|
Anonymous Poster8169
Brigadier General
Status: offline |
 Posted - February 08 2004 : 2:59:55 PM
|
This is one of those specialist books that are bought only by the hardcore. It was edited by Richard Hardorff and published a year or two ago. Since it's hard to find, and published only in a limited edition, I thought I'd report on it here.
The title is rather misleading. While Camp's actual rosters are reprinted, the vast bulk of this book in fact consists of material not on those rosters. Some of it is excerpted from Camp's interviews, some of it from other sources. As a result, the text frequently looks chaotic. Here is the entry for Sgt. Hanley:
HANLEY, RICHARD P. [Was QM sergeant says Thompson.] (In charge of mules says Knipe.) (Headed off ammo mule named Old Barnum who stampeded from Reno Hill on 6/25 says himself.) (Ditto says McGuire.) (Ditto says Hardy.) [Awarded Medal of Honor for recapturing, without orders, a stampeded mule loaded with ammunition boxes within the enemy's lines, under a galling fire lasting some twenty minutes.] [Resided at] 23 Green St., Boston, MA. Sgt. Retired. [Born 1843, Boston, MA]
Statements in square brackets [ ] were culled by Hardorff from non-Camp sources. Those in parentheses he extracted from Camp's interviews. Only the plain text stuff was included by Camp on his original rosters. As you can see, the only thing Camp actually put on it was Hanley's address! Everything else has been added by Hardorff. It's like this throughout the book.
If he was going to do all that, one wonders why Hardorff just didn't publish his own version of Hammer's "Men with Custer" or Carroll's "They Rode with Custer". Why stick to the pretense of it being "Camp's" rosters? The actual Camp rosters are very basic, not much different from the rosters Loyd Overfield published in his edition of Little Bighorn documents. Mostly, they just list whether a guy was killed, on detached service, or with the pack train. Sometimes Camp includes a man's current address, or if Camp knows him to be dead, he makes note of it ---- probably because the main purpose of these rosters was as a research tool. There wouldn't be much point in trying to track down the current whereabouts of a dead man.
But while it includes some exclusive information, Hardorff's book is not actually as detailed as Hammer's. And most of this info has already been published by Hammer in "Custer in '76," and Hardorff in "The Custer Battle Casualties," or elsewhere. A lot of entries are still just skeletal. The entry for Pvt. George Warren is typical. All it has is:
WARREN, GEORGE [A.] [Born 1840, Gibson County, IN]
You could get this and more (though not much more) from Hammer.
So I'm a little puzzled why this book exists. It's vastly more detailed than Camp's own rosters, the supposed basis for this book, but still omits much in Hammer. Why expand so extensively on Camp, if you were only going to take half-measures?
Well, since most of you are never going to be able to read this book, I thought I'd do everybody a favor by including the most interesting information that (I think) has not been previously published in some other book.
According to Kanipe, Thomas Bucknell resigned as C Company trumpeter after the regiment left Fort Lincoln on May 17. He was replaced by William Kramer. Many rosters still list Bucknell as a trumpeter on the day of the battle. Bucknell, according to Mahoney and Knipe, was originally assigned to the pack train; however, Knipe states that both he and Patrick Griffin were reassigned to combat duty on the morning of the battle, where, unfortunately, they rode to their deaths.
Not only do these two men now officially join the Poor Bastards department with Archibald McIlhargey and John Mitchell, but this information finally makes sense of something else from the Camp material that had before puzzled me. Dennis Lynch told Camp that Timothy Donnelly was assigned to the pack train; however, Donnelly actually died with Custer, and Lynch himself said that Donnelly's corpse was identified in Deep Ravine. I didn't know what to make of this before, but if packers Bucknell and Griffin were transferred to combat duty that morning, there's a good chance some men in other companies were also, and Donnelly was likely one of these if what Lynch said was accurate.
Sgt. Alexander Brown of G Troop compiled a company roster right after the battle, and in it he listed the lost horses of the company by rider. They were: Lt. McIntosh, Sgt. Edward Botzer, Sgt. Martin Considine, Cpl. Otto Hagemann, Trumpeter Henry Dose, Saddler Crawford Selby, Blacksmith Walter Taylor, Farrier Benjamin Wells, Pvt. Theodore Goldin, Pvt. Benjamin Johnson, Pvt. John Lattman, Pvt. George Loyd, Pvt. Samuel McCormick, Pvt. Thomas O'Neill, Pvt. Eldorado Robb, Pvt. Thomas Stevenson, Pvt. Markus Weiss, Pvt. John Rapp, Pvt. Benjamin Rogers, Pvt. Henry Seafferman, and Pvt. Edward Stanley. Most of these guys either died or were left in the timber. In addition, the wounded horse of Pvt. John Small was destroyed by the "rear guard," and the horse of Pvt. Hugh McGonigle was destroyed on June 29. Fred Gerard claimed that McGonigle was Reno's stepson, which I find wildly improbable.
What seems most interesting about this Brown list is how few horses were apparently killed during the siege on Reno Hill. McIntosh, Botzer, Considine, Hagemann, Dose, Selby, Wells, Rapp, Rogers, Seafferman, and Stanley were all killed, and their horses therefore probably lost before then, while Taylor, Johnson, Lattman, McCormick, O'Neill, and Weiss were reported to have been left in the timber. Their horses were probably lost in the valley too. The horses of Goldin and Robb are also said to have been shot in the valley. This leaves just Loyd and Stevenson, and of course those may been "lost" in the valley too.
There's some other stuff, mostly horse names (McIntosh rode a horse named Puff, and Sgt. Botzer was killed riding a Goat), but kind of inconsequential. Captain Weir had two horses named Beelzebub and Nigger Jim.....
R. Larsen
|
|
Walter Camp's Little Bighorn Rosters
