Ghost Dances

There is a story in my great-grandmother's history that begs to be told. Her extraordinary pioneer life intersects with some momentous events in the history of the western frontier, particularly in North and South Dakota and Wyoming. She lived at the time of Custer's Last Stand and the massacre at Wounded Knee, and was closely associated with some of the important people involved. 

Ada Clemina Hall was born on July 18, 1856 in Chittenango, NY. Both her father Andrew Adam Hall and her mother Miriam Olivia Wandell Hall were born in the Westchester County in NY. They married in 1850. Andrew Hall's family can be traced back to the original colony of Connecticut. Miriam's family is mostly of Dutch heritage. Her grandfather, Jacob Wandell was a wealthy merchant on the Hudson River during the time of the Revolutionary War. 

Shortly after Ada's birth, Andrew took his family and moved west, to Ontonagon, Michigan. There, he worked in the copper mines. In 1861, a famously charismatic Army recruiter came to Detroit, and induced Andrew to sign up for the military. He served as a surgical assistant in the 1st Michigan Volunteer Infantry and participated in the Peninsular Campaign in Virginia. He did laundry for other soldiers for 10 cents, and sent the money home to his struggling family.  He was with General McClellan during the Seven Days Battle in Richmond, Virginia, during which he contracted dysentery. He spent six months in a hospital on David's Island in New York before returning to his wife and children in 1863; he was a mere skeleton of less than 100 pounds. Ada described what it was like to be so poor. She said their clothing had worn so thin that it was nearly transparent. 

The family moved to Marquette, Michigan, where Andrew worked in the mines. Then they moved to Brainerd, Michigan, where Andrew became a bridge builder. He helped to build the bridge for the Northern Pacific Railroad across the Red River to Fargo, North Dakota, opening up new land on the frontier. He also helped to build one of the first frame houses in Fargo. Most of the residents lived in rough cabins or tents, however, and that is how the Hall family lived during the Grasshopper Plague. Ada describes the scene:

Grasshoppers came that first year, 1871. They darkened the sky which when looked up at, shone like silver with their flashing wings. They ate the sides out of our tents, the linen coat off my father's back while he was mowing... 

by Mrs. H. C. Crofford, "Pioneer Days in North Dakota, " in North Dakota Historical Quarterly, II, 129-137.

Ada taught school in Fargo, and later at Fort Lincoln where the Halls lived for a year in 1876. She became friends with General Custer's wife. Family lore is that Ada let her students out of school to wave to the soldiers as they left for Little Big Horn. I can't help but think that Ada and Elizabeth Custer shared a love of writing and history, as both of them wrote memoirs of their experiences and published papers in defense of Custer. Ada's paper in defense of Custer is housed in a museum in Newcastle, Wyoming. You can read it HERE.

Around 1877, Andrew and his family, with an Army escort, traveled by wagon train to settle in the Black Hills. Travelers were warned not to go ahead or lag behind the procession as it was dangerous Indian territory. One young couple ignored the warnings and went on ahead. The travelers came upon them and found them slaughtered.

The Hall family settled on a ranch near Fort Meade (now Sturgis) in South Dakota, which was established in 1878 to protect illegal white settlements and gold mines on the Sioux Reservation in the northern Black Hills (Wikipedia, Fort Meade, South Dakota). The local men would gather at "Old Man Hall's" house to discuss the recent Indian uprisings. They were particularly concerned about the Ghost Dances which were part of a religious movement among the Native Americans who believed that the spirits of the dead would return and protect them against the white man. The spread of this cult culminated in the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890 (Britannica, Ghost Dance). At one of these gatherings at the Hall ranch, a young gold miner named Horace Calvin Crofford attended and met Ada Hall. They married in 1891. 

Ada's brother Ed married a Native American woman named Mary Amiotte (pictured below) in 1897 and lived with her and their children on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in Sterling, South Dakota - the location of the Wounded Knee massacre. 

Disclaimer: I am not a historian, so forgive me if any historical facts are off. Much of my information comes from Ada's writings and family lore, which have proven to have a few "close but not quite" details. I will add more to this post as I continue my research. 

 

 

 

Ada C. Crofford

My great grandmother, Ada Clemina Hall, was born on July 18, 1856 in Chittenango, New York.

Ada C. Hall > Horace C. Crofford > Virginia M. Crofford > Teresa Zaun Austin

Ada's family (parents, Andrew and Olivia, Ada, and her siblings, Nina and Albert) traveled west and settled in the Dakota Territory sometime before 1876.  Their home was near Bear Butte Creek at the northern edge of the Black Hills (near what is now Sturgis).  Her father was a farmer and her mother kept house, perhaps with her daughter Nina's help.  A young man, Jesse, boarded with them and shared the work of farming.  Albert most certainly worked on the farm as well.  Ada became a teacher.

Ada taught school at Fort Lincoln in North Dakota, and was friends with General Custer's wife, Elizabeth, who was about ten years older than Ada.  Family legend has it that Ada was teaching school at Fort Lincoln on the day that Custer and his men left to fight the Battle of Little Big Horn in May 1876.  Ada later wrote a paper defending General Custer which is now housed in a museum in Newcastle, Wyoming.

"Mrs. Crofford was a school teacher at Ft. Abraham Lincoln and was a friend of General Custer's wife Elizabeth. She came to the Black Hills to teach in 1876." From the obituary of her daughter, Miriam Darrow printed in "Bits and Pieces" Newcastle, Weston, Wyoming, Vol. 4 No. 1, 1968

Ada married Horace C. Crofford in 1891 at age 34. They had three children born in South Dakota - Horace, age 5, Oliver, age 4, and "Abraham" (Abram), age 2.  The census indicates that she had another child that did not survive.  By 1900, they had moved across the line into Wyoming, just south of Newcastle. Daughter Miriam was born in 1902.

Ada holding Miriam, born in 1902.

In 1907, Ada's father Andrew Hall signed over to her the title to farmland in Weston County, in the Newcastle area.  Horace raised stock, and the three boys worked as laborers on the home farm.

Ada was an consummate inventor.  In 1905, she patented a design for an insect trap.  This design has been referenced by other inventors until as recently as 2012.  In 1906, she patented a signal attachment for a life preserver that would make a person in distress visible from a distance.  In 1918, she patented a method for sealing jars of preserves.   In 1923, she patented a mechanism to automatically release the thread tension in a sewing machine.

She was also a writer and historian.  Her story "Pioneer days in North Dakota" was published in the 1923 North Dakota Historical Quarterly.  I wonder if she was inspired by her friendship with "Libbie" Custer who supplemented her widow's pension by writing books about life on the plains.  http://www.kshs.org/kansapedia/elizabeth-bacon-custer/12030

Common Threads

When I began doing research on my family tree, I wondered if I would find any shocking surprises like being cousins with my spouse or something. I actually did find a distant connection, both by surname and geographical location...but there was no accidental inbreeding as I feared!

I love finding unexpected connections. I discovered that direct ancestors of both of my parents certainly knew each other back in 1652. My paternal 9th great grandfather Thomas Judd was one of the seven founders of the Church of Christ in Farmington, Connecticut, and was a pillar in the church until his death in 1688. His children and grandchildren were baptized there. My maternal 8th great grandparents, Samuel Hickok (distant cousin of Wild Bill) and his wife Hannah, were members of the congregation at the same time and their children were also baptized in that church. There were only 84 proprietors of the town of Farmington at that time, so it was highly likely they knew each other well. 

Also in the 1600's, two of my mother's maternal and paternal lines were entangled together in Gravesend, NY. Thomas Applegate, my 8th great grandfather, came to America from Norfolkshire, England with his wife, Elizabeth. It seems that Thomas and wife both had issues with fiery tempers and loose tongues! Elizabeth was "censured to stand with her tongue in a cleft stick for swearing, reviling, and railing." Thomas was sued for slander by my 8th great grandfather Nicholas Stillwell, who was from a completely different branch of my mother's tree.  (Historical and Genealogical Miscellany: Early Settlers of New Jersey and Their Descendants, Vol. III, by John E. Stillwell, M.D.). 

General Custer keeps popping up in our family stories on both of my mother's maternal and paternal lines. My grandfather's mother, Ada Hall, was teaching school in Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, in 1876 when Custer left with his Cavalry for the Little Big Horn. She wrote that she let her students out of class to watch the men leave. Coincidentally, my grandmother's mother, Eva Allen, died in 1911 at Old Fort Supply, a residential hospital that was a former post for Lt. Col. Custer and the 7th U.S. Cavalry in 1868.

These are the stories that keep me addicted to genealogy!

I keep coming across certain common threads in our family history... for example, there are at least two pioneer schoolteachers in our lineage:
1) Ada C Crofford, Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, 1876.
2) Anna Lyons Crofford, Liberty Township, Indiana, 1837.
Each began the first school in her territory.

Custer House at Fort Lincoln

Gen. Custer appears in the unrelated stories of both of my maternal grandparents:
1) Ada Crofford, my grandfather's mother (mentioned above), was friends with Mrs. Custer and was teaching school in Fort Lincoln when Custer left for the Little Big Horn.
2) Eva L. Allen, my grandmother's mother, resided in a mental hospital in Oklahoma that was a former "Camp of Supply" from which Custer left to fight the Cheyenne Indians at the Battle of Washita.

I find this kind of thing fascinating.