Bicentennial Story #26-Grave at Young Mans Butte, 1874

Bicentennial Story #26-Grave at Young Mans Butte, 1874

Account of first known white man buried in the Richardton area, Sergeant Henry C. Stemker, 1874.

6/5/1975

2/19/1976

Father Louis Pfaller
Jack Hjort

This recording cannot be copied or reproduced without the written permission of the Dickinson Museum Center. This recording may be freely used for education uses, so long as it is not altered in any way. No commercial reproduction or distribution of this recording file is permitted without written permission of the Dickinson Museum Center.

mp3

audio reel, analog, 1/4 inch polyester tape

English

BS-026

Young Mans Butte, ND

Richardton, ND

Copyright Stark County Historical Society and Dickinson Museum Center

The first known White man buried in the Richardton area was Sargeant Henry C. Stempker, a member of Custer's Seventh Cavalary. On the way back to Fort Lincoln from the Black Hills Expedition of 1874, Stempke died of typhoid dysentery, on August 25, somewhere south of modern Dickinson or Gladstone. The next day his fellow soldiers buried him with military honors at Young Man's Butte. Two years later Custer's Seventh Cavalry on its way to death on the Little Big Horn, stopped near the butte, and the newspaper reporter, Mark Kellogg, noted in his journal that the headboard on Stempker's grave was still undisturbed.

This is Bicentennial Story No.26, prepared by Father Louis Pfaller, for the Stark County Historical Society, Jack Hjorte at the piano.

NDH, Vol. 21, p. 107-108

Sound recordings

1:06

128kbps

1970 1979

Bicentennial tape #3, Bicentennial stories 23-45