Cover Page

Yellowstone National Park: Its Exploration and Establishment Biographical Appendix

Biographical Appendix: A-E

WILLIAM A. BAKER. Born in County Donegal, Ireland, in 1832; died Mar. 31, 1874, at Fort Ellis, Montana Territory. The sergeant of the military escort that accompanied the Washburn party through the Yellowstone region in 1870.

He was an itinerant peddler prior to his enlistment Nov. 6, 1854, in Company F, Second Dragoons (the Second U.S. Cavalry after 1861). The enlistment papers describe him as 5 feet 8-1/2 inches in height, with blue eyes, brown hair, and a fair complexion.

Sergeant Baker earned his stripes in rough campaigning during the Civil War, and thus was a well-seasoned noncommissioned officer—experienced with all manner of men, as well as in formal and Indian warfare. He was quiet, efficient, and well-liked, and he should have retired from his beloved Company F as a senior NCO at the conclusion of a long and faithful service; instead, he was killed by Private James Murphy in the course of the latter's murderous attack upon a comrade in the barracks at Fort Ellis.

Sources: The National Archives, RG-94, AGO—Enlistment papers and register, and "Homocide at Fort Ellis," in the Bozeman, Mont. Avant Courier, Apr. 3, 1875, p. 3. Followup items appear in the issues of September 18 and 25.

JOHN WHITNEY BARLOW. Born in Wyoming County, N.Y., June 26, 1838; died Feb. 27, 1914, at Jerusalem, Palestine. The engineer officer in charge of the Army's 1871 party of Yellowstone explorers and co-author of the official report.

Entering West Point as a cadet in 1856, he graduated with the class of 1861 (2 months early because of the fall of Fort Sumter). He was commissioned a second lieutenant of artillery on May 6 and employed as an instructor of volunteer troops until May 15, when he received a commission as first lieutenant.

He took part in the Battle of Bull Run and served through the Peninsula Campaign with Battery M, Second U.S. Artillery. His gallant and meritorious service at the battle of Hanover Court House, Va., earned him the brevet rank of captain.

On June 13, 1863, Captain Barlow was given command of Company C, Battalion of Engineers, serving with the Army of the Potomac until Feb. 16, 1864, and gaining the permanent rank of captain of engineers on July 3, 1863. He was with General Sherman's army in the Atlanta Campaign, receiving the brevet ranks of major, July 22, 1864, and lieutenant colonel, March 13, 1865—both for "gallant and meritorious service."

After the war, Barlow superintended engineering work on coastal fortifications in Florida and New York, and harbor improvements on Lake Champlain. He reached the permanent rank of major of engineers Apr. 30, 1869, when he was assigned to General Sheridan's staff as Chief Engineer of the Military Division of the Missouri, serving in that capacity until July 1874. His field work during that period included several scientific expeditions, his reconnaissance of the Upper Yellowstone in 1871 being the most important. While with a Northern Pacific Railroad surveying party the following year, his escort fought off an attack by a thousand Sioux under Sitting Bull.

From 1874 to 1883 he had charge of fortification and harbor work on Long Island Sound; then on harbor improvement for Lakes Superior and Michigan until 1886, and on the improvement of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers, including the building of a ship canal at Muscle Shoals, which was completed Nov. 10, 1890.

From 1891 to 1896, Colonel Barlow (he received the permanent rank of colonel of engineers on May 10, 1895) was the senior commissioner of the International Boundary Commission charged with remarking the boundary with Mexico west of the Rio Grande River, which was followed by engineering work in the Southwest Division.

In 1898, Colonel Barlow was stationed in New York City with charge of improvement work on the Hudson River while serving on a number of important commissions. He was retired with the rank of Brigadier General and Chief of the Corps of Engineers on Apr. 30, 1901.

This tribute was paid him in the Report of the Annual Reunion, June 11, 1915, prepared by the Association of Graduates, USMA, p. 51:

"Modesty and courtesy were the characteristic features of his life. Wise and sincere, brave courteous and altogether loveable, he leaves a memory of Christian manhood which all who knew him will cherish."

Sources: The publication of the Association of Graduates, USMA, cited above, and data provided by Colonel Barlow's daughter in 1963.

COLLINS JACK [JOHN H.] BARONETT. Born in 1827 in Glencoe, Scotland; still living as late as 1901. The rescuer of Truman C. Everts, who was lost from the 1870 Washburn party of Yellowstone explorers and wandered alone for 37 days in the wilderness.

Many of the details of the colorful career of Jack Baronett (better known as "Yellowstone Jack") come from the biographical sketch that Hiram M. Chittenden included in his 1895 edition of The Yellowstone National Park (pp. 291-92). From it we know that he went to sea at an early age, but deserted his ship in China in 1850 in order to go to the gold fields of California. The lure of gold drew him to other strikes in Australia and Africa, and he made a voyage to the Arctic as the second mate on a whaling ship before returning to California in 1855. He served as a courier for Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston during the Mormon War and took part in the Colorado gold rush on the eve of the Civil War.

Baronett's sympathies were with the South, so he joined the First Texas Cavalry. Abandoning the "lost cause" in 1863, he took service briefly with the French under Maximilian in Mexico.

Baronett came to Montana Territory in September of 1864 and his movements afterwards are better known. He was a member of one of the prospecting parties that crossed the Yellowstone plateau that fall and was with the "Yellowstone Expedition" of 1866. He wintered at Fort C. F. Smith and was among those prospectors who made their way through the hostile Sioux to the Gallatin Valley to obtain relief for the nearly starved garrison of that northernmost outpost on the Bozeman road.

Service as a scout with General Custer's expedition to the Black Hills and another foray into the Yellowstone country in 1869 increased Baronett's familiarity with the region. Thus, when Truman C. Everts was lost from the Washburn party in 1870, Baronett was considered best qualified to search for him. As a result, the unfortunate explorer was found in time to save his life.

Immediately after the dramatic rescue of Everts, Baronett built a toll bridge over the Yellowstone River near its junction with the Lamar, and he operated it for many years as a vital link in the road to the mining region on the Clark Fork River. The care of his bridge was often left in other hands as Baronett guided hunting parties, scouted for the military, and continued his search for elusive mineral riches.

One of the men he guided in the park in 1875, Gen. William E. Strong, has left an excellent description of Baronett. He says:

" 'Jack Baronett,' as he is best known, is a celebrated character in this country, and, although famous as an Indian fighter and hunter, he is still more celebrated as a guide... he is highly esteemed by those who know him and his word is as good as gold. He is of medium stature, broad-shouldered, very straight and built like Longfellow's ship, for 'strength and speed.' Eyes black as a panther's and as keen and sharp; complexion quite dark with hair and whiskers almost black. He speaks well, using good English, and his manner is mild, gentle and modest; is proud of his knowledge of the mountains and of his skill with the rifle. I took to him at once . . . . " See "A Trip to the Yellowstone National Park in July, August, and September, 1875" (1876), 43.

While in the Black Hills during the winter of 1876-77, Baronett became involved in a dispute with W. H. Timblin over the recording of mining claims. Fired upon by Timblin, he returned the shots with mortal effect. This event led to the following comment: "As well might the eastern miners walk with shot guns into a gulch lair of Hogback Grizzlies, as to arouse Barronette, the Buchannons and other comrades from the upper Yellowstone." Letter, J. S. Farrar to P. W. Norris, Feb. 26, [1877], in P. W. Norris Collection, Henry E. Huntington Library, Pasadena, Calif.

Despite his service for the Confederacy, Baronett enjoyed the respect and confidence of his former enemies. He was the preferred guide of Gen. Philip H. Sheridan on several junkets through the park and also the only member of the original civilian police force to be retained when the Army took over management of the area in 1886. He thus became the first scout to serve the new administration (he had even been considered for the superintendency, upon the recommendation of the Governor of Montana Territory in 1884).

Baronett married Miss Marion A. Scott, of Emigrant Gulch, at Bozeman, Mont., on Mar. 14, 1884. His wife later held the position of postmistress at Mammoth Hot Springs in the park.

Baronett's 35-year association with the Yellowstone region has been justly recognized by coupling his name to an outstanding peak which flanks the road to the park's northeast entrance, but, otherwise, life did not treat him well. His toll bridge, in which he had invested $15,000, was taken from him in 1894, and he spent $6,000 in lawyer's fees to obtain from Congress a niggardly compensation of $5,000. That money was invested in an expedition to Nome, Alaska, during the last great "gold rush," but his schooner and his hopes were both crushed in the Arctic ice.

Thereafter, the old man's health failed rapidly and he was soon too feeble to earn a living at the rough work available to him. The trail ends at Tacoma, Wash., in late January or early February of 1901, when he was given a ticket by a charitable organization to get him to a friend at Redding, Calif., and it ends with a touch of irony: Six weeks after Baronett's disappearance, he was sought as the only heir of a titled brother killed in the Boer War.

Sources: Hiram M. Chittenden, The Yellowstone National Park (Cincinnati, 1895), pp. 291-2. "Capt. Baronette" in The Livingston (Mont.) Enterprise, Apr. 20. 1901, and the P. W. Norris Papers, Henry E. Huntington Library, San Marino, Calif.

CHARLES W. COOK. Born in Unity, Maine, in February 1839; died in White Sulphur Springs, Mont., Jan. 30, 1927. A member of the 1869 Folsom party of Yellowstone explorers, and co-author of the first magazine article describing the Yellowstone region.

Charley Cook attended the Quaker Academy at Vassalboro, Maine, with his boyhood friend, David E. Folsom. Together, they went on to the Moses Brown Quaker School at Providence, R.I., where Cook completed his education after David was forced to drop out because of ill-health. From there, the spirit of adventure swept him westward.

Drawn by reports of a rich gold strike near Pikes Peak, Cook made his way to Colorado—only to find there was no fortune awaiting him there. Early in 1864 he joined a band of drovers who were moving 125 head of cattle to Virginia City, a new mining town in what had just become Montana Territory. The eight men were stopped by Sioux and Cheyenne Indians near Green River—where they had to pay a steer for the privilege of passing on with their herd.

The remaining cattle were delivered safely on Sept. 22, 1864, just as the placer mining in Alder Gulch was at the peak of its frantic activity. There being no more ground available, Cook moved on to Last Chance Gulch (present Helena), and then to Confederate Gulch. There he found a job managing the Boulder Ditch Co., which supplied water to the placer mines around Diamond City. One of the men he employed soon after taking over in 1865 was William Peterson. His old chum, David Folsom, joined him there in the fall of 1868.

It was that summer when Cook first thought of visiting the Yellowstone region. An eastern mining man with business around Diamond City (which was then without a hotel) boarded for a time at the headquarters of the ditch company, where he heard some of the rumors then current concerning the wonders lying south of Montana's settlements. Immediately interested, this guest proposed an exploration of the region, but it was already too late to organize a trip there that season. However, the notion persisted with Cook.

When notice of the intention of a party of citizens from Virginia City, Helena, and Bozeman to make just such an exploration appeared in the Helena Weekly Herald of July 29, 1869, Cook and Folsom sought permission to accompany the expedition, and they were greatly disappointed when the project collapsed at the last moment for lack of a military escort. Having already made their preparations for the trip, the two Quakers decided to go anyhow, a resolution in which they were joined by William Peterson.

The party left Diamond City on Sept. 6, 1869, well armed and outfitted, and their trip of 36 days introduced them to the principal features of wonderland. The considerable interest evidenced in the information they brought back induced these explorers to combine their notes in an account suitable for publication in magazine form. The modest, well-written article prepared by Folsom was sent to Cook's mining friend, who had offered to find a publisher; however, attempts to place it with prominent magazines, such as Scribner's and Harper's, were rebuffed. It was finally accepted by the Chicago Western Monthly Magazine, which used the account in a somewhat abbreviated form, and under Cook's name, in the issue of June 1870.

Cook left the Boulder Ditch Co. soon after his return from the Yellowstone adventure, serving briefly as the receiver for a Gallatin Valley flour mill before driving a band of sheep from Oregon to the Smith River Valley in 1871. He developed a large ranch called "Unity" on land he had claimed about 10 miles east of Brewer's Springs (now White Sulphur, Mont.), and it was there that he brought his bride—a Miss Kennicott, of New York—in 1880. They raised three children, one of whom has survived to this writing.

Charles W. Cook outlived his comrades, and he alone was still alive and present at the celebration of Yellowstone Park's 50th anniversary in 1922. The presence of that tall, spare old man with the craggy face and piercing eyes provided a direct link with the park's era of definitive exploration, and he was lionized. But even greater honor came to him before his death. It was in the form of a letter which arrived in February 1924, with this message:

"My Dear Mr. Cook:

Through the courtesy of Mr. Cornelius Hedges, Jr., and of Congressman Scott Leavitt, I have learned that you are within a few days to celebrate your 85th birthday anniversary. As one of the pioneers of the great intermountain West, the first explorer of what is now Yellowstone Park, and one of the men responsible for the founding of the national park system, you have rendered a series of national services of truly notable character. Upon these I wish to extend my felicitations, and my congratulations upon your approaching birthday. I hope you may live to enjoy many more celebrations of the same anniversary."

That kindly tribute was signed by Calvin Coolidge, President of the United States.

Sources: Lew L. Callaway, Early Montana Masons (Billings, Mont., 1951), pp. 29-33, and family records made available by Mrs. Oscar O. Mueller, Lewistown, Mont.

WALTER WASHINGTON DELACY. Born in Petersburg, Va., Feb. 22, 1819; died in Helena, Mont., May 13, 1892. Leader of a party of prospectors who passed through the southwest corner of the Yellowstone region in 1863, and compiler—with David E. Folsom—of the first map (deLacy's 1870 edition) to show most of the prominent features with reasonable accuracy.

He was the son of William and Eliza deLacy of Norfolk, Va. They came of a noble Irish family that had declined on these shores, and young Walter lost both parents while yet a boy. His upbringing was left to a pair of maiden aunts and a bachelor uncle, who did well by him. In fact, his uncle even moved to Emmetsburg, Md., to be nearby while the young man attended Mount Saint Mary's Catholic College (where he specialized in mathematics and languages French, Portuguese, and Spanish).

Since civil engineering was the career he wished to follow, deLacy's uncle obtained for him an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, but that schooling was denied him through official chicanery. The wrong was soon righted personally by Professor Dennis Hart Mahan, who felt a responsibility to the boy's family. He took Walter to West Point for tutoring by himself and other officers, thus providing him with what was undoubtedly the finest education in civil and military engineering available in that day.

In the year 1839, while deLacy was working as a railroad surveyor, he was called to Washington to take an examination for a commission in the regular army. With the rank of lieutenant, the young man became an assistant instructor in French at the Military Academy, but he soon resigned that position to take a similar one with the U.S. Navy. Future officers were then schooled at sea and deLacy taught languages to midshipmen aboard ships until 1846.

Returning to his true interest, engineering, deLacy was employed by a group of wealthy men to search for abandoned Spanish silver mines, and he was in the Southwest when war began with Mexico. He took a brave part in that conflict, gaining a captaincy, and during the years immediately following he was employed in the West on a number of Government projects a survey for a railroad across the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, the survey of the 32d parallel from San Diego, Calif., to San Antonio, Tex., and hydrographic surveys on Puget Sound.

The latter work put deLacy in position to play a very important role in the Indian war of 1856 in the struggling new Territory of Washington. Governor Isaac I. Stevens made him engineer officer with responsibility for planning and constructing the blockhouses and forts that protected the settlements while the volunteer troops campaigned in the Indian country east of the Cascade Mountains.

Having proven himself as a military engineer, deLacy was given employment on a favorite project of Governor Stevens—the construction of the Mullan Road. He was the man who set the grade stakes for the crews, and, at the eastern terminus, he later laid out the town of Fort Benton at the head of navigation on the Missouri River.

Apparently deLacy's experience in Mexico gave him faith in the mineral possibilities of Idaho and Montana. He followed the succession of stampedes that opened up the northern Rocky Mountains, and it was a prospecting tour in 1863—with a party he called "the 40 thieves" that took him across the southwestern corner of the present Yellowstone Park. There he saw Shoshone Lake and the Lower Geyser Basin, but failure to publish his discoveries adequately prevented his getting the credit his exploration merited.

But there was a valuable result. In 1864 the first Territorial Legislature of Montana commissioned deLacy to prepare an official map to be used in establishing the counties, and his map, published in 1865, showed just enough of the Yellowstone region to whet the interest of Montanans (on it was the lake and the falls of the Yellowstone River, with a "hot spring valley" at the head of the Madison River). The map was periodically improved during the 24 years it was in print, and a copy of the 1870 edition—complete with the route of the Folsom party of the previous year, and extensively corrected to accord with their observations—was carried by the Washburn party of 1870.

In Montana's Sioux War of 1867, deLacy assumed a familiar role when he was appointed colonel of engineers for the Territorial Volunteers. In that conflict he displayed his usual quiet bravery by going to the relief of Federal troops beleaguered at Fort C. F. Smith on the Bozeman trail. Loading a wagon train with Gallatin Valley potatoes and flour for the famished garrison, he pushed through with a handful of volunteers—despite warnings that the Sioux would gobble them up.

The remaining years of deLacy's life were occupied with surveying and civil engineering. He fixed the initial point and laid out the base line for the public land surveys of Montana, prepared a map for the Northern Pacific Railroad that greatly influenced the choice of a route through the territory, and accomplished a perilous survey of the Salmon River. He was later city engineer for Helena, Mont., and an employee in the office of the Surveyor General there. He worked to within a few weeks of his death.

Source: "Walter Washington deLacy," Contributions to the Historical Society of Montana 2 (1896), pp. 241-251.

GUSTAVUS CHEENY DOANE. Born in Galesburg, Ill., May 29, 1840; died in Bozeman, Mont., May 5, 1892. The officer in command of the military escort that accompanied the Washburn party through the Yellowstone region in 1870. He was also the author of an official report that appeared as a congressional document, thus providing information recognized as reliable.

Doane's parents moved to Oregon Territory by ox-wagon when he was 5 years old, and in 1849 they were lured south to the gold fields of California, so that the lad grew to manhood in the exciting atmosphere of the mushroom camps and towns of the Argonauts. It was that environment, and the University of the Pacific at Santa Clara, that shaped the man.

In 1862, young Doane went east with the "California Hundred," determined to serve the Union cause. Enlisting in the Second Massachusetts Cavalry on October 30, he had advanced from private to sergeant by Mar. 23, 1864, when he was commissioned a first lieutenant of cavalry. He was honorably mustered out of service on Jan. 23, 1865.

For a time after the war, Doane was involved in the military government of Mississippi, holding offices that included that of mayor of Yazoo City. He married a southern girl, Amelia Link, on July 25, 1866, but it was an unhappy union that ended 12 years later when she divorced him at Virginia City, Mont.

Doane returned to military life July 5, 1868, being commissioned a second lieutenant in the Second U.S. Cavalry. His company arrived at Fort Ellis in May 1869 to become part of the garrison of that post established less than 2 years earlier for the protection of the Gallatin Valley in Montana Territory. And so, when a detail was needed to escort the Washburn party of 1870 into the Yellowstone wilderness, there was just the right officer available at the post that was the logical point of departure.

The assignment was routine—"proceed with one sergeant and four privates of Company F, Second Cavalry, to escort the surveyor general of Montana to the falls and lakes of the Yellowstone, and return"; but Lieutenant Doane made a better-than-routine report upon his visit. That remarkably thorough description was the first official information on the Yellowstone region and its unusual features, and it was characterized by Dr. F. V. Hayden, U.S. Geologist, in these words: "I venture to state, as my opinion, that for graphic description and thrilling interest it has not been surpassed by any official report made to our government since the times of Lewis and Clark."

Great interest was created by that report, and as a result, Doane was often referred to as "the man who invented wonderland." He was described as of splendid physique, standing 6 feet 2 inches, straight as an arrow, and swarthy, with black hair and a dark handlebar mustache. He was 200 pounds, "tall, dark and handsome," and endowed with a loud voice and an air of utter fearlessness. Add to that all the competence of a natural frontiersman, including superb horsemanship and deadly proficiency with a rifle, and there stands the man of whom a soldier once said, "We welcomed duty with the lieutenant." There is also praise of the finest type in the published memoir of Maj. Gen. Hugh L. Scott, one of Doane's shavetails who made it all the way to chief of staff; he looked back over the years and said of that adventurous officer he had served under, "I modeled myself on him as a soldier."

Being a restless, energetic, intelligent man with great powers of endurance, Doane was always busy. He was in demand to escort official parties through the Yellowstone region—as he did the Barlow-Heap and Hayden Survey parties in 1871, and the grand excursion of Secretary of War William W. Belknap in 1875—and when not so employed he volunteered to lead scouting parties and developed a force of Crow Indian auxiliaries of considerable value during the Nez Perce Campaign of 1877 (a war which was a disappointment to Doane because his orders kept him out of the real action).

Late in 1876, Lieutenant Doane was sent on one of the most unusual and bizarre expeditions ever fielded by our army in the West. It was nothing less than a winter exploration of the Snake River from its Yellowstone headwaters to the junction with the mighty Columbia—a task to be accomplished with a detail of six men and a homemade boat. It was his good fortune to lose the boat—but not his men—in the Grand Canyon of Snake River, thus ending in an early disappointment a venture which could only have matured into tragedy.

On Dec. 16, 1878, Doane married his second wife, Mary Hunter, daughter of the old pioneer who was the proprietor of Hunter's Hot Springs on the Yellowstone River at present Springdale, Mont. After a honeymoon in the "States," where Lieutenant Doane had a winter assignment, the couple returned to Montana and life at Fort Ellis.

In 1880, Doane was involved in what promised to be the grandest adventure of his life, one that might have taken his life had he not refused to go through with it. He was ordered East to be considered for duty in the Arctic—as the commander of a party which was to implement the "Howgate Plan" for the study of Arctic weather and living conditions. For its part, the U.S. Army was to establish and maintain a station at Lady Franklin Bay on Ellesmere Island, less than 500 miles from the North Pole. Doane sailed north on the Proteus, a leaky and inadequate vessel that was unable to reach its destination (and almost failed to get back). The experience was enough for Doane and he declined the duty, letting it go to a young Signal Corps officer named A. W. Greely.

A promotion to the rank of captain came to Doane Sept. 22, 1884, and his subsequent service was mainly on the Pacific Coast and in the Southwest. While doing monotonous duty at dusty outposts, he dreamed of explorations in Africa, and he made serious tries for the superintendency of Yellowstone National Park in 1889 and 1891.

But Doane's days were numbered. His health began to fail under the hard field duty required of him in Arizona, and he reluctantly asked for retirement. It was not allowed him because he had neither the age (64 years) or the service (40 years) required at that time, and all that could he done was to allow him 6 months leave. He returned to his home as Bozeman, Mont., but contracted pneumonia and died there.

Sources: Hiram M. Chittenden, The Yellowstone National Park, (Cincinnati, 1895), pp. 293-95; Francis B. Heitman, Historical Register and Dictionary of the United States Army 1 (Washington, 1903), p. 375, and various newspaper items from the Montana press.

TRUMAN C. EVERTS. Born in Burlington, Vt., in the year 1816, died in Hyattsville, Md., Feb. 16, 1901. A member of the 1870 Washburn party of Yellowstone explorers, whose loss in the wilderness and subsequent rescue after 37 days heightened public interest in the expedition; also, author of a timely article in Scribner's Monthly a year later, when the movement to create Yellowstone Park was taking form.

Helpful as that account was in creating an awareness of the Yellowstone region and what it contained, just as a group of determined men were opening that campaign which eventually led to creation of a Yellowstone National Park, it provided very little personal information about the man who survived such incredible hardships, and nearly his entire life before and after the Yellowstone adventure remained obscure until August 1961 when his son walked into park headquarters at Mammoth Hot Springs with some facts.

Thus, we now know that Truman C. Everts was one of a family of six boys. His father was a ship captain and the lad accompanied him as cabin boy during several voyages on the Great Lakes. It is unlikely that he received anything more than a public school education, though nothing is certainly known of his life before the age of 48 except that he had been married.

On July 15, 1864, President Abraham Lincoln appointed Truman Everts so be Assessor of Internal Revenue for Montana Territory, an indication he had been a staunch supporter of the Republican party. Yet he was unable to weather the political intrigues of the Grant administration and lost his patronage position on Feb. 16, 1870. Everts lingered in Montana for a time, in the hope of obtaining something else, but by mid-summer he had decided to return to the East with his grown daughter, Elizabeth, or "Bessie," who was his housekeeper and also the belle of Helena society. An entry in the diary of Cornelius Hedges shows the purchase of household effects auctioned by Everts on July 6, in preparation for the move.

Everts' accompaniment of the Washburn party into the Yellowstone wilderness was in the nature of a between-jobs vacation—though it turned out somewhat differently. The details of his travail are available in his "Thirty-Seven Days of Peril" (in Scribner's Monthly for November 1871). He was rescued at the last possible moment by "Yellowstone Jack" Baronett and George A. Pritchett. While the one nourished the feeble spark of life remaining in a body wasted to a mere 50 pounds, the other went 75 miles for help, so that the lost man undoubtedly owed his life to those hardy frontiersmen who had set aside their usual pursuits to succor him.

It would seem that Everts' gratitude would know no limits; yet, it did not even extend to the payment of that reward his friends had offered for his rescue, he maintaining he could have made his own way out of the mountains. Unfortunately, there was more to his ingratitude than that. When Baronett called on Everts several years later in the course of a visit to New York, he was received so coldly that he afterward said "he wished he had let the son-of-a-gun roam."

Following the passage of the Yellowstone Park act, there was a strong sentiment for making Everts superintendent of the area. However, he was reluctant to accept the position without some provision for a salary, and, before that was resolved, he became a delegate to the Liberal Republican convention at Cincinnati. By thus joining Horace Greeley's attempt to split the party, he passed beyond the pale of orthodoxy and was given no further consideration.

The Bozeman, Mont., Avant Courier of May 9, 1873, indicated that Everts had just returned to that town after securing a part interest in the post trader's store at Fort Ellis; but he did not remain there, despite the statement that he "will be permanently located among us."

In 1880 or 1881, Truman C. Everts married a girl who was said to have been 14 years old at the time, and they settled on a small farm at Hyattsville, Md., which was then on the outskirts of Washington, D.C., but has since been absorbed in its urban sprawl. The couple had a child—Truman C. Everts, Jr.—born Sept. 10, 1891, when the father was 75 years old. This son understood that his father was a minor employee of the Post Office Department in his declining years, and that the family went through some very hard times during the Cleveland administration, when his politics were of the wrong persuasion.

Sources: Nathaniel P. Langford, The Discovery of Yellowstone National Park (St. Paul, Minn. 1905), p. xviii, and an interview with Truman C. Everts, Jr., in Yellowstone National Park, Aug. 11, 1961.

Last Modified: Tues, Jul 4 2000 07:08:48 am PDT
http://www.cr.nps.gov/history/online_books/haines1/iee4.htm