Custer Expedition wagon train descending the Castle Creek valley on July 26, 1874

[Subdeacon Joe]

William Henry Illingworth was born in Leeds, England, on 20 September 1844. He immigrated with his parents to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania while still a young child. In 1850, his family relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father operated a jewelry business. Illingworth helped in the business until he was about 20 years old, when he moved to Chicago to study wet plate photography.

After he returned to Minnesota, he worked on an expedition to Montana, later on, George Armstrong Custer chose him to be the photographer for his Black Hills expedition.

Illingworth's work provided later generations insight into key events of his time.

 

A blow-up of the Custer Expedition wagon train descending the Castle Creek valley on July 26, 1874 (photograph by William Henry Illingworth, Devereux Library Archives, Illingworth-809). Custer's expedition into the Black Hills consisted of 1,000 soldiers from his 7th Cavalry, 110 wagons, 70 Indian scouts, four reporters, and two gold miners.

 

[Pat Riot]

I didn’t realize this was the 150 year and 1 month anniversary of this event. 

 

Man, that’s a lot of wagons. Custer never did anything small, did he? 
 

 

 

Flubber fingers…

Edited August 25 by Pat Riot

[Subdeacon Joe]

35 minutes ago, Pat Riot said:

 

Man, that’s a lot of wagons. Custer never did anything small, did he? 
 

 

Well, 1,000 men require a lot of rations.

From 

https://49thohio.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/Kautz_NCOs_guide.pdf

 

 

 

 

 

[Alpo]

If I'm reading that ration list correctly, 3/4 of a pound of coffee a day? Half a pound of pork, quarter pound of salt beef and a quarter pound of bacon. That makes sense for daily ration. But three quarters of a pound of coffee????

[Rip Snorter]

https://cowboyandchuckwagoncooking.blogspot.com/p/chuck-wagon-coffee-just-little-history.html

[Subdeacon Joe]

21 minutes ago, Alpo said:

If I'm reading that ration list correctly, 3/4 of a pound of coffee a day? Half a pound of pork, quarter pound of salt beef and a quarter pound of bacon. That makes sense for daily ration. But three quarters of a pound of coffee????

 

You aren't reading it right.

 

 

About an ounce and a quarter per day.

 

ADDED:

Also, you didn't get pork AND beef, it was one or the other, and the weight included bone and maybe hide.

Tale a look at "Hardtack and Coffee" by J. Billings.  From the section on RAtions:
 

I have stated that by Army Regulations the soldiers were entitled to either three-quarters of a pound of pork or bacon or one and one-fourth pounds of fresh or salt beef. I have also stated, in substance, that when the army was settled down for a probable long stop company cooks did the cooking. But there was no uniformity about it, each company commander regulating the matter for his own command. It is safe to remark, however, that in the early history of each regiment the rations were cooked for its members by persons especially selected for the duty, unless the regiment was sent at once into active service, in which case each man was immediately confronted with the problem of preparing his own food. In making this statement I ignore the experience which troops had before leaving their native State, for in the different State rendezvous I think the practice was general for cooks to prepare the rations; but their culinary skill—or lack of it—was little appreciated by men within easy reach of home, friends, and cooky shops, who displayed as yet no undue anxiety to anticipate the unromantic living provided for Uncle Sam’s patriot defenders.

Having injected so much, by way of further explanation I come now to speak of the manner in which, first, the fresh-meat ration was cooked. If it fell into the hands of the company cooks, it was fated to be boiled twenty-four times out of twenty-five. There are rare occasions on record when these cooks attempted to broil steak enough for a whole company, and they would have succeeded tolerably if this particular tid-bit could be found all the way through a steer, from the tip of his nose to the end of his tail, but as it is only local and limited the amount of nice or even tolerable steak that fell to the lot of one company in its allowance was not very large. For this reason among others the cooks did not always receive the credit which they deserved for their efforts to change the diet or extend the variety on the[132] bill of fare. Then, on occasions equally rare, when the beef ration drawn was of such a nature as to admit of it, roast beef was prepared in ovens such as I have already described, and served “rare,” “middling,” or “well done.” More frequently, yet not very often, a soup was made for a change, but it was usually boiled meat; and when this accumulated, the men sometimes fried it in pork fat for a change.

When the meat ration was served out raw to the men, to prepare after their own taste, although the variety of its cooking may not perhaps have been much greater, yet it gave more general satisfaction. The growls most commonly heard were that the cooks kept the largest or choicest portions for themselves, or else that they sent them to the company officers, who were not entitled to them. Sometimes there was foundation for these complaints.

In drawing his ration of meat from the commissary the quartermaster had to be governed by his last selection. If it was a hindquarter then, he must take a forequarter the next time, so that it will at once be seen, by those who know anything about beef, that it would not always cut up and distribute with the same acceptance. One man would get a good solid piece, the next a flabby one. When a ration of the latter description fell into the hands of a passionate man, such as I have described in another connection, he would instantly hurl it across the camp, and break out with such remarks as “something not being fit for hogs,” “always his blank luck,” etc. There was likely to be a little something gained by this dramatic exhibition, for the distributor would give the actor a good piece for several times afterwards, to restrain his temper.

The kind of piece drawn naturally determined its disposition in the soldier’s cuisine. If it was a stringy, flabby piece, straightway it was doomed to a dish of lobscouse, made with such other materials as were at hand. If onions were not in the larder, and they seldom were, the little garlic found in some places growing wild furnished a very acceptable[133] substitute. If the meat was pretty solid, even though it had done duty when in active service well down on the shank or shin, it was quite likely to be served as beefsteak, and prepared for the palate in one of two ways:—either fried in pork fat, if pork was to be had, otherwise tallow fat, or impaled on a ramrod or forked stick; it was then salted and peppered and broiled in the flames; or it may have been thrown on the coals. This broiling was, I think, the favorite style with the oldest campaigners. It certainly was more healthful and palatable cooked in this wise, and was the most convenient in active service, for any of the men could prepare it thus at short notice.

BROILING STEAKS.

The meat generally came to us quivering from the butcher’s knife, and was often eaten in less than two hours after slaughtering. To fry it necessitated the taking along of a frying-pan with which not many of the men cared to burden themselves. These fry-pans—Marbleheadmen called them Creepers—were yet comparatively light, being made of thin wrought iron. They were of different sizes, and were kept[134] on sale by sutlers. It was a common sight on the march to see them borne aloft on a musket, to which they were lashed, or tucked beneath the straps of a knapsack. But there was another fry-pan which distanced these both in respect of lightness and space. The soldier called in his own ingenuity to aid him here as in so many other directions, and consequently the men could be seen by scores frying the food in their tin plate, held in the jaws of a split stick, or fully as often an old canteen was unsoldered and its concave sides mustered into active duty as fry-pans. The fresh-meat ration was thoroughly appreciated by the men, even though they rarely if ever got the full allowance stipulated in Army Regulations, for it was a relief from the salt pork, salt beef, or boiled fresh meat ration of settled camp. I remember one occasion in the Mine Run Campaign, during the last days of November, 1863, when the army was put on short beef rations, that the men cut and scraped off the little rain-bleached shreds of meat that remained on the head of a steer which lay near our line of battle at Robertson’s Tavern. The animal had been slaughtered the day before, and what was left of its skeleton had been soaking in the rain, but not one ounce of muscular tissue could have been gleaned from the bones when our men left it.

The liver, heart, and tongue were perquisites of the butcher. For the liver, the usual price asked was a dollar, and for the heart or tongue fifty cents.

The “salt horse” or salt beef, of fragrant memory, was rarely furnished to the army except when in settled camp, as it would obviously have been a poor dish to serve on the march, when water was often so scarce. But even in camp the men quite generally rejected it. Without doubt, it was the vilest ration distributed to the soldiers.

It was thoroughly penetrated with saltpetre, was often yellow-green with rust from having lain out of brine, and, when boiled, was four times out of five if not nine times out of ten a stench in the nostrils, which no dedicate palate cared[135] to encounter at shorter range. It sometimes happened that the men would extract a good deal of amusement out of this ration, when an extremely unsavory lot was served out, by arranging a funeral, making the appointments as complete as possible, with bearers, a bier improvised of boards or a hardtack box, on which was the beef accompanied by scraps of old harness to indicate the original of the remains, and then, attended by solemn music and a mournful procession, it would be carried to the company sink and dumped, after a solemn mummery of words had been spoken, and a volley fired over its unhallowed grave.

So salt was this ration that it was impossible to freshen it too much, and it was not an unusual occurrence for troops encamped by a running brook to tie a piece of this beef to the end of a cord, and throw it into the brook at night, to remain freshening until the following morning as a necessary preparative to cooking.

Salt pork was the principal meat ration—the main stay as it were. Company cooks boiled it. There was little else they could do with it, but it was an extremely useful ration to the men when served out raw. They almost never boiled it, but, as I have already shown, much of it was used for frying purposes. On the march it was broiled and eaten with hard bread, while much of it was eaten raw, sandwiched between hardtack. Of course it was used with stewed as well as baked beans, and was an ingredient of soups and lobscouse. Many of us have since learned to call it an indigestible ration, but we ignored the existence of such a thing as a stomach in the army, and then regarded pork as an indispensable one. Much of it was musty and rancid, like the salt horse, and much more was flabby, stringy, “sow-belly,” as the men called it, which, at this remove in distance, does not seem appetizing, however it may have seemed at the time. The government had a pork-packing factory of its own in Chicago, from which tons of this ration were furnished.

[136]

Once in a while a ration of ham or bacon was dealt out to the soldiers, but of such quality that I do not retain very grateful remembrances of it. It was usually black, rusty, and strong, and decidedly unpopular. Once only do I recall a lot of smoked shoulders as being supplied to my company, which were very good. They were never duplicated. For that reason, I presume, they stand out prominently in memory.

Edited August 25 by Subdeacon Joe

[Pat Riot]

Holy Cow!

[PowderRiverCowboy]

Was Just up the Northern Part of this 

[Sedalia Dave]

On 8/25/2024 at 2:37 PM, Subdeacon Joe said:

William Henry Illingworth was born in Leeds, England, on 20 September 1844. He immigrated with his parents to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania while still a young child. In 1850, his family relocated to St. Paul, Minnesota, where his father operated a jewelry business. Illingworth helped in the business until he was about 20 years old, when he moved to Chicago to study wet plate photography.

After he returned to Minnesota, he worked on an expedition to Montana, later on, George Armstrong Custer chose him to be the photographer for his Black Hills expedition.

Illingworth's work provided later generations insight into key events of his time.

 

A blow-up of the Custer Expedition wagon train descending the Castle Creek valley on July 26, 1874 (photograph by William Henry Illingworth, Devereux Library Archives, Illingworth-809). Custer's expedition into the Black Hills consisted of 1,000 soldiers from his 7th Cavalry, 110 wagons, 70 Indian scouts, four reporters, and two gold miners.

 

 

WOW 1 wagon for every 10 men. That's more than I would have figured.

 

Can you imagine blazing a trail that those wagons could negotiate across all that terrain. Had to have taken a lot of time making fords for every ditch, streams and creek along the way. Plus the need to cut brush and trees. Guess that's where they got all the firewood necessary to cook all that food.

 

Hollyweird would have you believe they carried everything needed for a months long campaign in one wagon and their saddlebags.

 

 

Edited August 28 by Sedalia Dave
spelling

[Subdeacon Joe]

3 hours ago, Sedalia Dave said:

WOW 1 wagon for every 10 men. That's more than I would have figured.

 

Look at the chart of Table showing the weight an bulk of 1,000 Rations, then multiply it out for 2 months.

Here is another source:  https://transportation.army.mil/history/pdf/Peninsula_Campaign/Rodney Lackey Article_1.pdf

 

 

Quote

“A government wagon, drawn by four horses, over good roads, ought to carry 2,800 pounds avoirdupois, and make an average distance of two and a half miles per hour.”36 N. S. Dodge, the Regimental Quartermaster of the 119th New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, expressed that view in his short book37 on army transportation that was written near the beginning of the Civil War. As the war progressed, experience fine tuned the army‟s knowledge of the carrying capacity of a six-mule wagon. “An army wagon will carry conveniently, with what forage is usually added, about 2,500 pounds, making with the forage 3,000 pounds, which is about the greatest capacity over moderately good roads; even this amount will be found very  great if the march is continued long each day or requires to be at all rapid.” 38 “…I have found that an army wagon will haul from 700 to 800 complete rations, if well packed, and 1,200 of the ordinary marching ration.”39 Brigadier General Ingalls, the Chief Quartermaster of the Army of the Potomac, said that “One wagon will carry 1,200 rations hard bread; 2,000 rations coffee (1 barrel); 1,800 rations sugar (1 barrel); 300 rations (two-eights pound) pork (1 barrel, 1 box, 25 pounds); 1,200 rations salt (1 box, 45 pounds); 36 rations (9 pounds to ration) oats (3 sacks); gross weight, 2,674 pounds.”40 The next table provides a comprehensive listing of the carrying capacity of a six-mule wagon.

 

[Big Sage, SASS #49891 Life]

Wagons also carried all their personal items, clothing, bedding and ammunition.