Red Devils -25 Who Won the Prize - and Epilogue

April 26

Miss Marble reminded us that we must hand in our projects next Monday. A huge groan went up from the class. I have finished mine, and am writing every spare moment I have to make a second copy to send off to Mr. Hudson

May 3rd

Well, all of us except Nelson handed in our work today. And he promised that it would be in by tomorrow. I just managed to get my second copy done on time, and sent the original one off to Mr. Hudson. It was 50 pages long. I can’t wait to hear what he thinks of it. And Miss Marble has promised that she will read our essays and judge the winner by the 18th, which will be our last day of English class. We graduate on the 21st.

But before that we have the excitement of going to the circus. All seven of us decided to go together in a group, and the others are calling around at our house to pick us up at 1.30. The complimentary seats that Mr. Barnum gave us are very good ones as they are fairly high up but central, so we will have a good view. We plan to go to the exhibits after the main big tent show, and take in as many as we can until dusk.

May 12th

I should be waxing lyrical about the circus today, but I can’t even think straight. I had a letter from Mr. Hudson this morning.

 

May 11, 1880

Dear Miss Kellogg,

Thank you very much for your essay, which I have read thoroughly, and I must congratulate you on a splendid piece of work. You obviously put many hours of time and effort into writing it and your style of writing is to be commended.

After discussing the situation with my editorial board, we have decided that we cannot publish this essay in our paper. It was felt that it was too much from the point of the view of the Indians - and would incense our readership, who are for the most part, strong and firm in their trust in the American system. You did not mince your words when you stated that you felt that the government had caused the Indian problems then, and were still contributing to them now. I am afraid that I cannot put that forward under our banner, which would be tantamount to saying that we appreciate that point of view.

However, I would wish to offer you an alternative. I could take some of the information you gleaned about your father’s life, and print that as a separate article. It would be billed as the journalist daughter of the brave journalist who was killed at the Little Bighorn. Your father was very staunch in his views in regard to General Custer and the rightness of the cause and that is the impression our newspaper would want to give.

I also am very wary of the opinion of Mrs. Libby Custer, who is a good friend of my wife. She is in the process of writing a book about her husband, and I am sure she would view your opinions on her husband as the greatest treachery, especially since she says she sent you several letters, which I am sure were full of nothing but praise for the General.

I will not do anything until I hear from you. If you do not wish anything printed, I will return your essay to you. If you wish us to take out the bits about your father, edit them, and put them together to make the article, we will do so, happily, and under your name.

I hope you are not too disappointed, but I’m sure you will find out, if you continue in your journalist career, that there will be many more rejections than acceptances of your work. Publishing is a business after all, and we have to look after our readership.

 I so much enjoyed meeting you and your sister, and am glad you say that you valued your visit to see us in our wonderful city.

Yours faithfully,

Fredrick Hudson,

Editor of New York Herald

I showed the letter to Cora Sue as soon as I had read it, with tears streaming down my cheeks. She put her arm around me, and said she understood how I felt, but she thought that under the circumstances, I should not be upset. What I was getting, was what I had originally wanted - a story about Pa. She reminded me that I had never wanted to write about Custer or the Indians - other than to include them as part of the story about Pa.

I need to think this whole thing through, and will not reply to Mr. Hudson just yet. I think I will wait until after Miss Marble reads my essay. I might, in fact, win the school prize and get my work published in our local paper. I would prefer my whole article even in an inferior paper, to a foreshortened version of it, taken out of context, in a superior one.

We did enjoy the circus. Thank goodness the letter didn’t come on Saturday morning, or I wouldn’t have been able to go.

18^th May

We were handed back our essays today, and Miss Marble was very pleased to announce the winner - Nelson Nickerson. Why am I not surprised? His father paid for him to get his extra special Lincoln research done - and he probably bribed Miss Marble to choose his story. I know I am bitter. I know that I am a better writer than he is. I know that I put more effort into my project than he did - he probably hired a ghost writer too.

Then after school, as we were filing out, Miss Marble said, “Oh, Mattie, can I have a word with you, please.” And when Cora Sue hung behind to wait, she added, “in private, please.”

So Cora Sue said she would wait for me outside. Everyone was rushing around Nelson, congratulating him, and wanting to know when his essay would be in the local paper.

 “Sit down, please Mattie.”

I sat.

“You have been very sullen and unresponsive these last few weeks in class. Is anything the matter?”

“No,” I said shortly.

“Are you upset that you didn’t win the prize?”

“Yes, in a way I am,” I said, “but I suppose I should have expected it.”

“Are you implying that you think I judged it unfairly?”

“No, not exactly, but I am a better writer than he is. In fact, I am the best writer in this class, and I know it, and I think you know it too.”

“You are indeed a gifted writer, and I have admired your work over the years. But Mattie, I could not believe it when I read your essay. Your father would be so ashamed of you! Those things you wrote about the desecration of the bodies after the massacre. I could hardly bear to read it. And you implied that General Custer was unfaithful to his much beloved wife with an Indian Squaw. Really! How could you even have thought that I would have chosen your work knowing that the winning project was to be published. I really wonder if you understand how very disloyal to the American way of life your essay reads. I am doing you a favor by not choosing it, and I suggest you throw it away as soon as I return it.”

By this time I was crying freely, and couldn’t think of anything to say to rebutt her unkindness.

She softened and tried to put her arm around me but I shrugged her off, and grabbing my essay, I marched out of the room.

“Martha. You are being very rude. Martha, do you hear me?”

Oh, I heard her all right. But I kept on going. At least she had given me a B on my project, so I wouldn’t be failing the year and not be able to graduate. I suppose I should be grateful for that.

Cora Sue realised as soon as she saw me that my interview had not gone well. She didn’t say anything but just hugged me while I cried as if I couldn’t stop.

“I got a B on my essay,” she added when I finally calmed down.

 “So did I,” I said.

“Goodness, the way you were carrying on, I thought she'd failed you!”

“She said a lot of things about how Pa would be ashamed of me for the things I said. It would have been easier to have taken a bad grade than have her say that.”

“Pa was a journalist, and he would have been proud of the way you wrote your story, even if he might not have agreed with all the things you said. People who write against the accepted point of view are never going to be popular writers. People like to read things that make them feel good, and things that don’t make them think too deeply or question their accepted point of view. Mrs. Custer’s stories are sweet and soft and gentle and loving. Her work will be well received. But your story is the one that, in years to come, if people read it, they might well then be able to accept that yours was the truth, and hers the dream.”

She stopped then, and remembering that I still had not replied to Mr Hudson, she asked, “Will you let Mr. Hudson publish the bits of your story about Pa?”

 “No,” I said. “I will write and say thank you but no thanks. He would edit it so that it would no longer seem like my work. One day, perhaps, I will write a story, or maybe even a whole book about Pa. But the story I sent to Mr. Hudson was not for that purpose, and therefore, I will ask him to return it and will not have him publish it.”

“But who knows. If he did publish it, you might become famous yourself, and maybe even get a job out of it?”

“Well, we will never know, will we? I have made up my mind. And all that work I did was not in vain. I learned ever so much from my research. And I value the visit to New York and the articles we read. I enjoyed corresponding with Libbie Custer. And I suppose, in a way, it has brought me closer to Pa. I hardly knew him at all. And because of this project, I feel that I do know him, and wish with all my heart that I could meet him again, and discuss with him what this whole thing was about.”

“Do you know what I would like to do, Mattie?”

“No, what.”

“I would like to take some of our money from Mr. Bennett and go on a sort of pilgrimage to see all those places Pa worked in and talked about. I want to see Bismarck, and Fort Abraham Lincoln, and especially the Bad Lands. He did so love those Bad Lands.”

“Yes,” I agreed, “and we could go on the same route as he went, but on the train now, and when we get to the right part of Montana, we could go and see where he died, and see that pretty view he talked of in his last report - the one he wanted so much to do a sketch of. We could do a sketch of it for him.”

“Let’s stop by Craves ice cream parlour on the way home.”

“It’s not on the way home.”

“Well, it isn’t far out of the way.”

“Okay, then. I’ll have a tutti fruit, like the Hudsons did in New York.”

“I am going to be faithful to Maple Nut. I don’t think you can get anything better.”

 

EPILOGUE

 

Mattie Grace Kellogg

Mattie became a professional musician and by 1885 her name began appearing in the Bridgeport City Directory as an artist (pictured above) . In 1892 she is listed as a music teacher. On December 28, 1892, Mattie, aged 29, married Dr. Franklin S. Temple, aged 25, from New York. He had recently graduated from Albany Medical College of Union University, Albany, New York. September 12, 1893, their son was born in Boston, and called Franklin Lyman Temple.

On the 1910 census, Franklin S. Temple, and Mattie Y. (should be G.) and Frank L., (aged 16) are listed as living in Lowell Ward 9, Middlesex, Massachusetts. His widowed mother, Katharine A, Temple, aged 64, is living with them.

On June 1, 1917, Mattie died at the age of 52 of nephritis in Lowell, Massachusettes. She was buried next to her grandmther in Bridgeport in unmarked graves. Nearby are large monuments over the graves of showman P.T. Barnum and Tom Thumb.

Cora Sue Kellogg

Cora Sue was not listed individually in the Bridgeport City Directory, so after 1885, she may have moved to live with Kellogg relatives in Denver. She worked as a dental assistant in Denver from 1893 to 1900. She, aged 37, married Edward Allison Elray, aged 52, a mining engineer from Cincinnati, Ohio. He had been married previously and had a daughter. Cora apparently lived in Salt Lake City, Utah, from 1903 . She lived at the Plandome Hotel in Salt Lake City,  inherited her husband’s silver mine for the last 20 years of her life and died on December 6, 1938

John Dunn and his wife Christina, were the people in Bismarck who were given Mark Kellogg's possessions which they later turned over to the North Dakota Historical Society in 1918, included a black leather satchel, continuing a blue woolen shirt, wool socks, cotton underwear, mosquito netting to drape his head and face, reading glasses, pencil, combs, tobacco and flint, and his journal. Along the way he collected some rocks that appealed to his interest in geography. Their daughter  Fannie Dunn gave his journal to the Bismarck Tribune, and later the Tribune donated it to the North Dakota State Historical Society.

P.T. Barnum died on April 7, 1891, at home in Bridgeport. He kept working with the circus most of those in between years, and it combined with nearly all the other circus’ in existence. He arranged for the paper to print his obituary before he died, so he could read it.

James Gordon Bennett - He married at the age of 73 to the Baroness de Reuter, daughter of Paul Reuter, founder of Reuters news agency. He died on May 14, 1918 in Beaulieu-sur-Mer, Alpes-Maritimes, France

Mrs. Elizabeth Bacon Custer - died on April 4, 1933 at the age of 99, having successfully published three books about her life with General Custer.