15th January, 1880

Cora Sue got a reply to her letter in the mail today, and we were so excited as we looked at the envelope. It was definitely from Mr. Barnum.

“Mr. Barnum says we can come on Saturday, at 10.30 and he and his wife would like us to stay to lunch, and he says we can ask him anything we like.”

“That is wonderful news,” I said while I perused it. “Remember what you found out about him when you were doing your research yesterday. He has a very young wife - only thirty while he is 69. I wonder if she will be there. And I have heard that he has four servants. Think of that!!

“We will need to be very organised about what questions we will ask him, as we must make the most of this opportunity. Perhaps we can both take notes, and then we are sure not to miss out anything that he says.”

“I won’t write my introduction until after we have seen him. Then I can make it so much more informative and interesting,” said Cora Sue.

“Well, I haven’t heard anything yet from Mr. Bennett, so I can’t wait to write mine until we go to visit him. I had best be getting on with it.”

So taking the notes I had gleaned from the books in the library, I sat down to start my essay.

Introduction

General George Armstrong Custer is the subject of my essay on Which Famous Person Would I Most Like to Meet, and Why. I will take the Why part of the question first. My father, Mark Kellogg, was a reporter for the "Bismarck Tribune" and also the "New York Herald" in 1876, and he was sent as the papers’ representative to go along on the famous ride of the 7th Cavalry which started in Bismarck, North Dakota, where Custer and his troops were stationed at Fort Lincoln, and ended in a hole in the ground in the middle of Montana, where my father and General Custer and 207 of his men lie side by side in a common grave.

My father thought the world of General Custer, and as they were about the same age, I thought it would be interesting to contrast their two lives, and tell the joint story about their deaths.

They came from very different backgrounds. George Custer was born on the 5th of December, 1839 in New Rumley, Harrison County, Ohio. His father, Emanuel Custer, had been married to Matilda Viers, and had three children with her, but she died in 1832, and within a few months, Emanuel had remarried a widow, Maria Kirkpatrick who had three children of her own. George was the first child of the new marriage, and he had three full brothers and a sister. His nickname was “Autie” which came from him trying to pronounce his middle name, Armstrong.

George’s father was a hard working farmer and blacksmith, and came from a German background. His ancestors had emigrated to America from Germany in 1600 and had settled in Pennsylvania.

In contrast, Marcus Henry Kellogg was born on March 31, 1831, in Brighton, Ontario, Canada. He was the third of ten children. The Kellogg family moved a number of times around places in Illinois before they eventually settled in La Crosse, Wisconsin in 1851.

His father was post master, and also ran the Kellogg House Hotel, which burned down in 1853. Mark worked as a reporter for the "La Crosse Democrat," and also worked at a mill and feed store. He learned to operate a telegraph and went to work for both the Northwestern Telegraph Company and the Atlantic and Pacific Telegraph Company.

Mr. Custer married his childhood sweetheart, Elizabeth “Libbie” Bacon, from Monroe, Michigan, whose father was a widower and a wealthy judge, Judge David B Bacon. George moved to stay with one of his step sisters, Lydia Reed in Monroe, where he met Libbie. He was so smitten with her that he managed to get some jobs to do for her father so he could get to know her better. However, that was when they were still children, and he moved back home after a few years, and it was only much later that he and Libbie got together officially on February 9th, 1864. They had four daughters.

Marcus Kellogg married Martha J. Robinson of La Crosse in 1861. They had two daughters, Cora Sue, born in 1862 and me, Martha Grace, born in 1864.

I hope through this essay to show the separate careers of each man, and how they finally merged in Bismarck, North Dakota, a few years before they were both killed.

That’s 491 words, so I hope it meets with Miss Marble’s expectations.