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.