , had arrived to to with the regiment cutting his leave short. He was KIA.

I'm thinking the young wife was Grace Edgerley, but he was on Reno Hill so maybe she was at Fort Rice too. Might have even been back East.

By the way, Maggie Custer was married to Jimmi Calhoun whose brother Fred married Emma Reed and whose sister Charlotte married Myles Moylan. Katie Gibson and Mollie McIntosh were sisters. Along with the fact that three Custer brothers, one brother-in-law and a nephew were all killed, you can see it was a family affair. When you factor in George Yates, who also came from Monroe, MI, it has to remind you of those times in WWI when English villages would lose all their young men or the family in WWII who inspired saving Private Ryan.

On my first trip to the battlefield, that was what struck me the hardest, the three markers for Armstrong, Tom and Boston; I didn't know about Autie Reed and Jimmi Calhoun yet. I asked the famous historian if their mother had been alive and he didn't know.

Humph. History used to be all about dates and Great Men, didn't it?. And, yes, she was alive as was Father C. Not to mention Lydia Ann and David Reed who were Autie Reed's parents - Lydia Ann was a step-sister to the Custer men.

At Fort Rice were Kate Benteen, with I think one child, Katie Gibson, Lotte Moylan, Mary Godfrey, with a baby, and her sister Zoe, and Eliza DeRudio with her four kids. Their husband survived with Benteen and Reno.

We don't know the name of the wife of Isaiah Dorman, the interpreter/scout.

Of course, the Indian warriors who died were also mourned and not only were they, the Sioux, Cheyenne and Arapaho losing their family members, but their entire culture, a discussion for another time.

THE FUN OF RESEARCH

The fact is, if you're interested in the subject, the research is fun. The trouble is getting so deep into it, you forget about the project you're researching for. You have to reach a certain point when you just put your blinders on and get on with the writing.

But then you have your characters doing something and you have to find out if they could and how. For instance, I decided to write a scene that takes place on the train bringing Elizabeth and the other women back to the States from Fort Abraham Lincoln.

I have to stop and find out what that would entail. I found a map online of railroad lines from Bismarck east and saw the line was almost straight east through the Dakotas into Minnosota. That was great, then I had to find out when exactly they left, how long it took - almost a week - and what kind of train - Northern Pacific sent a special car - with what kind of accomadations - Pullman car with bathrooms for men and women and a small kitchen.

I had an old article from "American Heritage' magazine that had great photos about crossing the Continenant by train and, of course, there was great stuff online.

This info became useful when I decided to write a scene about the Custers' wedding trip. They left the evening of their wedding with the other two couples of their wedding party. It took overnight to get to their first stop, Cleveland. And if you're wondering, they went to a hotel there, otherwise they spent their wedding night on the train. From what I could find, there weren't any berths for sleeping untli after the Civil War and Libbie and Armstrong were married in 1864 so they sat up, with no privacy.

In both cases, I mapped out the trips. Doing that, I wondered if I could set up a calendar. If would help with the itineraries and also with what else went on in Monroe when Libbie got back. Back to the Net. I put in 1876 calendar and up popped what I needed. Made me feel quite heady!

i wrote three other historical novels before this one and doing research all from books was fun, but took more time. Couldn't just stop and look up whatever online. On the one hand, I had to make decisions, come to conclusions when I couldn't find the specific information and on the other, I wonder what gaffs I made.

Of course, writing about someone who wrote her own books means there is a lot of information out there about her. She wrote hundreds of letters and was written about in books, memoirs and the papers all of her long life. I'm also conscious that Custer and every facet of his life is a subject about which many, many people are experts.