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Army Letters from an Officer's Wife

Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe

69 ratings
Army Letters from an Officer's Wife | Frances Marie Antoinette Mack Roe

Army Letters from an Officer's Wife

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Frances was the young wife of a West Point Army officer, whose career took them both to frontier garrisons in what are now the states of Kansas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Utah, Montana, and Wyoming. Her letters home to her family in upstate New York, written between 1871 and 1888, are a fascinating chronicle of life on the frontier. Despite the grittiness of keeping house in tent-and-log-cabin quarters, Frances took to Western life, learning to shoot and ride (side saddle), fly fish for trout and hunt buffalo. Her letters, chatty and detailed, open windows on varied aspects of frontier and army life: army protocol (including the right of senior officers to bump subordinates out of their housing ); the Indian tribes--Arapahoe, Cheyenne, Apache, Kiowa (ceremonial visits from chiefs as well as Indian warfare); the black cavalry troops (at Camp Supply in Indian Territory); Chinese cooks (also Polish, Irish, and enlisted men doing kitchen duty). Her letters span years of rapid change in the West. They touch on the disappearance of the buffalo herds, the decline of the Indian tribes and the coming of the railroads. Even Yellowstone Park, established in 1872, gets a mention: “Now that the park can be reached by railroad, all of the generals, congressmen, and judges are seized with a desire to inspect it--in other words, it gives them a fine excuse for an outing at Uncle Sam’s expense.”
Red Man's strategy is not quite equal to that of the Great Father's soldiers, or he would have known that troops would be sent at once to protect the horses.

There were a great many pony tracks to be seen in the sand the next morning, and there was a mounted sentinel on a hill a mile or so away. It was amusing to watch him through a powerful field glass, and we wished that he could know just how his every movement could be seen. He sat there on his pony for hours, both Indian and horse apparently perfectly motionless, but with his face always turned toward the post, ready to signal to his people the slightest movement of the troops.

Faye says that the colored troops were real soldiers that night, alert and plucky. I can readily believe that some of them can be alert, and possibly good soldiers, and that they can be good thieves too, for last Saturday night they stole from us the commissary stores we had expected to last us one week—everything, in fact, except coffee, sugar, and such things that we keep in the kitchen, where it is dry.

The commissary is open Saturday mornings only, at which time we are requested to purchase all supplies we will need from there for the following week, and as we have no fresh vegetables whatever, and no meat except beef, we are very dependent upon the canned goods and other things in the commissary.

Last Saturday Mrs. Hunt and I sent over as usual, and most of the supplies were put in a little dug-out cellar in the yard that we use together—she having one side, I the other. On Sunday morning Farrar happened to be the first cook to go out for things for breakfast, and he found that the door had been broken open and the shelves as bare as Mother Hubbard's. Everything had been carried off except a few candles on Mrs. Hunt's side, and a few cakes of laundry soap on mine! The candles they had no use for, and the thieves were probably of a class that had no

John 09/26/2024
I enjoyed this memoir describing army life in the American west during the late 19th century. Told from a woman's perspective it describes in detail the living conditions, social life, Army politics concerning housing, as well as vivid portraits of the land, animals and people. It is a must read for
Carolyn 09/10/2024
These letters from 1871 to 1888 provide a unique look at life on Army posts in the west.
Janice M Dodson 10/04/2019
Enjoyable read!

I always enjoy historical accounts from the perspective of the actual day to day living. This writer did it in an entertaining style!
Constance 10/13/2013
I really enjoyed reading this book. Largely because of the humor I found in the similarities to life in the the military in 1871 compared to 2013. Funny what things don't change. If you have a familiarity to being in the military, this book should give you a good laugh. Its an easy read and I enjoye
Anne 07/29/2011
This is an excellent read for anyone who is really interested in the life of an army wife. There are times when I was irritated with her less than politically correct opinions of people and races, but those were the views in those days and it is wrong to expect political correctness in days before i

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