Bon Homme County’s Oldest Mystery

Nov 16, 2016

Our November/December issue includes a story on six members of Custer’s Seventh Cavalry interred in the Bon Homme Cemetery. An inscription on their tombstone reads, “In memory of six unknown soldiers.” John Andrews visited the area to see if he could reveal their identities. Here are some of the photos we gathered that didn’t make the magazine.

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The men are said to be soldiers from Lt. Col. George Custer’s Seventh Cavalry, who passed through Dakota on a 400-mile march from Sioux City to Fort Rice, south of present-day Bismarck, North Dakota.
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The soldiers were believed to have contracted typhoid fever. They died at the regiment’s main encampment along Snatch Creek in 1873.
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The men were initially buried along the creek’s west bank.
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The bodies remained there until 1893, when they were disinterred and moved to the Bon Homme Cemetery.
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William Thomas Harrison carved the large tombstone that retired Yankton stonemason Bob Hanson repaired in 2011.
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Abraham Hirsch was long thought to be part of the Seventh Cavalry soldiers, but subsequent research has indicated that he was not.

Comments

10:22 am - Wed, December 25 2024

Jennifer Hanisch said:

It was my grandfather Thomas William Harrison that required these men in the BonHomme cemetery. His mother was Martha Abbott and she along with several other women baked bread and soup for Custers men who camped there for 3 weeks in 1874.