The Spirit Of Mattie

By: Peggy L Henderson

Kite Hill Graveyard near Mammoth Hot Springs

Since it’s only a few days after Halloween, I thought it wouldn’t be too far out to write about ghosts and spirits. 

Several ghost stories float around about Yellowstone National Park. There is the headless bride that haunts the famous Old Faithful Inn. There is the story of the vanishing hitchhiker, several Crow and Bannock spirit legends; just to name a few. 

The one story that intrigued me was the one of Mattie’s spirit.  Not only is her story one of myth and mystery, but it is also a timeless love story.

There are two graveyards within Yellowstone National Park. One is the military yard at Fort Yellowstone, the other one is called Kite Hill near Mammoth Hot Springs, which holds fourteen civilian graves. Some of those graves are unidentified. Two of the graves are of people who committed suicide, one was murdered, and one died in an avalanche. 

There are also eight known graves scattered throughout Yellowstone. One of these graves has been of special interest to a lot of people. It is said to contain the spirit of Martha Jane Shipley Culver. She was born on September 18, 1856. She was known as Mattie all her life. 

Mattie grew up working in textile mills in Massachusetts, where tuberculosis was common. When she was seven years old, her father was killed in the Civil War, which forced her family to separate and live with various relatives. When her sister Millie married, Mattie went with them to Montana in search of a new life. The textile mills had already taken their toll on Mattie, and she might have already known that she had tuberculosis.

Mattie, her sister and brother-in-law homesteaded near Billings, Montana, and that was where she met Eugene Gillett in 1882. After a one-year marriage, Eugene died tragically of tuberculosis. 

For years, she lived alone at the Park Hotel in Billings, until she met the newly appointed manager, Ellery Culver. The two shared many of the same experiences from early childhood. Ellery served in the Civil War like Mattie’s father, and later worked for the Northern Pacific Railroad like her first husband. They married in 1886. A year later, Mattie gave birth to a daughter, Theda Culver. 

Firehole River

Ellery Culver accepted a job in Yellowstone National Park as Master of Transportation with the Yellowstone Association and set off for the park. Mattie joined him later, and the family resided at the Firehole Hotel, situated along the banks of that river.  In the fall, they returned to Billings to spend the winter there. By their second year, in 1888, Mattie knew she was dying. Her husband’s job required him to travel to nearby towns, but Mattie decided to stay in the park that she’d come to love, and she even spent the winter there rather than return to Billings. 

Mattie died on March 2, 1889. Her tombstone reads that she was thirty years old, but she was actually thirty-two. 

Nez Perce Creek Picnic Area along Firehole River. Near site of Mattie's grave

When she died, the ground was too frozen, and there was too much snow to dig a grave. Soldiers stationed in the park placed Mattie’s body in two barrels laid end to end, and covered them with snow. A week later, her husband and a friend prepared a real grave for his wife’s final resting place. They used a partition from the Firehole Hotel that had been her home, and a place that she loved, and fashioned a coffin. Ellery buried his wife along the banks of the Firehole River. 

Ellery took his one-year old daughter to live with Mattie’s sister Millie, who had moved west to Washington. Hearing  the spirit of his wife calling him back to Yellowstone, Ellery returned to work in and around the park, drawn to the Firehole area where Mattie lived and died. In 1891, the Firehole Hotel was burned down to make way for a new hotel some miles away. This left Mattie’s grave in solitude along the river.

Tragedy once again struck Ellery, when his daughter Theda became ill, and at nineteen years old, answered her mother’s call and died. 

Poor health forced Ellery to move to California, where he died in 1922. The park service would not allow his body to be buried alongside his wife in Yellowstone, and people who have visited his grave in California swear that he is not there, but has joined his beloved wife along the banks of the Firehole River. 

Many people who have visited Mattie’s grave are repeatedly drawn back to the area. It is said that her spirit walks along the riverbank, and if you listen closely, you can hear her humming to the birds and animals, and beckon you to return time and again.

 --from Yellowstone Ghost Stories

(all photos are my personal property) 

Peggy L Henderson

Western Historical and Time Travel Romance

“Where Adventure Awaits and Love is Timeless”

Author of:

Yellowstone Romance Series

Teton Romance Trilogy

Second Chances Time Travel Romance Series

Blemished Brides Western Historical Romance Series

               

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Ramona: A 19th Century Romance

by Lyn Horner




Helen Hunt, c. 1850-1860

Helen Hunt Jackson (October 15, 1830 – August 12, 1885), was an American writer who became an activist on behalf of Native Americans, calling for reform in U.S. Indian policies. Born Helen Maria Fiske in Amherst, Massachusetts, she was the daughter of a minister who also served as a professor of Latin, Greek, and philosophy at Amherst College. She had two brothers, both of whom died soon after birth, and one sister, Anne.

The girls’ mother died in 1844, when Helen was fifteen, and their father died three years later. Financially provided for, Helen attended Ipswich Female Seminary and the Abbott Institute, a boarding school in New York City. She was a classmate of Emily Dickinson and the two corresponded throughout their lives.

In 1852, Helen married U.S. Army Captain Edward Bissell Hunt. They had two sons, both of whom died as young children. In 1863, her husband also died in a military accident. After her tragic losses, Helen Hunt began writing. She published her early work anonymously, usually under the name "H.H." Ralph Waldo Emerson admired her poetry and used several of her poems in his public readings.

Hunt traveled extensively. While in Colorado Springs, Colorado, in 1873-74, she met William Sharpless Jackson, a wealthy banker and railroad executive. They married in 1875 and she was best known under the name Jackson in her later writings.



Ponca Chief Standing Bear; Public domain

In 1879, Jackson attended a lecture in Boston given by Chief Standing Bear of the Ponca Tribe. The chief described the forcible removal of the Ponca from Nebraska to a reservation in Indian Territory (Oklahoma), and their terrible living conditions there. Disturbed by these revelations, Jackson began investigating and publicizing government misconduct in Indian affairs. She circulated petitions, raised money and wrote letters, carrying on heated exchanges with federal officials over the injustices committed against Native Americans.

Hunt exposed government treaty violations and documented the corruption of Indian agents, military officers, and settlers who encroached on and stole Indian lands. She won support from several newspaper editors who published her reports. One of her favorite targets was U.S. Secretary of Interior Carl Schurz, who she once called "the most adroit liar I ever knew.”



Carl Schurz,1870-1880; Public domain

In 1881, Helen Hunt Jackson published A Century of Dishonor, in which she condemned state and federal Indian policies. She recounted a shameful history of broken treaties and called for sweeping governmental reforms toward Native Americans. The author sent a copy to every member of Congress with a quote from Benjamin Franklin printed in red on the cover: "Look upon your hands: they are stained with the blood of your relations."

The New York Times later wrote that Hunt "soon made enemies at Washington by her often unmeasured attacks, and while on general lines she did some good, her case was weakened by her inability, in some cases, to substantiate the charges she had made; hence many who were at first sympathetic fell away."

Helen went to southern California to rest. Interested in the area's missions and Mission Indians, she began another investigation. In Los Angeles, she met Don Antonio Coronel, former mayor of the city and an authority on early Californio life. He had served as inspector of missions for the Mexican government. Coronel told her about the plight of the Mission Indians under Mexican rule and later the U.S., leading to their removal from mission lands. Under its original land grants, the Mexican government allowed resident Indians to occupy such lands. After taking control of the territory in 1848, the U.S. dismissed most Mission Indian occupancy claims. In 1852, an estimated 15,000 Mission Indians lived in Southern California. By the time of Jackson's visit, they numbered fewer than 4,000.

Jackson approached the U.S. Commissioner of Indian Affairs, Hiram Price, who recommended her appointment as an Interior Department agent. Her task was to visit the Mission Indians, ascertain their location and living conditions, and determine if lands should be purchased for their use. Jackson traveled throughout Southern California and documented her findings. She submitted her 56-page report in 1883. It recommended broad government relief for the Mission Indians, including the purchase of lands for reservations and the establishment of more Indian schools. A bill embodying her recommendations passed the U.S. Senate but died in the House of Representatives.

Jackson decided to write a novel to reach a wider audience. To Don Antonio Coronel, she wrote, “I am going to write a novel, in which will be set forth some Indian experiences in a way to move people's hearts. People will read a novel when they will not read serious books. She was inspired by her friend Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852). "If I could write a story that would do for the Indian one-hundredth part what Uncle Tom's Cabin did for the Negro, I would be thankful the rest of my life."

First Edition cover; Public domain

Jackson’s novel, Ramona, was published in 1884. The main character, Ramona, was an orphan girl, half Indian and half Scots, raised in Spanish California. The story relates her and her Indian husband Alessandro’s struggle for land of their own. The characters were based on people Jackson knew and the story on incidents she had encountered. A great success among a wide reading public, the book was popular for generations, with an estimated 300 reprints. Its romantic story brought many tourists to Southern California, wanting to see places described in the novel.

Encouraged by her book's popularity, Jackson planned to write a children's story about Indian issues, but did not live to complete it. Her last letter was written to President Grover Cleveland. In it she said:

Helen Hunt Jackson; before 1885

"From my death bed I send you message of heartfelt thanks for what you have already done for the Indians. I ask you to read my Century of Dishonor. I am dying happier for the belief I have that it is your hand that is destined to strike the first steady blow toward lifting this burden of infamy from our country and righting the wrongs of the Indian race."

Jackson died of stomach cancer in 1885 in San Francisco, California. Her husband arranged for her burial near Seven Falls at Inspiration Point overlooking Colorado Springs, Colorado. Her remains were later moved to Evergreen Cemetery in Colorado Springs.

One year after Jackson's death the North American Review described Ramona as "unquestionably the best novel yet produced by an American woman" and named it, along with Uncle Tom's Cabin, as the two most ethical novels of the 19th century. The book has never been out of print and has been adapted for four films as well as stage and television productions. 

The Haunted Places in Wyoming by Sarah J. McNeal

Happy Hollerween My Darlings

It's Halloween and, although I personally do not believe in ghosts, I love discovering haunted places. Since all of my western stories take place in  the fictional town of Hazard, Wyoming, but in a real location near the Green River, I decided to look up the haunted places along the river. There are 81 haunted places in Wyoming, I had to find a way to pare that down to a reasonable number I could blog about.
So, here is a little sompthin'-sompthin about the haunted places along the Green River.

Yellowstone National Park - Old Faithful Inn

The hotel is about 95 years old. Various apparitions including a man in a big black hat and a bride that was beheaded on her wedding night by her new husband. There was also an incident where two guests woke in the middle of the night in a steamy hot room with their night clothes completely removed and folded neatly at the foot of their bed. The radiator in their room was stone-cold.

Evanston - Wyoming State Hospital

A single sheet hangs in a room window facing the interstate. Authorities thought it necessary to place it there because of repeated sightings of a young girl reliving her death (caused by hanging) every night. Many people have born witness to this disturbing occurrence. There is no power and lights will be on at night a rocker that will be rocking howling noises strange floating lights are all reported.

Kemmerer - Fossil Country Museum

A dance team practices there in the late afternoon. They always hear thumps and bumps. They are the only ones in the museum at the time. In the museum part of the building you can feel a presence. It is very creepy. Also read somewhere that it's the 3rd most haunted place in the United States.

Green River - Sweetwater County Court House

On the Morning Watch shift in the Sheriffs Office you may see a tall figure walk past the windows in between the offices. You expect someone to walk into the dispatch center and no one does. This tall figure has also been seen to follow people in and out of the building. On a rare occasion you can feel someone touch your hair or hear a voice. In other locations of the court house there is known to be other hauntings. In the jail kitchen a coffee pot spilt by itself or mixing bowls fell off the counter. Downstairs in other offices people have reported a hand on their shoulder or a general uneasy feeling. No matter where you are in the court house around 3am chances are the hair on the back of your neck will stand up...if you are really paying attention

Rock Springs-Rock Springs, Wyoming Imperial Apartments

.

The Rock Springs Wyoming Imperial Apartments (recently renamed the 'RS Apartments') was built on top of an old prison graveyard, but that bodies were never removed before building took place. In some of the apartments you're likely to get cold chills, the feelings of being watched, and sometimes you'll even start to have dreams of the prisoners that were buried under the buildings. A 19 year old female in building D started having nightmares about a boy, around her age, with platinum blonde hair, whom she had never seen before in her life. The boy would get dragged onto the floor by 'something', then all of a sudden, she would be in the boys position looking up at herself. She felt a squeezing sensation come over her body and felt like she couldn't breathe. The feeling felt as though she was being posessed. Doors have also been known to slam on their own, furniture will move when nobody is sitting in it (i.e a rocking chair), and you'll get the overall feeling that you're not wanted.

Rock Springs - County Offices Building

there have been many strange and unusual happening in the building mostly at night when a lonely deputy is on duty making copies in the office or just simply sitting down and having a cup of coffee Report seeing people out of the corner of their eye when the building is empty. He shook it off again and went back to his reports when suddenly he turned around and there standing in front of him was an old man wearing a blue bathrobe and blue slippers. He said the old man just looked up at him and turned around and walked out.. The deputy not realizing what had just happened followed the man out the door but when he reached the hallway there was no one to be found! Another unexplained happening happened around the same time when the Emergency Management Director was sitting in his office early in the morning and was drinking a cup of coffee when suddenly someone slapped the back of his chair and sent him flying up on top of his desk! When he turned around to investigate he realized that no one was in the room with him let alone no one was even in the building at the time of the event!

Sweetwater-Sweetwater Co. Library

The Sweetwater County Library was constructed on an old Indian cemetery. Items move by themselves. Apparitions have been seen.

Rawlins-Rawlins High School

The High School is less than two blocks from the middle school and may be on the same ground. There have been sightings and sounds throughout the building but the worst area seems to be the auditorium. When it was being built a worker fell from one of the catwalks and was killed when he landed on the chairs below. There have also been a few other deaths reported in the area. An area under the stage where props and sets are kept called Siberia is a hot spot as well. Lights turn on and off by themselves things move around and you can hear voices when no one else is down there. Interestingly it is also the part of the school that is closest to the middle school.

Rawlins - Rawlins Middle School

There is a 2-3 acre area including RMS which is supposedly an Indian burial ground and passage of an old pioneer trail. Almost all of the houses in this area have reported sightings both of Indians and old-fashioned people. A janitor at the Middle School was working one night when a short well-dressed man approached her. She asked him his name and he bolted. She chased after him and as he turned a corner she could see that he no longer had a head. All of the janitors that have worked there have similar experiences including strange noises and moving objects. In two houses in particular about 2 blocks away from RMS the activity is especially bad. They have reported apparitions moving objects and have even recorded clear voices on a cassette tape hidden in an upstairs bedroom while the family was away.

Carbon - Medicine Bow- Virginian

A ghost is said to haunt the rooms and restaurant. Employees have reported items mysteriously moved around and have reported sightings of ghosts throughout the old hotel.

Medicine Bow - Virginian Hotel

Numerous cold spots and ghostly music in this virtually abandoned hotel in south-central Wyoming.

Encampment - Battle Lake/Slaughterhouse Gulch

There is an area between Encampment and the old mining ghost town of Battle known as Slaughterhouse Gulch. An explosion in a mine near the area killed a miner. There wasn't enough of him left to bury properly. So it was said he walked and roamed through Slaughterhouse Gulch. Dorothy Peryam and her first husband Horace Quivey her brother John and his wife Eda were camped in the area in 1918. The men were marking timber there for the Forestry Service. It was dusk and they had made their campfire. Dorothy and John were standing close to the road when they heard a hollow cough and looked up to see a man walking down the road toward them. He walked past them not looking to the right or left or at them. They could not hear his footsteps as he walked by. It was very peculiar in those days for a stranger to be alone in the mountains at dark without a horse or supplies. He would have approached the fire to talk. But this person acted as though they weren't there. Charles M. Scribner ran a stage line between Battle and Encampment. One of his drivers quit because on one occasion a man approached his team of six horses walked right between them and disappeared. The horses reared and bolted and it was all the driver could do to control them. He was sure it was the Ghost of Slaughterhouse Gulch.

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- Second Floor, 

Third floor

Second Floor: Wailing sounds hear at night from outside the windows faces can be seen within the windows. Basement Beating drum sounds within the basement. Basement- Any possible light cannot penetrate the complete darkness lingering within the area.

Third Floor: feeling of always being watched after dark.

Laramie - University of Wyoming- prep school

elementary to 9th Grade repots of locker doors slamming the felling of being watched in the library and felling that you are not alone in the girls bathroom on the second floor.

Burns - Burns High School

The Library there have been many sightings of walls shaking and stuff falling off the walls.

Here is the entire list of 81 haunted places is Wyoming (for inquiring minds)

Albany - Laramie- town square

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- Second Floor

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- South end of the West Wing

Albany - University of Wyoming- Knight Hall- Third floor

Arapahoe - Arapahoe Middle School

Burns - Burns High School

Byron - Rocky Mountain High School

Carbon - Medicine Bow- Virginian

Casper - Ivy House Inn B&B

Casper - Natrona County High school

Casper - Townsend Hotel

Casper - Wonder Bar

Cheyenne - Atlas Theater

Cheyenne - Deming School

Cheyenne - Francis E. Warren Air Force Base

Cheyenne - Old Underground Tunnels

Cheyenne - Plains Hotel

Cheyenne - St. Mark's Episcopal Church

Cody - Cedar Spirit Mountain

Cody - Coe medical center

Cody - Irma Hotel

Crowheart - Wind River mountains

Encampment - Battle Lake/Slaughterhouse Gulch

Ethete - Blue Sky Hall

Ethete - Ethete's Old Faith Hall

Ethete - The Esthete tribal office

Evanston - Old High School

Evanston - Wyoming State Hospital

Fort Bridger - Cemetery

Fort Bridger - Fort Bridger State Historic Site

Fort Laramie - Old Officer's Quarters

Fort Laramie - Fort

Gebo - Cemetary

Gillette - Kost Kutters

Green River - Green River Library

Green River - Sweetwater County Court House

Kemmerer - Fossil Country Museum

Laramie - Laramie Plains Civic Center

Laramie - Wyoming Territorial Prison

Laramie - University of Wyoming lab school

Laramie - University of Wyoming- prep school

Lovell - Cane

Lovell - Motorcross

Lovell - Shoshone Bar

Lusk - Silvercliff Motel

Lusk - The Yellow Motel

Medicine Bow - Virginian Hotel

Morton - Old Morton High School

Park County - Meeteetse- Cowboy Bar

Powell - Northwest College

Powell - Northwest College- Auditorium

Powell / Cody - Heart Mountain Relocation Center

Rawlins - Ferris Mansion

Rawlins - Old Wyoming State Penitentiary

Rawlins - Rawlins High School

Rawlins - Rawlins Middle School

Riverton - Acme Theater

Riverton - The Broker

Riverton - The Old Hosptial

Riverton - Splitrock Coffee & Bagels

Riverton - St. Stephens

Riverton - St. Stephen's Indian Mission

Rock Springs - County Offices Building

Rock Springs - Rock Springs Wyoming Imperial Apartments

Sheridan - The Historic Sheridan Inn

Sheridan - Kendrick Mansion

Sheridan - Public Cemetery

Sheridan - Sheridan Inn

St. Stephen's - St. Stephen's Mission- The Keil Gym

Sweetwater - Sweetwater Co. Library

Thermopolis - The County Library

Thermopolis - County Museum

Thermopolis - Hot Springs Public Health

Thermopolis - Kwik mart

Thermopolis - Old middle school

Torrington - Middle School

Upton - Old High School Site

Wind River Indian Reservation - The Reservation

Wind River Indian Reservation - Fort Washakie School

Wind River Indian Reservation - St. Stephens School Keil Gym

Yellowstone National Park - Old Faithful Inn

THE BEAST OF HAZARD

THE BEAST OF HAZARD, a Wilding series story, and part of the 2014 Halloween anthology, COWBOYS, CREATURES, and CALICO, volume 1, has just released as a single short story from Prairie Rose Publications this month.

A Terrorized Town…A Killer Beast…And Deliverance

Joey Wilding isn’t certain what’s killing the livestock in Hazard. Some believe it’s a bewitched beast, others a wolf gone rabid. As the town veterinarian, he’s seen mutilation before, but not like this, as if something enjoyed the killing.

When Claire Beau asks Joey to help her injured wolf-dog, and begs his discretion, he begins to suspect he has found the Beast of Hazard—and its beautiful mistress. But as he walks through the woods after dark, something more ominous than any wolf stalks him from the shadows.

Buy Links:  AMAZON  SMASHWORDS

To purchase the boxed set of COWBOYS, CREATURES & CALICO, volumes 1&2 Now only 99cents!!

Buy Links: Volumes 1&2 Boxed Set

To find more of my Wildings series of western romances, click onto "The Wildings" below.

 Sarah J. McNeal

Sarah J. McNeal is a multi-published author of several genres including time travel, paranormal, western and historical fiction. She is a retired ER and Critical Care nurse who lives in North Carolina with her four-legged children, Lily, the Golden Retriever and Liberty, the cat. Besides her devotion to writing, she also has a great love of music and plays several instruments including violin, bagpipes, guitar and harmonica. Her books and short stories may be found at Prairie Rose Publications and its imprints Painted Pony Books, and Fire Star Press. Some of her fantasy and paranormal books may also be found at Publishing by Rebecca Vickery and Victory Tales Press. She welcomes you to her website and social media:

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Swedish Immigrants homesteading in Kansas by Linda K. Hubalek

This past weekend was the 75th anniversary of our Svensk Hyllningsfest, Lindsborg's bi-annual festival honoring the Swedish pioneers who settled in the Smoky Valley of central Kansas. It's been held on odd years ever since 1941. The two highlights for most people are the school children dancing for the opening ceremonies on Friday, and the Saturday parade.

All the school children, grades one through eight, are in Swedish costumes and perform three dances per class. It's fun to watch the timid steps of the little ones, to the accomplished maypole dance of the oldest girls.

Saturday's parade theme was "Diamond Dala", for the 75th anniversary and because we have Dala horses all over town- from house signs- to four-foot dalas on street corners. My two favorite floats were themed "Dalas are a girl's best friend" and "Hello Dala".

You may ask, how is this related to our western blog theme of "Sweethearts of the West"?

Several ethnic groups settled in Kansas after the Civil War, because of the Homestead Act giving free land to anyone who would live on it.

My Swedish ancestors came to America in 1868 and settled in Illinois. A year later, a pastor from Galesburg, Illinois organized a group of over 200 immigrants to move and settle together in central Kansas. They drew by lottery what land they would homestead, and built sod houses or dugouts to live on the prairie.

At that time the railroad were being built across Kansas. For an income source, the Swedish immigrant men worked in teams, one man worked away from home laying the railroad tracks going west, while the other man stayed home working on their homesteads and taking care of two families.

So you may not think of a Swede being a part of the frontier and "wild west", but they, and many other immigrants, were living and working in that important era of western history.

 If you're interested in reading about the immigrants homesteading in Kansas, please enjoy the historical fiction book series Planting Dreams, featuring my Swedish ancestors.

Thanks for stopping by to enjoy today's Sweethearts of the West blog.

Linda Hubalek

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