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Post by elisabeth on Apr 11, 2007 8:25:20 GMT -6
Apologies to all, by the way, for the "$8,000" nonsense. That's what comes of posting something off the top of my head ... Which is the same place that houses some vague recollection that a striker got paid extra. Is that true? Or another case of False Memory Syndrome? Just thinking that if it's true, it might be telling us that the servants paid "at the rate of a private soldier" possibly weren't taken from the ranks ...?
Custer seems, most of the time, to have had rather more servants than the army pay covered -- two cooks, or a cook and a maid, plus a coachman, quite apart from his striker. Unless he'd found some way to do it on the cheap, servants' pay would make hefty inroads into his disposable income, one would think.
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Post by Tricia on Apr 11, 2007 8:28:17 GMT -6
Elisabeth--
Well, thank goodness he could always borrow his brother's suits!
--t.
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Post by elisabeth on Apr 11, 2007 10:34:47 GMT -6
Tricia,
Yes, and it must have been a comical sight. I don't know Tom's height, but he certainly looks shorter than GAC in photographs ...
Sword,
Thanks for posting those figures earlier. Fascinating. Would those merchandise prices be the prices paid in the States? If so, every item would have cost a lot more once freighted out to frontier posts like Fort Lincoln. Making things even worse for a mere private.
(A side note: Boyer had chickens at FAL ... and Libbie once or twice mentions keeping chickens herself on occasion ... yet her memoirs, and those of every other frontier wife, are full of laments about the unavailability/price of eggs. Can anybody think of a single good reason why every post didn't keep the things as a matter of course? They don't take much work, they can survive anywhere, they can be fed on scraps, or root for insects themselves, and when they're past producing eggs they can be eaten. They must be the single most efficient thing far-flung posts could supplement their diets with. I'm at a loss to understand why intelligent cavalry officers who could get music, musical instruments, and books for their posts never thought to get chickens ... Or did they? And nobody thought it worth mentioning?)
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Post by markland on Apr 11, 2007 11:04:29 GMT -6
Coyotes, snakes, hawks, skunks are predators of chickens/eggs.
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Post by elisabeth on Apr 11, 2007 11:56:30 GMT -6
Same here: foxes, badgers, rats, magpies, hawks, anything going. And yet people here manage to keep them. All you need is a secure nest-box. Just seems like a failure of imagination. But then again ... every post had its army of disreputable dogs. Perhaps few chickens would have survived them.
But wire-netting, I find (thanks to Google!) was invented in 1844. Not impossible to use that ...? OK, a shortage of wood to use for fence-posts. And if the chickens were confined, they'd be less able to forage for themselves and more dependent on rationed grain. But still ... it bothers me. If I'd been plumped down in a frontier post in the 1860s/'70s, my first thought (or second, after the small matter of survival) would have been to get chickens. Next, a milch cow. Third, vegetable seeds -- though that ambition obviously wouldn't have lasted beyond the first grasshopper plague. It just seems a bit, I dunno, lacking in lateral thinking ...?
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Post by BrokenSword on Apr 11, 2007 18:32:36 GMT -6
Elisabeth-
The grocery and dry goods prices I posted were available in Abilene, Kansas. They represent the store’s price to the customer and were from sometime in the year 1874.
Liquor prices: From a wholesale liquor store at Dodge City in the 1870‘s [Kansas became a "dry" state in 1880--no legal manufacture or sale of liquor]
High Mucky Muck (a soft drink), Energy, Fire Fly, Orinoco, Ginger Ale -- $20 per cask British Bass Ale and Irish Guinness Stout -- $20 per cask American brewed beers such as Anheuser -- $2 per case Jamaica Rum -- $5 per gallon Port and Sherry -- between $1 to $5 per gallon Western brandy -- $15 per case Gin -- $1.50 per gallon Whiskey -- $2-$3 per gallon Saloon beer prices fluctuated but on average: 2 glasses for $.25 cents or 2 bits.
Now, get ready and put on your finest hat because we are going out to dinner. The following are 1870's San Francisco restaurant prices:
Green turtle soup - 15 cents Bouillon - 15 cents Fried smelts - 25 cents Fried cod - 25 cents Porterhouse steak - 50 cents Kidneys with wine sauce - 25 cents Mallard ducks - 40 cents Calf's liver - 25 cents Boiled ham - 40 cents Venison steak - 25 cents Cold roast beef - 25 cents Tea - 15 cents
Lastly: $1.00 in 1876 = $19.40 today Therefore. in today’s money a Lt Colonel US Army earned the equivalent of approx. - 47,258.40 US dollars - 23,925.82 GBP A private earned the equivalent of approx. - 3,259.20 US dollars - 1,649.90 GBP
M
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Post by BrokenSword on Apr 11, 2007 21:25:32 GMT -6
OKAY! Okay, okay. I started out researching a painting that I wanted to do. Along the way I became interested in a number of off-shoot aspects surrounding the people involved in the Battle of the Little Bighorn. That was fine. Then I got interested in other people of those times. That was fine too. Maybe finding the recipes for ‘Cowboy Biscuits’ and ‘Son-Of-A-Bitch Stew’ was a clue that I had moved too far afield. If not, then my ACTUALLY making that stuff for dinner one night should have been a clue that thing were getting out of hand. Despite that, I persevered. But now. NOW! I have just spent the better part of a day researching chicken ranching, the history of eggs and looking into water tables and reports from the 1800s. I had already learned that $1.25 bought you a deck of marked cards and $5 ‘a set of specially weighted dice’, but at least, chicken ranching and selling the eggs were honest endeavors.
All because of General Custer and Elisabeth. Its gone too far. It’s out of control. Someone help me. Anyway, while I await the nice young men in the white coats who are coming for me:
Dear Elisabeth-
I don’t know why more chickens weren’t raised out west by soldiers. A number of them had farming experience and numbers of officers at some forts arranged for them to have the time for planting and tending gardens. During the Red Cloud War, and the particularly hard winter that year, soldiers at one fort were near starvation , even while those at another fort not so far away were eating well from the crops they had raised and canned that season. They even GAINED weight over the winter. But, nothing about chickens. Records showed that grocers in numbers of towns out west traded goods in lieu of cash with customers. Eggs were mentioned prominently. The grocers shipped the eggs to other towns and received cash for them. Eggs seem to have been common enough.
I can only guess that it was the logistics of obtaining and raising chickens? I know that here in Georgia (USA) chicken farming is a major business. When temperatures get high in the summers, farmers can lose thousands of the birds to heat. Winters are longer and more severe out west too. Water may have been another issue. I read one account which stated that on the prairie, even from deep wells, the water was often so alkaline eggs were blood red and so foul of taste they couldn’t be eaten. YUM-YUM! GOOD EMBRYO, MOM!. Take stew AND eggs off my menu now. I would think that when choosing a site for a fort, water of ALL things, would be the prime consideration. Good water. So - it has to be that raising them at or near the fort was impractical for some other reason. Did the soldiers use the chickens for target practice? Nawh.
There was one account of two farmers coming to blows because one of them owned a wolfhound that kept stealing and eating the other farmer’s eggs, or so he said - after he went and shot the dog. HUMM… didn’t Geo. Custer have a bunch of dogs? Wolfhounds among them? Who would dare shoot the ‘General’s’ dog? Better to just do without any eggs, I guess.
M
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Post by harpskiddie on Apr 11, 2007 21:53:20 GMT -6
Hey, Fritz!! You got any money? Yeah, thirty nine cents - you got any McClusky? No, but I got a terrible thirst - let's get down to the friendly neighborhood and have a beer. Naw, I'm saving up for some green turtle soup and some kidneys with wine sauce. I only need another penny. Fritz, you are a terrible example of a proper sojer!!!!
Michael, you are sunk. You must run now, right now, or forget your boards and brushes and Hyplar colors while you conduct your research into the actual breeds of dogs owned by Georgie Boy at various times in his career [it started early, don't you know, and you'll never be content until you know all]. Once you've done that, then you have to get all their names right, and this becomes difficult because he apparently knew that posterity would be delving into the subject, and so he repeated some of the names, without rhyme or reason .
Gordie, Excuse me, could I have anopther porterhouse, please?.....................................................
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Post by Diane Merkel on Apr 11, 2007 22:07:32 GMT -6
NOW! I have just spent the better part of a day researching chicken ranching, the history of eggs and looking into water tables and reports from the 1800s. That is so funny and it is, of course, all Elisabeth's fault. You're sunk, M. Your life will never be the same. I live in a rather rural county, and one of our friends used to raise chickens and sell the eggs to friends. He quit because the bobcats kept getting the chickens, and he had a "secure" house for them. I can only guess it would be much more difficult on the plains. Also, I recently found out from a program we had at our local history museum, chickens dehydrate very quickly. No water, dead chickens.
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Post by BrokenSword on Apr 12, 2007 7:38:13 GMT -6
Gordie-
“…while you conduct your research into the actual breeds of dogs owned by Georgie Boy…”
OH YEAH! Thanks for the reminder! I need to check on the breed of Custer’s dog that was named ‘Bismark.’ Named after the German Count or after the Dakota Territorial City? And, who founded that city? Two ‘Es’ or just one in his first name? What was his mother’s maiden name? She was born in Ohio - Right? Or - was it Kentucky? So much to do….so much to do.
Diane-
Its not ALL Elisabeth’s fault. She just asked the question. Custer had a lot to do with it, and so do ALL of you others here. Although, I ran slap into her paper trail yesterday too. I think I did anyway. Elisabeth? Did you win a writing award once? Amazing … simply amazing, how far the Little Bighorn tentacles reach when you Google it.
M
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Post by elisabeth on Apr 12, 2007 8:17:14 GMT -6
Really??!? Well ... only third prize in a county competition. Nothing I'd have thought would be commemorated on the web. But who knows what trivia Google can unearth!
Predators and climate could well be the answer. It just seemed so crazy that they'd keep every other conceivable variety of pet, and not the one creature that could actually have been of use ...
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Post by BrokenSword on Apr 12, 2007 9:17:11 GMT -6
Elisabeth-
The web knows all - the web sees all. So why can't I find out more about chickens?
M
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Post by elisabeth on Apr 12, 2007 9:21:33 GMT -6
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Post by BrokenSword on Apr 12, 2007 10:01:51 GMT -6
Elisabeth-
Yep. Saw that one too. As well as, a TON of others. Need any chicken jokes? Nothing to the question of supplemental food supplies in the US Army, though. I’ll give it up for now. Dinner in San Francisco (especially at those prices) sounds like more fun anyway.
Thank you Michael
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Post by elisabeth on Apr 12, 2007 10:40:41 GMT -6
Doesn't it just!
Don Rickey, in Forty Miles a Day on Beans and Hay, talks about one post that kept a couple of pigs to fatten up (you'd think more bacon was the last thing they needed!); and I seem to remember Libbie mentioning getting a milch cow at one point, also chickens at some other post; but there doesn't seem to have been any consistent policy. (Goats would have been good, come to think of it, or even rabbits, but I've not heard of either being kept.) Apart from that, and a bit of gardening where grasshoppers allowed, it seems to have been whatever goodies they could buy with company funds, and whatever game could be got. Rather unenterprising, really.
Thank you for posting those prices and money equivalents. I don't know how it is in the U.S. these days, but in British terms the Lt. Col.'s salary is about the national average -- perhaps what an entry-level managerial person might expect to earn. Not starvation wages, but not exactly untold riches either. Makes GAC's constant quest for money more understandable ...
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