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Discover Mid-America — November 2004

Custer's allure enhanced by a visit to his frontier home

The home of Lt. Col. George Custer and his wife at Fort Abraham Lincoln. It was from this location that Custer left on May 17, 1876 for his ill-fated battle with Plains Indians at the Little Bighorn in Montana. (photo by Ken Weyand)

More than half a century after Lewis and Clark explored the area around present-day Bismarck, ND, workers began building the Northern Pacific Railroad.

In 1872, to protect the crews against attacks by Plains Indians, an infantry post with blockhouses was built on a bluff overlooking the river. A year later, a cavalry post was established on the river-bottom. Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer was the fort’s first commander, moving into a Victorian house with his wife Libbie. They would live here until May 17, 1876, when Custer and the 7th Cavalry rode out to an ill-fated encounter with Plains Indians at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in Montana.

A fire ruined the house while the Custers lived there, and it was rebuilt. In 1891, the fort was abandoned with the wooden buildings torn down by area settlers. Now rebuilt from original plans, the Custer home is furnished with period pieces closely resembling the originals, and with some items used by the Custers themselves.

My guide was Dani, a girl of 16 who was in her second year at the fort. Knowledgeable beyond her years, she described the house as though she had lived there and had known the Custers personally.

Dani, a young guide with amazing knowledge of the Custers, shows off a piano identical to the one used by Libbie Custer and others. ÒMrs. Custer tried to play, but wasnÕt very good,Ó she remarked. (photo by Ken Weyand)

We entered the house, a high-ceilinged frame structure typical of many Victorian homes of its day.

The large rooms could be explored with no restrictions — no “forbidden areas” or taped-off furnishings. It looked as though the Custers had simply left for the day. Dani showed me the ornate piano, a duplicate of the one in the original house.

“Mrs. Custer tried to play it,” Dani said, “but she wasn’t very good at it. Others would play it at social gatherings.”

Not far away was the portable field desk used by Custer. In the kitchen was a meat platter given to the Custers when they were married. Dani said most of the cooking was done by servants. “Mrs. Custer wasn’t a much better cook than a piano player,” she said.

Upstairs were bedrooms furnished to faithfully duplicate the original beds and other items. I noticed they were short by today’s standards. Were the Custers short people?

“No,” Dani said, “many people had respiratory problems and it was thought necessary to sleep in an upright position to ward off consumption and other diseases.”

One upstairs room had a fainting couch. “It was used often,” Dani said. “The women would have corsets so tight that made it hard to breathe. At parties, it wasn’t unusual for women to faint several times. There was a waiting line to use the fainting couch.”

When the house was first rebuilt, Custer had ordered a wall removed between two bedrooms and installed a game room with a card table and billiards.

“Mrs. Custer was a good billiard player,” Dani remarked. “She could usually beat her husband at the game, and he was proud to admit it.”

Custer, known as a vain and arrogant man, was not without his lighter side. Dani said that one of his favorite diversions was sliding down the long bannister. “The new house hadn’t been finished more than a month when he had the decorative knob at the base of the railing removed,” she said.

It did look like fun.

I asked Dani what became of Mrs. Custer after the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

“She was given thirty days to pack up and move out,” Dani said. “She went back to Michigan where she had previously lived. She and George were in debt, and she had to work to pay back both her family and his. She lived to be 91.”

Fort Abraham Lincoln State Park is located seven miles south of Mandan, ND on Hwy. 1806. For more information, call 701-667-6340 or visit www.state.nd.us/ndparks.

Discover Mid-America founder and Senior Contributing Editor Ken Weyand files regular reports on notable Midwest destinations. He can be reached at kweyand@gbronline.com.

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