Where, Oh Where, Was Libbie?

[Diane Merkel]

This isn't gossip but, since we don't have a board devoted to Libbie, I thought I would post this question here. I've been corresponding with a woman who has a question about 1869:

In the book The Custer Story, the letters of George A Custer and his wife Elizabeth indicate Custer travelled quite a bit. The letters indicate Elizabeth was elsewhere, but I just can't imagine that she was at Fort Hays, Kansas all that time. Can I assume she was in Monroe, or Pennsylvannia with relatives for some of the time. Although one letter is from Monroe to her somewhere else.

I know it's a small point but do you know any book, or anywhere, I could research to get some idea if she actually stayed at the fort without him, during that year.

The woman asking is a journalist and author, so please provide sources.

Thanks!

Diane

[biggordie]

Shirley Leckie covers 1869 well in her Elizabeth Bacon Custer and the Making of a Myth, University of Oklahoma, 1993. I would quote the relevant bits, but your correspondent would be better served by consulting the source herself [and probably would want to].

Gordie

PS See also Lawrence A. Frost's General Custer's Libbie, Superior, 1976.

[stevewilk]

I happen to have the Frost book: General Custer's Libbie a first edition no less. This was very first "Custer book" purchase in 1977. I had to get my older brother to send a check to the bookseller since I was only sixteen at the time. At any rate, Chapter 21, pages 181-187 chronicles Libbie's (and George's whereabouts):

Nov 1868--Libbie leaves for Monroe (I guess from Ft. Hays?)

Mar 1869--Regiment returns from field, goes into summer camp
on Big Creek KS (near Hays) Libbie is there to greet
her husband. Stays with him in camp until Oct.

Oct 1869--Regiment breaks camp, Custer and Libbie leave for
winter quarters at Ft. Leavenworth

Nov/Dec 1869--Custer travels to Chicago to visit Sheridan, who
was ill; then on to Monroe where he tended to some
personal business regarding the Bacon estate; then
on to Washington for business at the War Dept; then
to Philadelphia and New York and back to Monroe for
Christmas with his folks and Lt. Cooke who tagged
along. Libbie was escorted to Christmas dinner with
her cousin, Anne E. Bingham by Capt. Yates.

So apparently Libbie stayed at Leavenworth all winter; the Custer's were friends of Nelson Miles who also was at "11-worth". Libbie likely spent time with his wife, Mary, among other officer's wives.

[Diane Merkel]

Thank you both!

[elisabeth]

Actually -- was Miles at Leavenworth? I thought he was at Hays. (But could be wrong.) The Sturgis family will have been there, but I'm not sure how warm relations will have been between the Custer and Sturgis camps. Also present were the Buels. Buel was a old classmate of Custer's, so the two families may have been friendly from the start; Rebecca Richmond's diary from early 1870 shows them socialising together quite a bit, so Libbie might have fallen back on their company in late 1869 too. (There are suspicions that Mrs. Buel was the "married woman, the wife of an officer of the garrison" who Custer was rumoured to have had an affair with; but if so, that most likely didn't start until his return in 1870.)

One potentially Tupperware aspect: Custer's long absence from Libbie follows very close on the heels of her summary firing of Eliza -- in September 1869. If Benteen's right about Custer's relationship with Eliza (as per the D. F. Barry correspondence) what we could be looking at here is the first of several throwings-out of Custer by Libbie. If she'd suffered the Monasetah humiliation earlier that year, and then found out about Eliza, her patience might well have snapped. "Go, and never darken my doors again" or similar. So this could be the right thread after all!

[stevewilk]

You are correct, Elisabeth. Fifth Infantry HQ was at Ft. Hays; it wasn't till 1871 that it was moved to Leavenworth. Mary Miles left for Cleveland in the fall of 1869 to give birth to daughter Celia (per Wooster's Miles bio); so she wasn't at Leavenworth that winter either.

BTW; the Wooster book mentions a Miles/Merrill fued, resulting in Merrill's removal. Nothing further. Do you know the context of this?

[elisabeth]

Thanks, Steve.

I didn't know Miles was also involved in the Merrill feud; that's most interesting. I knew Custer got drawn into it towards the end of 1870, when Armes stirred up the Lauffer case -- and that his hostility may have stemmed from Merrill's testimony to the Benzine Boards -- but I had no knowledge of Miles also being implicated. Any further info?
This whole Merrill thing seems to have been almost more important by 1876, both to Custer himself and to the army's/establishment's view of him, than the headline Belknap affair, so it would be great to know more.

[markland]

Jul 12, 2008 9:20:26 GMT -6 stevewilk said:

You are correct, Elisabeth. Fifth Infantry HQ was at Ft. Hays; it wasn't till 1871 that it was moved to Leavenworth. Mary Miles left for Cleveland in the fall of 1869 to give birth to daughter Celia (per Wooster's Miles bio); so she wasn't at Leavenworth that winter either.

BTW; the Wooster book mentions a Miles/Merrill fued, resulting in Merrill's removal. Nothing further. Do you know the context of this?

Steve & Elisabeth, I am going strictly by memory (being too lazy to hunt for the documentation) but wasn't Benteen stationed at Hays with Miles at that time? I know at one location Miles was the post commander when Benteen served at the post.

Billy

[bc]

On page 6 of the Fort Hays census on July 2, 1870 is Brvt. Col. Benteen, Age 36, of the 7th Cav with his wife, Kate, Age 28, and Fred, Jr., age 3, along with a young female servant from Denmark.

On page 7 of the Fort Hays census is Maj. Reno, Age 35, with wife Mary, Age 26, and son Robert, age 6.

I didn't really see any other officers that I recognized with the 7th. The only other officer with the 7th listed was a Capt. Cha Branston or something like that. It wasn't Barnitz and it wasn't Briscoe.

I suspect the families were staying on main post in officer quarters.

The 7th Cav was in camp on Big Creek aka Camp Sturgis. However the Custers do not show up on the census there.

[elisabeth]

I wonder if the census date coincided with one of their buffalo-hunting excursions away from the camp? I've got a feeling it might. If anyone's got Annie Roberts' diary, A Summer on the Plains, it'd be easy to verify. (Sorry, am temporarily without my own copy.)

Reading back over this thread, there's one small correction needed to reply #2. I'm pretty sure that in late 1868, Libbie travelled from Monroe to Leavenworth. (That's where she was, penniless, when Custer sent the $100 loan via Benteen.) As far as I can make out, she stayed there all winter.

[bc]

Could have been hunting, out at Fort Wallace or even Riley or Leavenworth. That census was taken just prior to a response to an Indian attack that resulted in some movement away from Sturgis & Hays by a company or two or more. I posted it on a previous thread somewhere.

Regarding Miles, just because the headquarters was in Hays, doesn't mean necessarily that Miles himself was there in the field a la Col. Smith, commanding the 7th.