Dakota Diary - 1

May 25th, 1883

“Our education has finished, and now our lives can begin,” I thought as my older sister Cora Sue and I marched with the rest of our graduating class to receive our teaching certificates. “Not that I didn’t enjoy my education, but I think it is time that we flew the coop and started to see the world.”

I have decided to start writing a diary - which will cover my adventures this summer. I will go into that more in a moment. But I think it is always best to preface any bit of writing with the background that precedes it. So first I am going to tell my diary a bit about our history.

My name is Martha Grace Kellogg, but I have always been called Mattie. My only sister, Cora Sue, and I live with our aunt and uncle, William and Lillie Disbrow and grandmother, Hannah Robinson, in Bridgeport, Connecticut. All of the family, except Uncle William were born and raised in La Crosse, Wisconsin. We moved to Bridgeport, William’s home town, in 1877, six years ago, and Cora Sue and I finished high school and then went on to Bridgeport Normal School. I intend to be a music teacher, to supplement the money I hope to earn from my piano concerts. Cora Sue isn’t too sure what she wants to do, but she does have a teaching appointment for next fall, like I do. She will
teach English at our old high school. Teaching has never appealed to her, but she knows she doesn’t want to be stuck at home, despite home being a very happy and loving place.

We are orphans. Mother died when we were young, only six and four, and our Pa left us with our grandmother and aunt, (Lillie wasn’t married then) and went out across the mid-west to various jobs - none of which was very successful. He ended up in Bismarck, Dakota Territory, writing for the Bismarck Daily Tribune, and as a result of the ill-fated trip of the Seventh Cavalry to the Battle of the Little Bighorn in July, 1876, he became quite famous - the journalist who was killed along with General Custer and his 110 troops in a complete massacre by the Indians.

We know quite a bit about what happened to our Pa partly because I researched the war and the reasons for it, and wrote an extensive essay on it when I was in my last term of high school. My teacher was less impressed than I had hoped, but in my disappointment, Cora Sue and I had
vowed that when we could, we would go to visit the places our Pa had lived, and see if we cannot find out a bit more about his life. And that time is now. We know that we were fobbed off when we
inquired of some Bismarckers about his life and his remaining possessions. There was something that the people of Bismarck intended to keep hidden, and we want to do our best to find out what it is. So that is the story that this diary is going to tell.

Aunt Lillie and Grandmother were not all that pleased about us going out on a several thousand mile trip on our own. But then, we are provided with our own funding. After our Pa was killed, the man whose newspaper Mark Kellogg (that was our father’s name) was writing for, felt sorry for us two orphaned girls, and paid us $50 a month each for our education. And although that education process is now done, he has also promised each of us a handsome dowry when we marry.
I decided that the best way of getting to find out more about our Pa, would be if we could have some sort of official introduction to the newspaper world in Bismarck. So I wrote a few weeks ago to Mr.
Bennett, still running his newspaper, the New York Herald, from his yacht on the Seine off Paris, and asking him for his advice. After several weeks, I had this reply.

Lysistrata on the Seine

Paris

Dear Mattie and Cora Sue,

How nice it was to hear from you again. Please let me congratulate you on receiving your teaching certificates. I am only pleased that I was able to help you to achieve your goals and become the accomplished and useful women that your father would have wished you to be.

As far as your trip to Dakota Territory is involved, I have enclosed a letter to Colonel Lounsberry, who you know is the editor of the Bismarck Daily Tribune, with an introduction and also telling him
that I am authorizing you to do some researching jobs on my behalf. I am hoping you will be willing to do that. I know I can get stories from his paper about what goes on in that part of the world, but I
think a fresh approach from someone young as you are, would make a very welcome change to our readership. So I have enclosed an extra $50 each which should be sufficient to pay your train ticket costs, and also put you up at a hotel for a week or so, and provide you with food. I expect you will be getting some hospitality from the good people of Bismarck, but you don’t want to be dependent on them - not if, as you say, you suspect there is hidden story there that you want to winkle out.

As far as what stories you bring back to me, I will leave that to you. I will, of course, reimburse you at the usual stringer rate for any stories that we end up publishing. I know that the railway bridge
over the Missouri is soon to be completed - and that there is a huge herd of buffalo somewhere in that region - and all sorts of unsettled business with the Indians. And we now know that Bismarck will be the future capitol of Dakota Territory. That surely must be worth a story or two. I don’t know if you knew it, but Sitting Bull is now out of jail and living at Fort Yates, and there is a rumor that he intends to appear with Buffalo Bill Cody in his Wild West Show. It just might be that you could find
out more about that if you see the right people to question. I suggest you contact our old friend Phineus Barnum to see what he knows about Buffalo Bill’s plans. I would love to have your view on
the show, but be warned, it might make uncomfortable viewing, in regard to the way your father died.

Anyway, I wish you luck on your trip, and hope to hear from you on your  return.

Your friend,

Gordon Bennett

And as promised, there was a check for $100 made out to Martha and Cora Sue Kellogg, and a letter of introduction, not specifically to Colonel Lounsberry, but “To Whom it May Concern”, so that we could use it for more than just the one contact. He didn’t say much else in it other than Mr Bennett, editor of the New York Herald, knew these girls, the daughters of Mark Kellogg, slain at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, and he thought they had journalistic abilities and hoped the local papers would help them in their inquiries.

We had saved money from our education fund, so we had already decided to take $100 each with us, but this extra money from Mr. Bennett meant that the trip could be a little more luxurious than we had imagined.

Grandma and Aunt Lillie stipulated that they wanted us girls to include a visit to La Crosse to look up the relatives on both sides of the family - as neither of them had been back for six years and although they wrote occasionally, it would be pleasing to have first hand accounts about how the family were all doing. We wrote to Uncle John informing him that we would be coming in the summer sometime, but leaving the date uncertain, so we wouldn’t be tied to a particular schedule.

Cora Sue was the one who had written about Phineus T. Barnum, the circus magnate, in her school essay, so she was keen to visit him to find out more about the dates for the Wild West show. We were both invited for morning coffee at his house, Waldanese, on Marine Drive in Bridgeport. His show, which was now joined with Mr. Bailey’s circus, had hit new highs in the ratings, and their plan for the year involved their newly acquired Africa elephant, Jumbo.

But as far as the Wild West show went, Phineus had bad news for us.

“I’m afraid that you have already missed his first performance, in Omaha,” he said. “It was on May 19th, and although Bill intends doing another one there before he moves on, he won’t be going in the direction you are going. I think he plans to go to Springfield, Illinois for the 1st of June. But in order to see him there, you would need to take a train south from Chicago. I don’t know whether you are willing to put in the extra time or expense.”

“Well, we will certainly consider it, and see how the rest of our schedule works out. We want to see as much of the United States as we can fit in on this trip, and Mr. Bennett has asked us to send him articles and if we get paid for those, we can afford to take a few side trips,” said Cora Sue.

“Our poor Tom Thumb is not at all well,” added Phineus. “He and Lavinia were staying in Milwaukee in January when a fire broke out. More than 71 people died, but they were saved by their manager,
Sylvester Bleeker. But since then Tom has not been quite the same in terms of zest for life.”

We left Mr. Barnum, after assuring him we would give his best wishes to Buffalo Bill, if we should see him, and that he should give ours to Tom Thumb and Lavinia.

The train tickets bought, we packed with light weight clothes for the trip which we knew would have very hot days, and possibly many biting insects. We each carried a bulging portmanteau, and included photographs of Lillie’s new baby, Lillian, and their two year old son, Charles, to show the relations in La Crosse. But we kept our packing to a minimum of fancy clothes - just one outfit each for Sunday special and another for a fancy party, should we be invited to one.

And today, on Saturday, May 26, 1883, we are at the Bridgeport train station, and have kissed our aunt and grandmother goodbye, and started our epic journey, which will lead, we hope to some closure about our father’s untimely death, and give us more insight into the sort of man he was.