Edward Meyer Kern (born 26 Oct 1822 or 1823 – 25 Nov 1863) was an American artist, topographer, and explorer of California, the Southwest, and East Asia.

Kern was born in Philadelphia, the son of John Kern III and Mary Elizabeth Bignell. He was trained as an artist.

His brother Richard Kern (1821–1853) was also an accomplished artist, and his brother Benjamin Kern (1818–1849) was a doctor. They joined him on several expeditions.

Expeditions
California

In 1845/46 Edward Kern accompanied the famous explorer Captain John C. Frémont on his Third Expedition into Mexican Alta California. Kern received a daily salary of $3.00. He served as cartographer as well as documentation artist, and collected botanical and animal specimens on this journey. Each night of the trip Kern would draw a field map of the day's route with longitudes and latitudes and sketches of landmarks.

En route in Nevada, Kern's drawing documented the Frémont party's killing of over 30 Northern Paiute Indians who were camped at the Humboldt Sink.

Just before they reached Klamath Lake, Klamath tribesmen attacked the expedition and several members were killed. A brutal counterattack by Frémont and his group upon a native village resulted in many Klamaths' deaths.[4] Kern recorded the counterattack in an engraving, that was later published with Fremont's report.
 

Frémont then ordered his main party – which included Kern and Joseph Walker – to travel the southern Sierra route over the pass Walker had discovered a decade earlier, while Frémont and a few others left were to cross the northern Sierra at Donner Pass. Frémont named the pass that Walker led his party through Walker Pass. Accompanying Walker southward was Edward Kern, who as the cartographer mapped the (at that time "Rio de San Felipe" as named by the Spanish) Kern River. Later, Frémont named the river after his artist. Kern’s Campsite in the Kern River Valley – at the junction of the South and North Forks of the Kern River – now lies submerged below Lake Isabella reservoir. However a historical monument for Kern’s site was placed above the reservoir near its east shore on Highway 178. During the 1846 Bear Flag Revolt against Mexico, 23 year old Kern was placed in command of Sutter's Fort and its company of dragoons in the Sacramento Valley by Frémont. That left John Sutter the assignment as lieutenant of the dragoons, and second in command of his own fort until 1847.

Sutter's Fort

In February 1847 Kern's forces were requested by several settlers who wished to intimidate Indians who had been involved in raids. Kern brought in 20 men, joined by 30 more led by John Sutter, and then proceeded on a series of attacks that killed 20 California Indians (see Kern and Sutter massacres).

Southwest

In 1848?1849 Edward Kern and his brothers Richard and Benjamin joined Frémont's Fourth Expedition, to the Rocky Mountains in present-day southern Colorado and northern New Mexico. By the time the last surviving member of the expedition made it to Taos on February 12, 1849, 10 of the party had died. In order to move more quickly to safety, it had been necessary for the brothers hide their goods (including sketches) in a cave. After arriving in New Mexico Territory, Benjamin Kern and Frémont's guide Old Bill Williams returned for the hidden goods but were killed by a band of Utes.

In August 1849 Edward and Richard Kern joined the John M. Washington military reconnaissance expedition to the Navajos in 1849, to punish the Navajos for raids on the New Mexico settlements and to secure a treaty with them, in addition to surveying the country.[9] The expedition brought both brothers back to New Mexico. Richard's role, as second assistant and artist, was to make portraits of Indian chiefs, costume, scenery, geological formations, ruins, and to copy ancient writings found on the sides of stone. Edward's role was as first assistant and topographer.

Edward and Richard stayed and lived in New Mexico for two years, working for the Corps of Topographical Engineers. The Kern brothers gave the American public some of its earliest authentic graphic images of the people and landscape of Arizona, New Mexico, and southern Colorado; with views of Canyon de Chelly, Chaco Canyon, and El Morro (Inscription Rock).

In 1853 Edward joined Lieutenant John Pope, who was looking for a better route between Santa Fe and Fort Leavenworth. His brother Richard Kern was killed in 1853, while on the Gunnison-Beckwith Expedition to survey a railroad route that would pass through the Rocky Mountains.

Asia

From 1853 to 1855, Edward Kern served on the ship USS Vincennes (1826) on an expedition to East Asia. The captain, Cadwalader Ringgold, was declared insane when they reached Hong Kong. Kern used both photography and drawing during this trip. The expedition landed on the eastern shores of Siberia, where Kern spent several weeks. They returned home via Tahiti and San Francisco.

In 1858 Edward joined Lieutenant John Mercer Brooke on a survey of the sea lanes between California and China, returning in 1860.

Civil War

During the Civil War, Edward served under Frémont, who had command of the Army of the West, but when Frémont was relieved of command, Edward was as well.

Personal life

Kern suffered from epilepsy, beginning at a young age. Late in life Kern established a studio in Philadelphia.

Edward Kern died in November 1863 of an epileptic seizure, at his home on 1305 Chestnut Street in Philadelphia. He was buried in Glenwood Cemetery, and later re-interred in New Glenwood Cemetery.

Legacy

Kern's diaries were discovered under the floorboards in an old hotel in Delaware Water Gap, Pennsylvania, and provided source material for David Weber's book on Richard Kern (brother of Edward). The diary and papers are now in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale University.

The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has over eighty of Kern's works.

The Kern River and Kern County, both in California, were named for him.
 

Little Britches (born Jennie Stevenson in 1879; date and place of death unknown) was an outlaw in the American Old West associated with Cattle Annie. Their exploits are fictionalized in the 1981 film Cattle Annie and Little Britches, directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Diane Lane as Little Britches.

Background

Born Jennie Stevens in Barton County in southwestern Missouri, to a farm couple, Daniel and Lucy Steve Her one known sister was Victoria Estella Stevenson. Apparently she dropped the "son" from her maiden name; her second husband was apparently named "Stephens", not "Stevens." For a time, therefore, she was Jennie Stevenson Stephens. The Stevenson family lived during part of the 1880s in Seneca in Newton County, also in southwestern Missouri on the eastern border of Oklahoma, then Indian Territory. The Stevensons then moved into the Creek Nation at Sinnett in Pawnee County in the northern Indian Territory. Little Britches followed stories of the Bill Doolin gang written by such dime novelists as Ned Buntline, like her friend Cattle Annie (born Anna Emmaline McDoulet).

Enchantment with crime

Little Britches joined the Doolin gang but lost her horse and returned home to the stern rebuke of her father. She was determined nevertheless to pursue a life of crime, and she married a deaf-mute horse dealer, Benjamin Midkiff, in March 1895. They established housekeeping in a hotel in Perry in Noble County in northern Oklahoma. Midkiff found her unfaithful, however, and he returned the teenager to her father after the two had been together for only six weeks. Within a day of returning home, she began riding along the Arkansas River in search of outlaw adventure.

Soon she apparently married Robert Stephens, but the union lasted only six months. At a community dance Jennie and Annie met the Doolin gang, later called the Wild Bunch (not the Butch Cassidy gang of the same name). These outlaws, all eleven of whom met violent deaths, maintained a hideaway in the Creek Nation Cave, located on the Cimarron River in Payne County near Ingalls east of Stillwater, Oklahoma. At a shootout in Ingalls in 1893, three marshals were killed.

Little Britches and Cattle Annie were excellent horsewomen and markswomen who dressed in men's clothing. The two women evaded law enforcement and became known for their daring pursuits throughout the region. The pair sold whisky to the Osage and Pawnee tribes and engaged in horse theft, operating either together or alone. They alerted other outlaws about the location of law enforcement officers.

In mid-August 1895, Little Britches was captured, but she soon escaped from a restaurant in Pawnee, Oklahoma Territory, while she was in the custody of Sheriff Frank Lake. Journalist accounts maintain that she left through the back door of the establishment despite the presence of a guard. She tore off her dress, grabbed the horse of a deputy marshal, and galloped away into the night. U.S. Marshals Bill Tilghman and his deputy Steve Burke quickly tracked down Annie and Little Britches. Burke caught Cattle Annie as she was climbing from a window, but Tilghman had more difficulty apprehending Little Britches, who fired a Winchester rifle at both lawmen. Tilghman then shot Little Britches' horse. As the animal fell to the ground, Little Britches was taken into custody and jailed, but only after she had tried to shoot Tilghman with a pistol and then to attack him physically.

Alternate reports

The Oklahoma Journal of History and Culture contends that Tilghman likely had nothing to do with the apprehension of Little Britches. Newspapers credited both captures to Lake, Burke, and Frank Canton, another deputy marshal. The publication further contends that neither girl had been involved with the Doolins or any other outlaw gang.

Imprisonment

The two young women were tried for horse theft and the sale of alcohol to the Indians before U.S. District Judge Andrew Gregg Curtin Bierer, Sr. (1862-1951) at his court in Guthrie in Logan County, capital of the Oklahoma Territory. Little Britches was incarcerated for two months in the Guthrie jail (under the name Jennie Midkiff, from her first husband of six weeks) as a material witness in a murder trial. She had witnessed a shooting while working as a domestic. Little Britches' two-year prison sentence for horse theft and selling whisky to the Indians began in 1895 at the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham. She was released in October 1896, under terms of good behavior, and returned to her parents. Her final years are unknown, though some stories circulated that she married for a third time, reared a family, and led an exemplary life thereafter in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Cattle Annie received a one-year sentence and was also sent to Framingham in 1895. Because of poor health, she was paroled, but remained in Framingham for some time.

Little Britches and Cattle Annie had thwarted the law for only two years in the Indian and Oklahoma territories, but their escapades proved a challenge to law enforcement and the judicial system. It is unknown if Little Britches was "rehabilitated" through her confinement in Framingham, one of the few prisons then available for female inmates.

In popular culture
In film

In the film Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), directed by Lamont Johnson, Diane Lane portrays Little Britches, Amanda Plummer makes her film debut as Cattle Annie, Burt Lancaster is an historically inaccurate and much older Bill Doolin, Rod Steiger is Marshal Tilghman, Scott Glenn is Bill Dalton, and Buck Taylor (known as the young gunsmith-turned-part-time-deputy and apprentice medical doctor on CBS's Gunsmoke) plays Dynamite Dick, a fictionalized character conflating elements of several real people. Bill Doolin was shot to death at the age of 38 by Marshal Heck Thomas; Lancaster was 67 when he played Doolin in the film.

In print

Novelist Robert Ward, a native of Baltimore, Maryland, wrote Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1977), his personal interpretation of the romantic legends of the Doolin-Dalton gang.

In television

Actress Gloria Winters (of the Sky King aviation adventure television series) portrayed Little Britches in a 1954 episode of the syndicated Stories of the Century, a western anthology series starring and narrated by Jim Davis. In this story, Little Britches became smitten with an outlaw named Dave Ridley, played by James Best, rather than Bill Doolin. Little Britches is shown at the conclusion of the episode leaving the Framingham reformatory and anonymously working in a soup kitchen in a slum section of New York City.
 

Bridget "Biddy" Mason (August 15, 1818 – January 15, 1891) was an African-American nurse and a Californian real estate entrepreneur and philanthropist. She is the founder of the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Los Angeles, California. She was born in Georgia.
 

Early life Biddy Mason was born a slave on August 15, 1818, in Georgia She was given the name of "Bridget" with no surname[was later given the nickname Biddy] and was given to Robert Smith and his bride as a wedding present. After the marriage, Smith took his new wife and slaves to Mississippi. Missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) proselytized in Mississippi. They taught Smith and his wealthy family and they converted. Slaves were not baptized in the church as a matter of policy. Members were encouraged to free their slaves, but Smith chose not to do so. Moving west The Smith household joined a group of other church members from Mississippi to meet the Mormon exodus from Nauvoo, Illinois, in 1847. The group traveled to Pueblo, Colorado, and joined up with the sick detachment from the Mormon Battalion. They later joined the main body of Mormons crossing the plains and settled in the Salt Lake Valley, Utah Territory. Freedom Church leader Brigham Young sent a group of Mormons to Southern California in 1851. Robert Smith, his family, and his slaves joined them in San Bernardino, California, sometime later. Bridget was among a large group of slaves in the San Bernardino settlement. As part of the Compromise

Biddy Mason

In 1856, Smith decided to move to the slave state of Texas and sell his slaves there. He told his slaves that they would be free in Texas, but Bridget did not believe him. She did not want to go to Texas and was worried she would be separated from her children like she was from her mother.

Bridget, helped by friends, attempted to escape from Smith. She and a group of Smith's other slaves traveled towards Los Angeles before Smith caught up with them. He took her and the other slaves and camped in canyon near Santa Monica. One of his slaves, Hannah, was having a baby which made it difficult to travel. Lizzy Flake Rowan, who had also been kept in slavery with Biddy in San Bernardino but had since been set free, told Frank Dewitt, the sheriff of Los Angeles county, of Smith's plans (David W. Alexander was actually the sheriff of Los Angeles). He issued a writ of habeas corpus and sent a local posse, who caught up with Smith and took the slaves into protective custody.

Bridget petitioned a Los Angeles court for her freedom. Smith claimed that Bridget was her family and she wanted to go to Texas. He then bribed her lawyer to not show up. She was not allowed to testify in court, since California law prohibited black people from testifying against white people. The judge presiding over the case, Benjamin Ignatius Hayes, interviewed Bridget and found she did not want to go to Texas and granted her freedom as a resident of a free state, as well as the freedom of the other slaves held captive by Smith (Bridget's three daughters—Ellen, Ann, and Harriet—and ten other African-American women and children). In 1860, Mason received a certified copy of the document that guaranteed her freedom.

Bridget had no legal last name as a slave. After emancipation, she chose to be known as Bridget Biddy Mason.[citation needed] Bridget's surname, Mason, came from the middle name of Amasa Lyman, who was the mayor of San Bernadino and a Mormon Apostle; the Lyman household being one with which Bridget had spent a considerable amount of time.
   
Los Angeles

After becoming free, she worked in Los Angeles as a nurse and midwife. One of her employers was the noted physician John Strother Griffin. Saving carefully, she was one of the first African Americans to purchase land in the city. As a businesswoman, she amassed a relatively large fortune of nearly $300,000, which she shared generously with charities. Mason also fed and sheltered the poor, and visited prisoners. She was instrumental in founding a traveler's aid center, and an elementary school for black children. Because of her kind and giving spirit, many called her "Auntie Mason" or "Grandma Mason."

In 1872, Mason was a founding member of First African Methodist Episcopal Church of Los Angeles, the city's first black church. The organizing meetings were held in her home on Spring Street. She donated the land on which the church was built. This land is now the site of Biddy Mason Park, a Los Angeles city park and site of an art installation describing her life.

Mason spoke fluent Spanish and was a well-known figure in the city. She dined on occasion at the home of Pio Pico, the last governor of Alta California and a wealthy Los Angeles land owner.

Death and posthumous honors

After Mason's death on January 15, 1891, she was buried in an unmarked grave in Evergreen Cemetery in the neighborhood now known as Boyle Heights. On March 27, 1988, in a ceremony attended by the mayor of Los Angeles and members of the church she founded, the grave was marked with a tombstone.

Mason is an honoree in the California Social Work Hall of Distinction. She was also celebrated on Biddy Mason Day on November 16, 1989.

One of artist Sheila Levrant de Bretteville's best-known pieces is "Biddy Mason's Place: A Passage of Time,” an 82-foot concrete wall with embedded objects in downtown Los Angeles (near where Mason lived) that tells the story of Mason's life.
 

Elizabeth "Libby" Thompson (1855-1953) was a prostitute and dance hall girl who worked in Dodge City, Kansas and other frontier cattle towns during the 1870s. She later became famous as Squirrel Tooth Alice, madam of a brothel in Sweetwater, Texas.

Early life

Born Mary Elizabeth Haley, Libby had a difficult childhood. The family lost its fortune during the Civil War, and in 1864 Comanche Indians raided the Haley farm in Texas and took young Libby captive. Libby remained a captive until 1867 when her parents paid a ransom for her release. From this point forward, Libby was a marked woman. Even though she was only thirteen, many people assumed that she had sexually submitted to the Indians during her captivity. Libby found herself shunned and ostracized from society. Libby soon took up with an older man who didn't care about her past, but James Haley found the idea of an older man taking advantage of his daughter so objectionable that he shot and killed the suitor. Libby’s reputation was soiled even further.

Life as a prostitute in the Old West

At the age of fourteen, Libby ran away from home in search of a fresh start. She wound up in Abilene, Kansas, but a young woman alone had few options so Libby became a dance hall girl and prostitute. In Abilene she hooked up with a gambler and part-time cowboy named Billy Thompson, brother of the notorious Ben Thompson. In 1870, the couple left Kansas for Texas and for the next couple of years Billy punched cows along the Chisholm Trail while Libby continued working as a dance hall girl in various towns across the southern prairie.

In 1872, at the age of seventeen, Libby was plying her trade in the cattle town of Ellsworth, Kansas, while Billy worked the gambling halls. By the spring of 1873, however, the couple was back out on the prairie with a spring cattle drive. Libby bore her first child on the open prairie and, to make the child legitimate, she and Billy got married that year.

In the summer of 1873, Billy Thompson, in a state of drunkenness, shot and killed Ellsworth town sheriff Chauncey Whitney. He was arrested but got the cattle company he worked for to bail him out. Because he was fearful of being shot himself by vengeful family members, Billy and Libby ran. The couple wound up in Dodge City, where Billy gambled and Libby worked as a dancer and prostitute. It was here that the Thompsons made the acquaintance of Wyatt Earp and his paramour, Mattie Blaylock.

After Dodge City, the Thompsons drifted to Colorado but by 1876 they had moved to Sweetwater, Texas, which became their permanent home. In Sweetwater the couple purchased a ranch outside of town and a dance hall in town. Libby ran the dance hall which was a front for a brothel. Libby was not embarrassed by her profession, and it was as a madam in Sweetwater that she became known for keeping her pet prairie dogs. These, along with a gap in her teeth, gave her the sobriquet, "Squirrel Tooth Alice."

In 1897, after twenty-four years of marriage and nine children, Billy Thompson died of consumption. Libby Thompson continued running her Sweetwater brothel until she retired in 1921 at the age of sixty-six. Although most of her sons had turned to crime and her daughters followed her into prostitution, Libby spent her elderly years living in Palmdale, California, among her various children’s homes. On April 13, 1953, Libby Thompson died at the Sunbeam Rest Home in Los Angeles, California, at the age of ninety-eight.