Elizabeth B. Custer
Indianapolis, IN, January 28, 1918
George Armstrong Custer?s Widow Receives Query about Husband?s Ancestors
Letter

ELIZABETH B. CUSTER, Mrs. Albert S. Johnson, Autograph Letter Signed, to Elizabeth B. Custer, January 28, 1918, Indianapolis, Indiana, with enclosed genealogical chart. 5 pp., 5.125" x 6.375". General toning; some light staining; very good.

This letter to Elizabeth Custer from Grace Johnson requests information about her husband?s genealogy and asserts a connection between the writer?s great-grandmother Mary Custer and General George Armstrong Custer. The enclosed genealogical chart insists that Mary Custer (1810-1887) was a second cousin of the General. She claimed that her great-grandmother?s grandfather George Custer (1744-1829) was the brother of General George A. Custer?s grandfather John F. Custer (1782-1830). According to Johnson, the common ancestor was supposed to be Emanuel Hoppe Custer (1754-1854), but the eighteenth-century connections are questionable.

It seems more likely that the common ancestor is Arnold Kuster (1669-1739), who emigrated to Pennsylvania in the seventeenth century. Mary Custer through Arnold?s son, Paul Custer Sr. (1710-1783), and General George A. Custer descended through Arnold?s son Nicholas Custer (1706-1784). If this genealogy is accurate, Grace Johnson?s great-grandmother Mary Custer was a third cousin, once removed, from General George A. Custer.

Excerpt
?You no doubt have been troubled to death with letters of inquiry regarding your husband?s families, and this is another one; and like the rest, I am asking if you know more about his family. To begin with, My mother?s grandmother was a second cousin to the General, her name being, Mrs. Mary Custer Peterson. She came from the same place as the General and we have always heard a great deal about him through my mother?s people."
?As I am a member of the D.A.R. and am interested in getting my family from all sides, I wondered if you would know if the General?s father or fore-father fought in the Revolutionary War, and could give me the dates. Possibly you could refer me to someone else who would know this data."
?I have some interesting data regarding the Custer relationship with the Washington (Gen. Geo.) family, and have become deeply interested in that also; whether it be true or not it is a pleasure to look into such.?

Elizabeth ?Libbie? Clift Bacon Custer (1842-1933) was born in Michigan as the daughter of an influential and wealthy judge. She graduated from a girls? seminary at the head of her class in June 1862. She first met George Armstrong Custer (1839-1876) in the autumn of 1862, but her father thought Custer was beneath her, and he wanted her to have a better life than that of an army wife. After Custer received a promotion to brevet brigadier general in 1863, Judge Bacon was more approving and allowed Elizabeth to marry Custer on February 9, 1864, in Michigan. Both George and Elizabeth Custer were ambitious and stubborn, and their dozen years of marriage were tumultuous. She followed her husband to every assignment, refusing to be left behind in comfort. After the war, Brevet Major General Custer reverted to his Regular Army rank of lieutenant colonel and held a series of frontier assignments in Texas, Kansas, and the Dakota Territory. In 1876, he left his wife at Fort Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory to pursue Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, and other Sioux and Cheyenne. After Custer?s death at the Battle of Little Big Horn, President Ulysses S. Grant publicly blamed him for blundering into a massacre. Elizabeth Custer quickly defended her husband?s image, aiding his first biographer and writing articles and books of her own praising Custer. Her version prevailed in popular culture for decades. She never remarried and was a widow for more than a half-century before she died in New York City. She was buried next to her husband in the United States Military Academy Post Cemetery at West Point.

Grace Barrow Johnson (1888-1971) was born in Indiana. In 1912, she married Albert Sidney Johnson (1887-1943), and they had one son. By 1930, her husband was the assistant treasurer at a savings and trust institution, and she was a music teacher in private homes.

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5.125" x 6.375"