Famous Last Words: Captain William Fetterman

William Fetterman, Capt., U.S. Army

(For an updated, more detailed version of this post, visit Sweethearts of the West, where I blog on the 12th of each month.)

“Give me eighty men and I'll ride through the whole Sioux Nation.”

So said Captain William Fetterman as he assumed command of a U.S. Army detail tasked with escorting a wood-cutting expedition through the northern Wyoming Territory in 1866. A fellow officer had declined the command after mounting, and failing to sustain, a similar effort two days earlier.

On the morning of Dec. 21, within minutes of their departure from Fort Phil Kearney, Fetterman, 79 infantry and cavalry troops, and two civilian scouts encountered a small band of Oglala led by Crazy Horse. Despite orders not to engage "hostiles," the detail gave chase … right into an ambush. A force of about 2,300 Lakota and Northern Cheyenne led by Red Cloud killed the entire detachment, then scalped, beheaded, dismembered, disemboweled, and/or castrated the dead soldiers.

Native casualties: 63.

Whether Fetterman deliberately disobeyed his commanding officer’s order or the commander massaged the truth in his official report remains the subject of debate.

Among the Sioux and Cheyenne, the event is known as the Battle of the Hundred Slain. Whites know it better as the Fetterman Massacre.

Ten years later, Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer would make a similar mistake at Little Big Horn in Montana.

Lone Stars: Llano, Texas

The Llano County courthouse, built in 1893 and still in use.

Llano (pronounced LAN-oh) is located in the Texas Hill Country about an hour north of Austin, very near the geographic center of Texas. Founded in response to a legislative act creating Llano County in February 1856, the town was established June 14 of the same year. A public vote under a live oak tree on the south side of the Llano River chose the town's location: a tract of 250 acres donated by a local rancher.

The area boomed from 1886-1893 after iron ore deposits were discovered in nearby Iron Mountain. With high hopes for the future, the Llano Improvement and Furnace Company embarked upon a mission to build an iron furnace and foundry. Land speculators from Dallas and northern states poured into the area with investment money, wanting to be part of "the Pittsburgh of the West." The population soared to 7,000 in 1890, encouraging the Austin and Northwestern Railroad to extend its line to a terminal on the north side of what promised to be a thriving metropolis. Increased access to transportation attracted granite quarying and finishing companies intent on profiting from the abundance of granite in the surrounding hills.

Then the bubble burst: The iron ore deposits proved insufficient for commercial exploitation, and the Llano Improvement and Furnace Company abandoned its project. The company's withdrawal threw the town's big plans into disarray. Although charters had been sold to construct a dam, an electric power plant, a streetcar system, and electric streetlights, only a small dam and the streetlights were completed. Speculators and local businesses lost fortunes as a result.

A wagon hauls a slab of granite through the streets
of Llano in this undated postcard photo.

A series of fires in the early 1890s, probably set to collect insurance money, destroyed much of the town; consequently, insurance companies refused to provide any coverage in the area for a number of years.

The granite processors remained. Today, Llano's primary industries are farming, ranching, and granite quarying and finishing. The town's population is roughly 3,000 people except during November and December, when the undisputed "Deer Capital of Texas" overflows with hunters.

Famous Last Words: John Adams and Thomas Jefferson

As the fiftieth anniversary of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence dawned on July 4, 1826, only three of fifty-six signatories of the noble document still lived: John Adams, Thomas Jefferson (the third President of the U.S.), and Charles Carroll of Carrollton. By the end of the day, only Carroll remained.

Thomas Jefferson
(portrait by Rembrandt Peale, 1800)

Jefferson, whose health had been deteriorating since July the previous year, was confined to his bed at Monticello in June 1826, felled by a combination of kidney failure and penumonia. In the evening on July 3, he spoke his last words: "Is it the fourth yet?" His grandson and his doctor assured him the fourth was only hours away. Seventeen hours later, at 1 p.m. July 4, 1826, Jefferson passed away at the age of 83.

John Adams
(portrait by Asher B. Durand, c. 1800)

Adams, who maintained a close friendship with Jefferson until the vicious politics of the 1800 presidential election drove a wedge between them, had reconciled with Jefferson in 1812. The two men corresponded frequently and were well aware of one another's ill health. On July 4, 1826, at his home in Braintree, Massachusetts, Adams gave a toast to the country he helped found: "Independence forever." Later that evening, after suffering a heart attack and unaware his friend had died several hours earlier, 91-year-old Adams breathed his last words: "Thomas Jefferson survives."

The nearly concurrent deaths of two political giants on such a momentous day seemed preordained and fitting. Carroll survived for another six years, closing the book on an extraordinary chapter in history with his death on Nov. 14, 1832.

Lone Stars: Chappell Hill, Texas

Old Town Chappell Hill today
(photo by S. Braswell of Spring, Texas)

Located roughly halfway between Austin and Houston, Chappell Hill was founded in 1847 on 100 acres owned by a woman. (Texas granted women extraordinary rights for the time.) Mary Haller and her husband Jacob built a stagecoach inn on the site -- at the junction of two major stagecoach lines -- and soon other folks from the Deep South migrated to the area and planted cotton, for which the climate and soil were perfectly suited.

By 1856, the population had risen to 3,000 people and the town included a sawmill, five churches, and a Masonic Lodge, in addition to two of the first colleges in the state -- one for men and another for women. A railroad line followed soon after.

During the War of Northern Aggression (otherwise known as the American Civil War), the men of Chappell Hill served in both Hood's Texas Brigade (infantry) and Terry's Texas Rangers (cavalry). Two years after the war ended, in 1867, many of the Chappell Hill men who survived the war perished in a yellow fever epidemic that decimated the town and the rest of the area around the Brazos River.

Longhorn relaxing in the bluebonnets near Chappell Hill

Chappell Hill never recovered, plunging from one of the largest, most vibrant communities in the state to little more than a memory.

Today, Chappell Hill is one of the best historically preserved towns in Texas. Main Street is listed as a National Register Historic District by the National Register of Historic Places; restored homes, churches, businesses and the Stagecoach Inn offer tours to tourists. If you're ever in the area, it's worth a visit.

Famous Last Words: Black Jack Ketchum

Black Jack Ketchum

(An updated and expanded version of this post may be read at Sweethearts of the West, where I blog on the 12th of each month.)

"Can't you hurry this up a bit? I hear they eat dinner in Hades at twelve sharp, and I don't aim to be late."

Whether or not he aimed to be late, Thomas Edward "Black Jack" Ketchum missed the dinner bell by more than an hour on April 26, 1901. In fact, his hanging was delayed by more than four hours while authorities tried to ensure his execution was both humane and permanent.

Black Jack, a native of San Saba County, Texas, also was known as "the handsome train robber." Between 1892 and 1899, he and his older brother Sam, along with a gang of other young men -- all of whom were described as well-mannered and well-dressed, riding good horses and flashing plenty of money -- "liberated" payrolls and other large sums of cash from trains passing through the Four Corners area of the Southwest. Their largest take, in September 1897, totalled about $60,000 in gold and silver.

Sam died in jail in July 1899 as a result of wounds he received during a shootout with a posse near Santa Fe, New Mexico. One month later, Black Jack was shot by the conductor of a train he was robbing alone. He didn't resist when either a posse or a railroad crew (there's a dispute) found him the next morning.

After he was sentenced to hang, the date of the execution was delayed several times by arguments about where final justice should take place, since several towns wanted the honor. Finally, reacting to a rumor that the old gang planned to break Black Jack out of jail, the hanging became the center of a carnival in Clayton, New Mexico. Despite an extended debate about the length and strength of the rope necessary for the deed, something went wrong. Shortly after 1 p.m., Ketchum was decapitated as his body plunged through the scaffold's trapdoor. He was 37 years old.

Black Jack Ketchum bears the dubious distinction of being the only man sentenced to die in New Mexico for "felonious assault upon a railway train." Apparently his botched execution set the residents of Union County back a mite, because Black Jack also was the only man ever hanged in Union County. Until Eva Dugan suffered the same fate at the Pinal County, Arizona, prison in 1930, Black Jack Ketchum was the only person in the U.S. who literally lost his head to a hangman's noose ordered by a court.

Call Me Bwana

“Don’t even think about it!”

Even before the words were out of my mouth, ears pasted themselves to neck and Dog was under the sofa, all staccato fur and scurrying claws. To this day, I haven’t figured out how he dragged that gnu under there with him, but I can tell you gnus shouldn’t be under sofas. They dislike confining, dark spaces almost as much as they dislike being wrestled to the ground by their throats. Not that Dog cared. He had captured the gnu fair and square, and he was determined to keep it.

“All right. I bow before the prowess of the great hunter,” I admitted as I flopped on the floor, prepared to haul out Dog, the gnu and whatever else was under the furniture, by force if necessary. “The gnu is yours. Now please bring it out from under the couch.”

Two glittering eyes peered from the dark slit between the sofa and the floor. “Wildebeest,” he said.

“Wildebeest?”

“It’s a wildebeest,” he answered. “I’m surprised you didn’t recognize it.”

“Whatever. Just bring it out from under the couch.”

Dog inched his way out of the wilderness den without any sort of ungulate mammal in tow and vigorously shook himself .

Drama on the Range

In the immortal words of Willie Nelson, "my heroes have always been cowboys." As of Thanksgiving Day 2011, though, I've bumped another group of everyday heroes to the top of the list, at least temporarily: firefighters. There's nothing quite like having a group of hunky firemen save you from your own stupidity to engender a modest amount of hero worship. Who knew hunky firemen even existed in the small Texas town where I live?

What did y'all "see" when you read "hunky firemen?" I'd tell you what I "saw" at the time, but honestly, it was just bizarre under the circumstances and probably shouldn't be allowed to escape into the wild if I wish to preserve any shreds of decorum still clinging to my reputation. This is what romance writing does to an ordinarily restrained descendant of untold generations of Baptist ministers.

Here's the condensed version of the sordid tale:

The Thanksgiving cooking marathon always seems to be hectic around here. Oddly, this year everything proceeded without a hitch...until suddenly it didn't. In an attempt to be helpful (which should have set off my calamity radar right there), my other half offered to put the dressed bird into the oven while I took a much-needed shower. Since I had laid out the bagged turkey and the roasting pan and had pre-heated the oven, I thought "How much trouble can he get into? We've done this every year for quite some time now. He knows how it's done." So I took myself off to clean up, leaving Other Half and pending disaster alone in the kitchen to become better acquainted.

An hour and a half or so later, while I was busily engaged in slicing my thu...er, putting together a Waldorf salad, I heard a faint sizzle coming from the oven. Odd. Bagged turkeys don't sizzle. Pressing a paper towel to my thumb so I didn't drip blood all the way across the kitchen floor, I opened the oven door to check on the turkey.

That's when the smoke alarm went off.

Because the turkey would have been a snug fit in the roasting pan—which we knew going in—Other Half decided to use a jelly roll pan (essentially a cookie sheet with sides) instead. The turkey's wings hung over both sides of the pan, and somehow the bag had sprung a leak. (Predictably, I might add.) I didn't realize the problem until the sizzling started because, uncharacteristically, Other Half had put away the roasting pan.

I snatched the cookie-sheet-ensconced turkey (as much as it is possible to "snatch" something that weighs more than 22 pounds) from the gas oven just as flames erupted—thankfully, only inside the oven. In the meantime, Other Half called the fire department, just in case.

To make a long story slightly less long, I dumped an entire bag of flour into the oven and smothered the flames (probably killing the oven, but I'll deal with that later). Whoever Other Half spoke with at 911 said to get out of the house—which, of course, I was having none of because although the fire was out, my house was filled with smoke. So I ran around opening every window I could get open while Dog and Underdog, locked in their condos much earlier to keep their tiny, troublemaking selves out from underfoot, howled and Other Half attempted to disarm the raucous smoke detectors (which are everywhere in our house). By the time every fire department person on duty (two engines and an ambulance) showed up, I was sitting in a chair on the porch holding both dogs in my lap. Underdog threatened to eat the strange creatures in bulky yellow suits, to which Dog responded by repeatedly biting Underdog in order to discourage a fruitless display of aggression toward odd-looking people who, for all Dog knew, had come to deliver dog treats.

The gaggle of firemen stripped off their yellow suits right there in my house (hence the thoroughly inappropriate mental images I mentioned earlier) and proceeded to ensure no fires had broken out spontaneously anywhere else. (Evidently attics are notorious hotspots for secondary fires. Again: Who knew?) They also planted big fans to blow any lingering smoke out of the house. All in all, they were very friendly guys, although a couple of them grumbled good-naturedly about having to leave the station at the exact moment some football team was about to make a touchdown. Couldn't I have timed the fire a little better? Then they hung around to chat and write up a report in case I need it for insurance. (I don't intend to file a claim. At worst, I may have to buy a new oven—which, unless I go hog wild and buy the oven I really want, will cost well below the insurance deductible.) When they left, they took a pecan pie with them, with my most heartfelt gratitude.

Other Half and the male component of the couple with whom we were to share Thanksgiving dinner ferried the half-cooked turkey, the dressing and the candied sweet potatoes over to Male Component's house a block away to finish cooking everything, while I made gravy and cooked green beans on top of the stove. (The top continues to function just fine.) Then the guests brought the food back to our house, and things proceeded as though nothing out of the ordinary had taken place. The house suffered no damage outside the oven, and even the smoke smell had disappeared by the time everyone arrived.

Dog and Underdog each gained about five pounds that day, because everyone kept slipping them bites of turkey in order to ease them over their (non-existent) trauma. Despite a blanket prohibition on feeding table food to tiny terrorists, each person evidently thought he or she was the only one unable to resist exceptionally pathetic, obviously abused and patently starving canines.

The meal was delicious, if I do say so myself. And post-almost-catastrophe I must admit: Hunky firemen make an exceptional appetizer.