Elizabeth Bacon Custer

Carlos & Cactus Cathy,

Muchas Gracias for the fine photo of Libbie Custer. I had not seen this one before.

I always knew that George Armstrong Custer married a Bacon, and probably for that reason I became very interested in Custer.

But that all changed when I found out that our Bacon name was originally Bachan. My not so great grandfather changed it when he entered the United States from Saint Hyacinthe, Canada, around 1877. Bacon in French sounds like Bachan. Did he change it on purpose? Did he change it in honor of him coming to America? Or was he hiding out?  I don't know.

I eventually traced the family back to Saint Cloud, just outside of Paris, to the year 1644. Nicholas Bachan served in the French army and sailed down the Saint Lawrence to Canada. He married in Canada at age twenty nine. His wife was fourteen. Nicholas had to wait six months until his wife turned fourteen. They had children. Now there are around three thousand of us.

Libbie Custer lived to be ninety one years old. She supported herself with speaking engagements and she wrote three popular books. Boots & Saddles, Following the Gideon and Tenting on the Plains. She also had an inheritance and her husband's pension. She never heard of Edward Curtis's collection of Indian stories from Little Big Horn. Teddy Roosevelt didn't want them published either. They are available now. When Nathaniel Philbrick wrote The Last Stand he agreed with most of what Curtis had found out directly from the Sioux who fought that day.

By the age of thirteen Libbie had already lost three siblings and her mother. Judge Bacon probably spoiled Libbie from there on out. They came from money. The Custers did not. Judge Bacon did not want them to marry. Just before Gettysburg Custer was promoted to Brigadier General. He shined during a calvary charge at Gettysburg. The judge gave in.

She never visited Little Big Horn Valley in the Montana Territory. She did, interestingly enough, see Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show at Madison Square Garden, which had a Little Big Horn reenactment in it with actual Indians who had fought at Greasy Grass. She remarked how handsome Gaul was. ycmts  up  Why read fiction?

She lived the next fifty nine years alone in Florida and New York City. She passed away in New York City in 1933. She is buried next to George at West Point, New York. We saw the graves and almost everything I said here is true.

Robert Francois Bachan