Dakota Diary 12 - Church and Linda Slaughter

Sunday, June 17th, 1883

Sunday was, of course, church day for us, being good Catholics. We ascertained from George at the desk, that masses would be at 8 and 10. We decided that we would go at 8, as we are early risers, and we had our trip to the Slaughters to look forward to later in the afternoon.

The church, which was also the school, didn’t look anything like a conventional church back home. It had a wooden cross nailed on the door - but it was just a rough and ready room - with straight chairs to sit on - no kneelers. The altar was a big table put at the far end of the room, with a cross above it. But it served its purpose.

The church was full. The priest, who we found out was called Father Chrysostom John Foffa, spoke with a strong German accent. He gave a very long and rather boring sermon, but the rest of the service, in Latin, was exactly like it would've been at home. We understood that he had been the parish priest here in 80 and 81 and now he had gone on to another parish, but was back on vacation for awhile.

After church, we waited to speak to the priest. And just before he came out, a bunch of nuns, who had been sitting at the front, came over to speak to us.

“Hello. You girls must be new in town. Or are you visiting? I am Sister Ignatius. I am the principal of the school here.”

We said hello and shook hands with each of the sisters. 

“This is Sister Evangelist, from Ireland, she is our housekeeper. And Sister Clemestine and Adelia help me as teachers for the school - we have nearly 150 children at school here, you know, which keeps the three of us very busy indeed. Sister Ida is our music teacher. She cannot wait until we can have a real church so she can play the organ and have some proper music. And Sister Maren is our seamstress.”

“We are Mattie and Cora Sue Kellogg,” I said, “and we are visiting here. We came to see where our Pa used to live. He was the journalist who was killed with General Custer at the Battle of the Little
Bighorn.”

“Oh, I have heard of that, but we weren’t here then. We have only been
in Bismarck for the last two years.”

“Where do you come from?”

“Our Benedictine mother house is in St. Cloud, Minnesota but Sister Ida and I come from Pennsylvania. Sister Marenis from Wisconsin.”

Oh,we come from La Cross Wisconsin, originally, although we live inBridgeport, Connecticut, now. Where abouts in Wisconsin are youfrom?”

“Near Milwaukee.”

“Oh, we don’t really know anybody from around there.”

“And I don’t know anybody from La Crosse,” she laughed.

“Iwould like to know more about your music, Sister Ida. I am a pianist, and am going to be teaching music at the high school in Bridgeport when we get home. It will be my first job, so I am rather nervous. I have taught piano lessons privately, but never to a group of students.”

“Ohyou must come and visit me and we can talk all about our favoritepieces of music. But not today. we don’t have any visitors onSunday. We give ourselves over completely to prayer. But come
tomorrow, if you wish.”

“That will be fine. Where do you live?”

“Rightnext door here to the church - in that little house. Could you come about 3 in the afternoon?”

“Yes, that would be fine. I look forward to it.”

About this time, the priest had finished locking up the church and came out, and we introduced ourselves and told him we hoped to be coming to his church for the next few weeks or so. He seemed rather dour.

“'Notlooking forward to more of your sermons,’ I nearly said to him,” offered Cora Sue as we walked back towards our hotel.

“But I’m sure there will be an interesting story behind him too. Maybe Sister Ida will tell us more about him.” 

Beforewe left for lunch with the Slaughters, we decided we would write a letter home and a sympathy letter to Lavinia, and then, tomorrow morning, we could mail them at the post office, which is just down the road from where we're staying.

We walked up the road, as directed, about two blocks and easily found Mrs. Slaughter’s house.

“Hi,” she said as she came to the door to greet us. “Come on in. I’m Linda Slaughter, (pictured above) and you must be Mattie and Cora Sue. Which is which?”

So we introduced ourselves and said how kind it was of her to invite us to lunch.

“I’m afraid that Frank, that’s my husband, has had to go out on a call. New baby coming, so he won’t be back for awhile, but you can meet him another day. And as far as you thanking me for inviting you, well, I consider the pleasure all mine,” she said. “Come on into the kitchen and we can sit right up. The kids are all there now getting things ready. We were sure hoping you would come.”

“These are my daughters, Rosalind, who is 12, Jessamine who is 9 and Linda who is 7.”

We said “Hi,” to them, and sat down at the table where indicated.

“So, what have you girls been doing in town since you arrived, besides stirring up excitement?”

“Well,we visited with the two people who we knew that knew our Pa - and Colonel Lounsberry has invited us to dinner next Saturday for us to meet some others.”

“Yes, his wife has invited us too, but I didn’t want to wait that long to meet you. And I wanted to talk to you on my own, not with lots of other people around.”

“Then we went to meet Mr. Dunn, the chemist, and went to the temporary Capitol building, and then to church this morning.”

“Quite a lot to have done in a short time, and what other things do you have planned?”

“We want to spend some time finding out more about the new bridge. We might be writing an article about it for our friend and patron, Mr. Gordon Bennett of the New York Herald.”

“Oh, my husband can give you all the run down on that that you could possibly want to know. He is interested in those sorts of things. You’ll meet him at the party on Saturday, but why don’t we plan
that you come over here for lunch next Sunday too, when he'll be home all day, and you can find out all about it - and maybe we can take you down to get a good view of the place, and so you can see what it's all about first hand.”

“That would be wonderful, if you wouldn’t mind doing that.”

We continued eating all the time this conversation was going on. We had fried chicken and baking powder biscuits with delicious gravy, and a fresh salad.

“Let’s think of some more things you might do while you're here. How long do  you have?”

“We are both going to be teachers in the fall. I will teach music and Cora Sue will teach English at the local school in Bridgeport. So we should be back by early August, so we have time to get ready. We would really like to see the Badlands if we have time. And we need to visit with relatives in La Crosse on the way home - as we were planning to do on the way coming - but we got diverted.”

“That sounds interesting. Who diverted you?”

“Well, first of all we went to Springfield to see the Wild West show.”

“Wonderful! You must tell us all about it. The girls would love to hear what Buffalo Bill did, wouldn’t you girls? I don’t suppose he will be bringing it up here.”

“Not this year. He plans to take the show back East, but perhaps next year, as he intends it to be a regular event, especially as it has proven to be so successful.”

“Then we were diverted to go on the train to Omaha with a man from Rhode Island we met on the train.”

“Was that safe?”

“Oh, yes, he was most informative and helpful. And he got us our passage on the steamboat. We have spent over a week coming up the Missouri and were lucky enough to have the company of Captain Marsh.”

“Marsh? Is he back here again? I thought he had deserted us for the Mississippi?”

“This was a sort of last sentimental journey I think. There was another pilot for the boat - and he only worked on it to give the other man a break. So he had time to spend with us telling us all sorts of
stories about his adventures over the years - including the time when he brought the injured soldiers back.”

“My goodness, you girls could write a book with all you've found out. And you will keep us going with your stories for months too, I expect. But now you're here, are there other things you want to do, besides meeting your dad’s friends and seeing the Badlands, and writing about the new bridge?”

“Well, we have a few personal puzzles to work through, although it might be harder than we originally thought.”

“What sort of puzzles?”

“When our dad died, nobody sent on any of his things. We were too young to think anything about it, but then a druggist friend of Grandma’s met Mr. Dunn on a train journey somewhere, and our friend told Mr. Dunn where we lived, as Mr. Dunn has said that nobody knew about the whereabouts of any relatives of Mark Kellogg. And our grandmother says she wrote to him, but he says he never got the letter. And he said he wasn't even sure he knew the other druggist.”

“We think he's lying,” put in Cora Sue.

“You shouldn’t say that Cora Sue. We just think there is more to the story, and we want to find out what it's all about if we can.”

“I can tell you for a fact that there were some things that came off the boat that night and were given to Mr. Dunn. I don’t know what they were. Probably spare clothes. But that's all I can tell you about it. Any other mysteries?”

“Colonel Lounsberry said that he didn’t know where Pa's relatives lived either, but we received a telegram from the Bismarck Daily Tribune when Pa died. So they did know. So he's lying too.”

“You shouldn’t keep saying lying, Cora Sue.”

“Well, what do you call it when somebody says something that you know isn’t the truth?”

“Maybe he forgot. Or maybe somebody under him knew but never told him.”

“And you don’t think it odd that he never asked?”

“Of course, it's odd, and I can see why you girls are getting into a frazzle about it. But if, as you say, they're both lying, then you can be pretty sure that there's a strong reason behind it - and they
won’t just come out and admit it. Have you any ideas?”

“Grandma says she thinks that there were some valuable things in the trunk he had when he left home, so maybe they wanted those. It was only some newspapers, but she seemed to think they were really important ones and worth some money.”

“And she also told us that she thinks that Pa might have written more than was published about the campaign and that for some reason these men didn’t want us to have that information.”

“I can tell you for a fact that your Pa was a staunch supporter of Custer and wanted very much to be on that campaign with him. He wasn’t scheduled to go originally - it was supposed to be Colonel
Lounsberry but then his wife got sick (she 'd just had a new baby) - so Mark got asked at the last minute. But he was so thrilled to do it.”

“Yes, but something might have happened on that last day to make him change his mind, and he might have written about it - and they might not want anyone to know what it was.”

“You might be right, and if that was the fact, then I can see why they might be trying to keep his writing from you. But that doesn’t explain why they wouldn’t want you to have the case with his
clothes in.”

“I suppose once you start lying, you just keep on, and it gets deeper and deeper.”

“And another thing, Linda. Our Pa wrote a letter just before he left for the skirmish, and told Grandma that he had a claim in the Black Hills - and also a share in a coal mine in this area, and he seemed to think he would have enough money from that to support us. And we never got any information about that when he died either? I wonder if he had made a will.”

“Highly unlikely, he wasn’t the sort that ever expected to die.”

“Well, he knew that our Ma died young, so he should have thought about it.”

“Yes, but he was healthy - and full of life. And he was convinced that the Indian problem would be quickly dealt with, with Custer and his friends easily coming on top.”

“Did he really hate the Indians as much as he seemed to from some of the things he wrote?”

“No, he didn’t. He felt that as a group they were rather shiftless, and he didn’t like the way they killed people and scalped them - often for what seemed no reason. But he also felt they got a very bad deal from the government. And I know that for a fact, because that was when I was working so closely with him. Let’s go sit in the yard - at least there is a bit of a breeze today - and I will tell you all about that. ”

(to be continued)