The Montana mystery of Warren County... part one

We like to say that Hidden New Jersey is often a scavenger hunt. Sometimes we know the quarry when we set out on our journey, as when we're seeking out a rare bird reported at a certain location. Other times, we find history along the way and end up discovering much more during the follow-up research days or even months later. Sometimes we unearth interesting coincidences, other times mysteries.

This story is a little of both.

It all started on a trip to the cemetery in Belvidere in late summer. Ivan and I were wandering around when I noticed interesting inscriptions on two stones, one a family marker and another for one of the family members, erected nearby.

Given the detailed description, the place and circumstances of Lieutenant Loder's death appeared clear. He'd taken part in the U.S. Army's repeated battles with the Sioux Indians, served gallantly and apparently perished in one of the skirmishes, his remains returned to his birthplace in New Jersey. It also appeared that his family called him Howard, perhaps to differentiate him from another Samuel, maybe his grandfather, buried nearby.

Then I found this grave marker, not far away, noting another individual's birthplace in Montana, NJ.

I was left with two stories to work out. First, how did Lieutenant Loder die, and second, where in heck is Montana in New Jersey? Was this just an odd coincidence, or do the two have anything to do with each other?

Finding cursory information on Loder proved to be reasonably easy. After graduating near the bottom of his class at the U.S. Military Academy in 1877, he was sent west and eventually assigned to Fort Logan in frontier Montana. At the time, clashes with Native Americans were regular occurrences in the area, with opportunities for injury and death. Several sources note the April 1879 conflict with a small group of Lakota Sioux at Careless Creek near Ryegate, Montana. According to government records, Loder, 18 men under his command and two Gros Ventre Indians confronted eight natives who were said to be connected to Sitting Bull. A 90 minute battle ensued, in which all of the Lakota were killed.

None of the accounts of ensuing conflicts in the area make mention of Loder, which seemed rather strange. If he'd performed so heroically at Careless Creek that the local white settlers presented him with a gift, wouldn't he have led other battles? Had he died some way other than through combat? The 1880 U.S. Army Register notes simply that he died at Fort Benton, Montana on June 30, 1879, with no further explanation. Could it have been illness that did him in? It's well known that in many wars, disease killed more soldiers than weapons did. Did frontier outposts suffer the same issues? Could there have been an outbreak of some sort that led to Loder's demise?

Unfortunately the circumstances of his death were tragic in another way. A July 6, 1879 New York Times article reported Loder's suicide as the lead in a story chronicling several people around the country who had died by their own hands. He'd shot himself in the head while in his tent at Fort Benton; the Times noted that "It is asserted that he had been drinking freely of late." It could have been an accident or intentional, we don't know. The details remain a mystery, perhaps buried somewhere in a report deep in old Army records, if not only with Loder himself.

The grateful people of the Smith River Valley in Montana territory didn't have the opportunity to show their full appreciation to the lieutenant before his death, but they made sure his family knew what he'd meant to them. A year later, they presented a ceremonial sword to the Loders, along with a letter eulogizing the young lieutenant. The sword was inscribed, "Presented to Lieut. Samuel Loder, Seventh United States Infantry, by the citizens of Smith River Valley, for especial gallantry in his fight with the Sioux Indians on Careless Creek, Montana Territory April 17, 1879." Hopefully their regard brought some measure of comfort to the Loder family, who clearly wanted their son's achievement to be known for perpetuity.

As for the mystery of Montana, New Jersey? I'm still working on that one... story to come.

Finding Pike's Peak in Trenton

I'm particularly tickled when a site that's expected to present one story ends up revealing another. That's the experience we had on a blustery visit to Trenton. Parking near the capital building to check out the original Masonic lodge, we found a sign that totally tripped me up. It said, in the customary New Jersey Tercentennial Sign haiku* format:

Brig. Gen. Zebulon Pike, explorer, 

born near here, 1779. 

Captured York, Canada, 

1813, but killed in attack. 

Pike’s Peak named for him.

Yet another western explorer born in New Jersey? You got it. In fact, one of his forebears was the founder of Woodbridge. His father, also named Zebulon, served as an officer under Washington in the Revolutionary War and continued his military service in the newly formed United States Army after independence had been won. As a result, the younger Pike spent most of his youth at forts in what was then the American frontier: Ohio and Illinois. He followed his father's footsteps and joined the army at the age of 15, rising to the rank of first lieutenant by the time he was 20.

While his military responsibilities seemed to focus more on administration and logistics, Pike came of age in the army just as western exploration was coming into vogue. The 1803 acquisition of the Louisiana Purchase nearly doubled the size of the nation, but much of the territory was unknown terrain to all but the natives who lived there. Young Pike was in the perfect place to make an impact, and in 1805, General James Wilkinson, Governor of the Upper Louisiana Territory, appointed him to lead an expeditionary force to find the source of the Mississippi River and bring back influential natives for negotiations. While Pike misidentified the river's origin, the other geographical information he gained was among the first learned for the U.S. government.

Wilkinson sent Pike on a second expedition in 1806 to locate the sources of the Arkansas and Red Rivers, establish relations with the natives and gain a greater understanding of the region's natural resources. Unlike the Lewis and Clark expedition, this journey started without authorization from President Jefferson and may have even been a spy mission. Some historians conjecture that Wilkinson may have been secretly collecting information for the Spanish government, using Pike as an unknowing accomplice. There's even a school of thought that the general was working in league with Aaron Burr to overtake the western United States, though it's never been proven. (Burr seems such a ready villain to some historians that one wonders if they'd charge him with starting World War I if they could.)

In any case, it was on this second expedition that Pike found the mountain that would eventually bear his name. Arriving in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado in November, lacking sufficient winter clothing and food, he and his team tried to reach the summit of the 14110 foot-high mountain but thought better of it and turned back. He was quoted as claiming that it was likely no man would ever reach the top.

The journey back was a lesson in hardship and disappointment. Pike and his men soldiered on through the winter, some suffering gangrene and frostbite along the way. Captured by Spanish soldiers near Santa Fe, they were interrogated and their records confiscated for a time, but they were generally well treated and eventually set free to return to undisputed U.S. territory.

You'd think that they'd receive warm welcome upon their return, but it wasn't the case. Jefferson himself was more enamored of Lewis and Clark's natural and scientific findings, and rumors had already begun to swirl about Pike's supposed involvement in the Burr conspiracy. Neither he nor anyone on his team received any special consideration for their efforts and hardships endured. If it weren't for Pike's Peak itself, it's doubtful that Zebulon Pike would be anything more than an answer to a particularly tough trivia question.


* Yes, I know that haiku generally take the three line, 5-7-5 syllable format. Go with me on this one.

Finding gold in Lambertville

Sometimes you have to wonder if bad luck runs in the family.

You might remember the story of Hunterdon County native and Declaration of Independence signer John Hart, whom we talked about following the hike Ivan and I took through through the Sourland Mountain range last year. Hart hid in a Sourlands cave to avoid capture by British troops in December 1776, and legend says he died virtually penniless less than three years later.

About 30 years after Hart's death, one of his daughters gave birth to James Wilson Marshall in Hopewell, NJ. The family moved to Lambertville shortly afterward, settling on what is now Bridge Street.

Heading west at the age of 24, Marshall spent time in Indiana, Illinois, Missouri and Oregon before finding his way to John Sutter's agricultural settlement in California. The two bought land together, and Marshall started farming and ranching, even as he helped out at Sutter's mill and performed various carpentering chores.

California was still a Mexican possession during this time, and Marshall volunteered to fight in the Bear Flag Revolt during the Mexican-American War. His participation in the battle took a toll on his personal finances, as the cattle on his farm had wandered off in his absence, leaving him destitute.

Sutter, however, brought him back into partnership on a new sawmill, which Marshall chose to locate upstream from the existing mill on the American River in the town of Coloma. In exchange for his work, Marshall would get a share of the mill's finished lumber.

Construction was slow and laborious, and he found that the millrace, or trough, routing water away from the mill's wheel was too small. The best solution, he felt, was to use the force of the river to expand the millrace, routing it through overnight as not to endanger the safety of the construction team that was building the rest of the mill.

One morning, while examining the results of the previous night's water rush, Marshall saw a glimmer in the mud below. Testing proved those shiny spots to be high quality gold, giving birth to the California Gold Rush.

Marshall must have had little idea of the stampede he'd engendered. He was so focused on the completion of Sutter's mill that he didn't gather any of the precious metal himself, instead giving his workers permission to mine for it during their free time. Eventually, so many preferred to look for gold that his entire workforce had quit, and his mill went bankrupt. Prospectors threw him off his land and he was, once again, penniless.

For more than 40 years, Marshall attempted various businesses, all of which ultimately failed. The California legislature voted three times to give him a two year pension, but that, too, eventually ceased. He died in 1885 in poverty.

Like his ancestor John Hart, James Wilson Marshall lives on in the memories of American history buffs. While his last home was but a small cabin, he's now memorialized with a grand tomb. There's a statue of him on the top, pointing to the area where he found the first bits of California gold. One thing you have to say for the guy: he was never deterred by failure. He just kept moving forward.

Hold the onions: the story of Liver Eating Johnson

The road wanderer's best friend (besides the GPS to get home) is the roadside historical marker. More than once, we've been drawn to an interesting story purely by chance, when we've seen one of these signs on a county road or local street. Kinda gives you incentive to drive the speed limit.

Traversing county roads around Hunterdon County a few weeks ago, Ivan and I came upon a rather puzzling marker:

The title alone gives one pause. Without reading the rest of the sign, I envisioned a local oddball who made his name by ordering liver every time he went to the local tavern. Maybe he got the name by winning a bet for eating several pounds of liver which, while being very nutritious, isn't everyone's cup of tea. 

You can read the sign for yourself to get the gist of the story, but it's possibly a little misleading. While Garrison/Johnson was born in Little York (now Alexandria), New Jersey, the deed which led to his sobriquet actually occurred in the American West. 

I checked into the Johnson story and found several conflicting accounts, all basically pretty revolting. Some say that after a troubled childhood, he left New Jersey to take to the sea, serving in the Navy before venturing west to the frontier. Others say he fought in the Mexican War and enlisted to serve on the Union side in the Civil War. Allegedly, he deserted after striking an officer, which led him to change his name to avoid capture.

The liver-eating part is, well, a bit gruesome. According to legend, members of the Crow tribe killed his wife, and in revenge, he took to a 12 year murder rampage. He slaughtered several Crow, eating his victims' livers since the tribe believed that eating the raw liver of the game they hunted would give them added strength. I haven't seen the movie Jeremiah Johnson, but I'm guessing that the cannibalism story line wasn't part of the plot. After all, the title role was played by Robert Redford, not Anthony Hopkins.

My research led me to a very well written essay by a young student who refutes the whole 'liver eating' story. That account says that while Johnson was an ornery, belligerent man, he had largely favorable relations with the natives. His nickname apparently originated after a knife fight with attacking Sioux, when a bit of his opponent's liver remained on Johnson's knife after a stabbing. Turning to his companions, Johnson offered the blade and asked if they'd like a bite. That may be callous, but it's not cannibalistic.

Johnson lived out his life in classic 1800's Western style, bootlegging whiskey, enforcing the law (while doing the bootlegging, I don't know), prospecting for gold and eventually retreating to a cabin in Montana. He's buried in Cody, Wyoming, far from his Garden State roots. Kinda makes you wonder how many other frontier legends were born in New Jersey.