Someone! Some Tupperware, Please!

[Tricia]

From the way Elisabeth portrays the whole matter(s), the name Diana seems to aptly describe Miss Darrah ... the huntress, eh? Given GAC's relative immaturity during the years 1866-69, I seem to remember--from seventh grade--that anger is often a cheap cover for love ... or in his case, attraction.

[elisabeth]

Diana the huntress ... and Diana the goddess of chastity. A two-edged joke, perhaps!

I was guessing that if GAC and Anna did carry on, it'd be in the spring of '68 -- hence Anna (possibly) being booted off the premises by Libbie. In which case GAC's remarks in '69 could be the 1869 equivalent of a sneering "Her? I've had her, everyone's had her". But this only works if Anna has not been invited back between March '68 and the end of '69, which I'm not absolutely sure of; it looks as if there may have been another visit, if she's managed to get engaged to Moylan. Hard to tell from Frost, and no-one else seems to have more on her than he does.

[Tricia]

But wasn't the winter of 1869 the year GAC and Libbie separated? The presence of the complication of Anna could have been the final straw ... and darn it, ya just don't spend Christmas apart, especially when you're as thick as the Custers were. Oh, so delicious. And terribly naughty ... ahem. But had Libbie really gone through a premature menopause, perhaps GAC is finally introduced to a sense of mortality--if I could only put the pieces together!

Poor Anna--how badly can one be ruined?
--t.

Chairchick, NACCers,
MST, The Nuthouse.

[harpskiddie]

So many of these characters seem to simply disappear into the mists of time, especially the womenfolk, Has anyone gone to the Monroe newspaper files to see what can be found as to marriages, deaths, movings away or whatever? I'm starting to get interested in this stuff, heaven help me.

Gordie
MC

[elisabeth]

There were two consecutive Christmasses they spent apart -- '69 and '70. Possible that Anna could have had something to do with the first one; however, the fall of '69 is when Libbie fires Eliza, so I'd suspect that's a more likely precipitating event. Libbie's swallowed her pride over the Monahseetah affair earlier in the year ... thinks she can breathe again once the captives have gone ... and then finds out that all these years, the woman she'd seen as her friend and companion had been cheerily cavorting with GAC behind her back. That would be the last straw, and more than enough to make her throw him out. (OK, we only have Benteen's and a Confederate newspaper's word for the Eliza relationship, but it fits. Especially with Libbie explaining Eliza's departure first of all as "she went on a spree and was insolent", to be transmuted in later years into the touching "Miz Libbie, you has the ginnel, but I's got nobody" scene. If the "insolence" took the form of Eliza telling Libbie what's been going on -- well, no Christmas for GAC.) And by the second one, 1870, she's had yet more to put up with, which has allowed the Keogh relationship to grow and flourish. Again she throws GAC out, but this time she doesn't have to spend Christmas alone; Keogh's there.*

Gordie, good thought about the Monroe newspapers. That may be the only way, since no amount of Googling seems to turn up young Anna's whereabouts. As far as one can tell, she just fades from view. I suppose the 1870 census would tell us if she was still in Monroe then; beyond that, it would have to be the newspapers. Wonder if she ever married, or if her reputation was too damaged for that? It would be fascinating to know.

And also to know what was going on in the minds of the other Monroe parents who sent their daughters on merry visits to the Custers. If Anna's misbehaviour became known, no decent girl would be allowed to go ... Hey, there's a whole study here waiting to be done! Who were the Custers' young lady guests over the years; what became of each of them; and did the standard of respectability decline noticeably as the "better class" of Monroe parent discovered the dangers? From the look of those two Wadsworth girls, I'd suspect the answer to the last would be yes -- but we still haven't pinned down exactly who they were, I think. Yes, a Tupperware trawl through the Monroe archives could be very interesting!


*Purists will argue that this can't be so, as Co. I was stationed at Fort Harker that winter. That's where Garlington's Chronological Sketch says they were. But Blaine Burkey in Custer, Come at Once! (p. 101) cites Chandler's Of Garryowen in Glory as stating that they were in fact at Leavenworth, so I'm prepared to go with that.

[gocav76]

Elisabeth and Tricia, Was Christmas even considered that big a deal in the 1860's? "According to Daniel Boorstin in his book The Americans, Christmas was largely a non-event in America until the 1860's. 1867 was the first year that Macy's remained open until midnight on Christmas Eve. 1874 was the year of the first window displays with a Christmas theme at Macy's. It has snowballed from there." www.modernlife.org/all_staples1999to2000/1999Months/December/christmas.htm

[elisabeth]

Good question -- but I think it had become so. Katie Gibson's account of Christmas festivities (With Custer's Cavalry, Chapter 16) comes from the '70s, of course; but we have Keogh in 1867 giving his men a special Christmas dinner at Fort Wallace, complete with the treat of "a Scotch brew", so it was established as a festival by then. And Dickens had been popular in the US for decades, importing his vision of Christmas ... Just guessing, I'd imagine that its importance probably rocketed as soon as the Civil War was over and families were back together again. (Though come to think of it, aren't there wartime Christmas scenes in Little Women? Can't remember for sure, but I thought there were.)

Hmmm. Must check.


OK, a few indications. Thomas Nast's first illustration of Santa Claus was in Harper's for Christmas 1863. There's a later one, 1865, on Ebay now, showing that the full Christmas iconography was in place by then:
cgi.ebay.com/1865-original-Christmas-Engraving-THOM-NAST-Santa-Claus_W0QQitemZ370003238404QQihZ024QQcategoryZ33836QQcmdZViewItem
There's a plaintive little classified ad from a mother wanting her daughter home for Christmas of 1865:
www.classifiedarchive.org/
and a description of Christmas celebrations here:
hscc.carr.org/research/yesteryears/cct1995/950101.htm

So I think we can say that Christmas was pretty prominent in people's minds by 1869 and 1870, and that there is significance in a couple choosing to spend it apart. Glad you raised the question, though; you're right that we must beware making assumptions about such things!

[Dark Cloud]

Clement Moore's poem was in the 1820's and a bigger hit every year in American magazines. Whether the greed factor had kicked in or not with the stores shouldn't dim the gabillion year old Solstice celebration upon which the birth of Christ was appended. Kwanza, so easily ridiculed, is actually pretty close to the original and lesser American holiday where family members made and gave each other gifts at Christmas (and Easter, I think).

Until Moore, an American, there was no concept of reindeer and a sleigh for Saint Nicholas. Twenty years later, Dickens' story emphasized gifts for the less fortunate and, you know, Christian attributes at that time of year. After the CW, in aggregate with booming economy and immigration and informal and maybe unconscious search for a celebration everyone could get into as well as celebration of family and life after a god awful war (as several here pointed out) it became what it became. But surely a sanctioned excuse to party on the frontier was welcomed no less than in the Beacon St. parlors.

[elisabeth]

Good stuff. And yes, I'm sure you're right that any excuse for a party was welcomed. (Rebecca Richmond's diary shows how the Fort Leavenworth contingent eagerly muscled in on the Purim Ball.) So they certainly wouldn't have missed out on something as big and as generally acceptable as Christmas.

[alfuso]

GAC and Cooke went to visit Cooke's family, passing through Monroe so GAC could "take care of some family business"

GAC was back with Libbie by New Year's Eve.

Just an odd trip to take over Christmas, without the wife. I believe one of the reasons was they couldn't afford for both of them to travel what with Christmas expenses and all. . . .So why did GAC go at all?

alfuso

[harpskiddie]

There is a new review of a book dealing with Christmas celebrations on the frontier on the Book Review thread. I have a couple of books which might have something in them [the View From Officers' Row, and Letters From an Army Wife or something], but I can't find them among the mess that passes for my "media room." Of course, they may be in the mess that passes for my "sleeping quarters, cum cat litter repository and kitten feeding stations."

I figure that if I refer to them as messes, then no one will believe that they are such.

Gordie
MC

[Tricia]

alfuso said:

GAC and Cooke went to visit Cooke's family, passing through Monroe so GAC could "take care of some family business"

GAC was back with Libbie by New Year's Eve.

Just an odd trip to take over Christmas, without the wife. I believe one of the reasons was they couldn't afford for both of them to travel what with Christmas expenses and all. . . .So why did GAC go at all?

alfuso

Because Libbie sent him packing; Utley make quite a deal out of the rift in the Custers' marriage.

[alfuso]

it's just an odd turn-out. Sending the Post Commander packing. It would seem more sensible that Libbie leave and go home, via her cousin and a few others. She could stay away as long as possible. As it was, GAC was back by New Year's Eve.

Of course, Libbie may not have wanted GAC to be out from under her eye for very long. then too, see what he -- apparently -- did while just about under her eye.

alfuso

[elisabeth]

The reason, according to Leckie, was that GAC had to sort out problems with Judge Bacon's estate. And needed to visit Sheridan in Chicago en route. And another cousin of Libbie's, Anne Northrop Bingham, was due to visit Leavenworth to see if she fancied settling in Kansas, which meant Libbie "had" to be there. (No explanation given for why Topeka wouldn't be just as sensible a place for both of them.) Too many reasons offered, and one does rather start to smell a rat.