This month’s column is about a homesteader who led a most unusual life. It is the story of Thomas B. Dempster (1843-1928) who served in the 7th Cavalry in the U.S. Army under General George Armstrong Custer in 1876 but survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn. How this happened and the intriguing story of Dempster’s life both before and after his association with Custer, including his time as a homesteader, follows.
The Idaho State death certificate for Thomas B. Dempster reports that he died at age 84 on June 26, 1928 in Boise, Idaho, with his birth having been on September 3, 1843 in Scotland. A military tombstone marks his burial location at Morris Hill Cemetery in Boise, Idaho. Besides listing his name, it includes information on his Civil War unit: “Co. H. 3. N.Y. L.A.,” referring to Company H of the 3rd New York Light Artillery. His death certificate noted that he was a veteran of the Civil War.
Thomas B. Dempster’s obituary in the June 27, 1928 issue of the Idaho Daily Stateman newspaper (p. 11) of Boise, Idaho provides more information on his early life and immigration to the United States. It follows:
“Thomas B. Dempster died at the home of R. S. Bumgardner on Vine street, at the age of 86 [84] years. Mr. Dempster was born in Scotland and came to the United States when he was 4 years old [ca. 1847]. He is survived by a cousin in New York. He was a veteran of the Civil war.”
Thomas B. Dempster, at age 19, enlisted on November 5, 1861, in Battalion H of the 3rd New York Artillery at Rome in New York State. He served in that unit until being mustered out on June 24, 1865 at Richmond, Virginia. It seems likely that he would have been in several battles during the war, with those possibly mentioned in his Civil War pension file that would be in the National Archives.
Two years after the Civil War ended Dempster enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps and was initially stationed at Brooklyn, New York. Records show that he served on the USS Portsmouth soon after his enlistment. This was a large wooden “sloop of war” sailing ship in service in the United States Navy during the mid-to-late 19th century.
By the spring of 1869, Dempster was assigned to the Navy Yard in Philadelphia. Records through mid-1871 continue to report him being there with the rank of private. At that time, Thomas B. Dempster would have served in a variety of necessary government missions.
By December of 1871, he was stationed back at the Marine Barracks in Brooklyn, New York, with Dempster reported by March of 1872, as serving as a private on the USS Canandaigua. This was another large wooden “sloop of war” sailing ship that saw service in the Civil War. But by 1872, it was in use for service in the West Indies and Gulf of Mexico during which time it apparently made occasional stops at the Navy Yard in Pensacola, Florida. That may have led to Dempster’s next assignment.
His Marine Corps records for December 1872 recorded him as stationed at the Pensacola Navy Yard as a Corporal. Yet he was back again holding the rank of private while stationed at the same Navy Yard in Pensacola in May of 1873. That month, at age 29, he was mustered out of service. By then, Dempster, had spent most of his time since 1861 in some form of military service. Yet that would not be the end of it. Less than a year later he would be back in military service. And he would do it from Idaho Territory.
On February 21, 1874, at Boise (likely at Fort Boise), Dempster again voluntarily entered the U.S. Army. His later military pension records report that he served in Company F of the 7th Regiment of the U.S. Cavalry. This was one of 12 such companies of the 7th Regiment that were headquartered at Fort Abraham Lincoln in Dakota Territory during 1873-1876.
The 7th Regiment, starting on February 26, 1867, was under the command of General George Armstrong Custer. He had served as a Union Army general during the Civil War, including in Virginia shortly before the war’s end in April of 1865. Custer would subsequently remain commander of the 7th Regiment until being killed at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in eastern Montana Territory on June 28, 1876. He was the most famous of the 268 Cavalrymen and their Indian scouts who died in that legendary battle, with the men under Custer being from five companies of the 7th Regiment: Companies C, E, I, L – and Dempster’s Company F.
This presents a mystery. If Thomas B. Dempster’s military pension record is correct, how did he survive? And what other evidence is there for his association with Custer at the Battle of the Little Big Horn?
On August 11, 1911, the following story appeared in The Spokesman-Review newspaper of Spokane, Washington (p. 9):
LONE SURVIVOR CUSTER FIGHT: Working on Some Placer Claims Near Stites.
STITES, Idaho, Aug. 2.—Thomas B. Dempster, the only survivor of Custer’s command before its last battle with the Indians and a pioneer miner of Idaho county [Idaho], has gone of a month’s visit to Lander, Wyo., and from there will go the Soldier’s home before returning to his placer claims on Leggett creek, near Newsome, this county, where he has worked with James Surridge for the last 10 years.”
The wording about Dempster being the “only survivor of Custer’s command before its last battle with the Indians” is both intriguing and ambiguous. It could include the possibility that Dempster was (luckily!) off normal duty on the day of the battle, perhaps being ill or on a special work detail. But what really happened is unknown.
Also illusive is how long Thomas B. Dempster served in Company F after the famous 1876 battle? And did the annihilation of Company F lead to his being reassigned to another Company within the 7th Regiment?
I was unable to determine when Dempster ended his service with the 7th Regiment, and he appears not to have been included in the 1880 census. But in 1886, the reconstructed census of Idaho (found in Ancestry.com) lists him at Boise, Idaho. The evidence is a money order registered in his name, but whether he was a civilian at this time is unclear. His age at that time would have been about 43 years old.
Otherwise, by sometime in the 1880s he lived in Idaho County, Idaho (north of Boise) where the prior-quoted 1911 newspaper article told that he was a “pioneer miner.”
By early November of 1889, Dempster was living at or near the community of Clearwater in Idaho County, Idaho. That fall, on October 22, 1889, he was named as one of the witnesses to provide proof that Daniel K. Gant had met the requirements to receive a homestead in Idaho County, Idaho. Thus, Dempster must have been a resident of that area for some time, perhaps engaged partly in mining near Clearwater. After 1889, he apparently continued living in the same area for several more years as he became a homesteader there.
On October 12, 1897, Thomas B. Dempster was still living in Idaho County, Idaho when he filed his own notice to provide proof that he had also met the requirements to receive a homestead. His claim for 160 acres was only a few miles from Daniel K. Gant’s homestead. Just when Dempster first settled on his homestead claim would be reported in his Homestead casefile in the National Archives. Because of his past, Thomas B. Dempster was likely able to substitute up to four years of his extensive prior military service for the five-year requirement to live on a homestead in the late 1800s. Thus, he may have filed for his homestead as late as the mid-1890s instead of before that. And in his case, he may have been mining part-time while homesteading.
On February 3, 1891, Thomas B. Dempster applied for, and was granted, a Civil War pension as an “invalid” claiming some health problems resulting from his Civil War and later military service, including his time in the U.S. Marine Corps.
I could not find records for him in the 1900 census, but in 1910 Dempster was listed in the federal census as a placer miner in Newsome Precinct in Idaho County, Idaho. He was then age 67, unmarried, and living alone.
In 1920, Thomas B. Dempster was listed by the federal census as living in the Idaho Soldiers Home at Boise, Idaho along with other old soldiers in their 70s and 80s. Some had never married (apparently Dempster’s situation) while others had been widowed. The Boise, Idaho city directories for 1917 (using 1916 information) and 1929 (using 1928 information), listed him as a resident of that home, so he moved there at least by 1916.
On January 29, 1928, Thomas B. Dempster wrote a will in Boise, Idaho. In it, after the payment of debts and taxes, he left all his property to “Alice E. Bumgardner of Boise, Idaho, in compliance with my agreement in writing with her and her husband of even date herewith, and in gratitude for her kindness to me both before and after such agreement.” That arrangement apparently included their care of the aged soldier, homesteader, and miner in his final months. Dempster subsequently died at their home on Vine Street in Boise on June 26, 1928.
The story of Dempster and his extraordinary military career before becoming an Idaho miner and homesteader adds yet another intriguing and unexpected tale about an American homesteader. Each story of a homesteader’s life further enriches our understanding of the great diversity of people who homesteaded during this most important episode in America’s past – one that in many ways still influences the lives of many Americans today in the early 21st century.
