Seth Bullock (July 23, 1849 – September 23, 1919) was a Canadian-American Western sheriff, hardware store owner, and U.S. Marshal. Early life Many of the details of Bullock's early life are lost. He was born in Amherstburg, Canada West (now Ontario) on the Canadian side of the Detroit River. His father, retired British Army Sergeant Major and hero George Bullock, was known to be active in the politics of Sandwich, Canada West (later renamed Windsor, Ontario). He has been mistakenly believed to be related to British General George Bullock, Governor and Commander-in-chief of Bermuda; however, Lieutenant General Sir George M. Bullock was a boy and young man during Seth's exploits in Deadwood. Seth's mother was a Scotswoman named Anna Findley Bullock. Bullock was apparently not happy at home. His father was a strict disciplinarian, known to beat young Seth for minor infractions. Bullock ran away first at age 13, then again at age 16 to Montana to live temporarily with his older sister, Jessie Bullock. By age eighteen, he had permanently left home. Helena In 1867, Bullock became a resident of Helena, Montana, where he unsuccessfully ran for the Territorial

Seth Bullock

Around this time, Bullock and Sol Star opened a hardware store. In August 1876, he and Star decided that an untapped market for hardware existed in the gold rush town of Deadwood in the Dakota Territory. The two purchased a lot in Deadwood and set up shop there as the "Office of Star and Bullock, Auctioneers and Commission Merchants," first in a tent and then a building
 

Deadwood Deadwood was a lawless, rowdy camp. The day after Bullock's arrival, Wild Bill Hickok was murdered by Jack McCall. McCall shot Hickok in the back of the head while he sat playing poker. McCall was later found not guilty by an impromptu camp court and released, after which he promptly left town. The demand for law enforcement grew following Hickok's murder and Bullock's background made him the logical choice for Deadwood's first sheriff. Bullock took his job seriously, deputizing several residents and tackling the job of civilizing the camp. Despite (or perhaps because of) a reputation for fearlessness and an uncompromising nature, Bullock managed the task without killing anyone. Bullock had several 'run ins' with Al Swearengen, proprietor of the notorious Gem Theater, Deadwood's most notable brothel. Swearengen had a knack for making money from vice and shrewdly invested some of his profits in cultivating alliances with the camp's wealthy and powerful. When appointed sheriff, one of Bullock's first duties was to confront Dodge City Deputy Marshal Wyatt Earp, who was possibly interested in the sheriff's job. Bullock told Earp that his services were not needed. A week later Earp left Deadwood to return to Dodge City. Having attained some stability in Deadwood, Bullock brought his wife Martha Eccles Bullock and daughter to town from her parents' home in Michigan, where they had been living during this period.

Seth Bullock 1893

Bullock and Star purchased a ranch where Redwater Creek met the Belle Fourche River and dubbed it the S&B Ranch Company. Bullock is also credited with introducing alfalfa farming to South Dakota in 1881. Later he became a deputy U.S. Marshal, partnered with Star and Harris Franklin in the Deadwood Flouring Mill, and invested in mining, the local growth industry. Bullock and Star eventually expanded their business interests to the towns of Spearfish, Sturgis, and Custer.

Bullock met Theodore Roosevelt, then a deputy sheriff from Medora, North Dakota, in 1884 while bringing a horse thief known as Crazy Steve into custody on the range, near what would become the town of Belle Fourche. The two became lifelong friends, Roosevelt later saying of Bullock, "Seth Bullock is a true Westerner, the finest type of frontiersman."

Belle Fourche and the Bullock Hotel

Bullock and Star contributed further to the economic development of the region by convincing the Fremont, Elkhorn, and Missouri Valley Railroad to build a track by offering them 40 acres (16 ha) of free right-of-way across their land when a speculator purchased the right of way to Minnesela and demanded a high price from the railroad. The railroad built a station three miles (5 km) northwest of Minnesela in 1890, and Bullock and Star were instrumental in founding the town of Belle Fourche, offering free lots to anyone moving from Minnesela. Belle Fourche became the largest railhead for livestock in the United States and the county seat was changed from Minnesela to Belle Fourche.

Bullock and Star's hardware store in Deadwood burned down in 1894. Rather than rebuild, they built Deadwood's first hotel on the site—a three story, 63-room luxury hotel with steam heat and indoor bathrooms on each floor, at a cost of $40,000. The Bullock Hotel continues to operate to this day, now incorporating a casino.

Later life and death.

Bullock's friendship with Roosevelt led to his becoming a Captain of Troop A in Grigsby's Cowboy Regiment. This was another volunteer cavalry regiment which Congress authorized in the Spring of 1898. It was similar in composition to Theodore Roosevelt's Rough Riders which saw action in Cuba during the Spanish–American War. Although the troop never left training camp in Louisiana before the war ended, Bullock still earned the rank of captain. When Roosevelt became vice president under President William McKinley, he appointed Bullock as the first forest supervisor of the Black Hills Reserve. After Roosevelt was elected president, Bullock organized 50 people (including Tom Mix) to ride in the inaugural parade in 1905. Bullock was then appointed U.S. Marshal for South Dakota for the next nine years. Roosevelt later selected Bullock as one of 18 officers (others included Frederick Russell Burnham, James R. Garfield, and John M. Parker) to raise a volunteer infantry division, Roosevelt's World War I volunteers, for service in France in 1917.

Congress gave Roosevelt the authority to raise up to four divisions similar to the Rough Riders; however, as commander-in-chief, President Woodrow Wilson refused to make use of the volunteers and the unit was disbanded. After Roosevelt's death in January 1919, Bullock created a monument to him with the aid of the Black Hill Pioneers, dedicated on July 4, 1919, on Sheep Mountain, which was renamed Mount Roosevelt.

Bullock died of colon cancer shortly thereafter, on September 23, 1919, at his home at 28 Van Buren Street in Deadwood. He is buried in Mount Moriah Cemetery in Deadwood, along with Wild Bill Hickok and Calamity Jane, with his grave facing Mount Roosevelt. Bullock's grave is more than 750 feet away from the main cemetery grounds.
 

Martha Eccles Bullock (1851–1939) was the wife of Seth Bullock, one of the leading citizens in early Deadwood, South Dakota. She and Bullock were married in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1874.

Martha Bullock and daughter Margaret were sent to live with her parents in Michigan in 1876 when Bullock first left for Deadwood, then a wild lawless frontier town and no place for a family; after the town had become more orderly, largely as a result of the efforts of Bullock himself as sheriff, they joined her husband in Deadwood. She became a leading member of local society managing a household befitting the wife of one of the area's leading citizens. They subsequently had another daughter, Florence, and a son, Stanley.

In popular culture

Martha Bullock appeared as a supporting character in the HBO television series Deadwood where she was portrayed by Anna Gunn. Several creative liberties were taken with the facts surrounding the real Martha Bullock for the show's character. Unlike her character in the TV series, she was not originally the widow of Bullock's brother, but is reported to have been his childhood sweetheart[citation needed]; and similarly, rather than having a son by Bullock's brother, she and Bullock actually had a daughter, Margaret, at the time of Bullock's departure for Deadwood.
 

Anna Emmaline McDoulet, known as Cattle Annie (November 29, 1882 - November 7, 1978), was a young American outlaw in the American Old West, most associated with Jennie Stevens, or Little Britches. Their exploits are known in part through the fictional film Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), directed by Lamont Johnson and starring Amanda Plummer in her film debut as Cattle Annie, with Diane Lane as Little Britches.

Cattle Annie and Little Britches were crack shots with both pistol and rifle, but today they are mostly unknown outside of the film. Yet they were once among the most recognized names among outlaws in the Oklahoma and Indian territories, where they carried out their short-lived criminal ventures.

Embracing the criminal element

Anna was born in Lawrence in Douglas County in eastern Kansas, one of eight children of James C. and Rebekah McDoulet. When Anna was four years old, the family moved to Coyville in Wilson County, in southeastern Kansas. Anna worked as a hotel dishwasher and performed other odd jobs. When she was twelve, the family moved to the Otoe Reservation near Skiatook north of Tulsa in the northern Oklahoma Territory, where she turned outlaw. Annie and Little Britches followed tales of the Bill Doolin gang from reading dime novelists like Ned Buntline, who became famous for his mostly fictional account of Buffalo Bill Cody as a western frontier hero and showman.

For two years, Cattle Annie and Little Britches roamed the former Indian Territory, often working together and at other times alone. They stole horses, sold alcohol to the Osage and Pawnee Indians, and warned outlaw gangs whenever law-enforcement officers were nearby. They wore men's clothing and packed pistols on their hips. Their adventures netted headlines from Guthrie, the capital of the former Oklahoma Territory, to Coffeyville in southeastern Kansas, where the Dalton gang attempted to rob two banks simultaneously on October 5, 1892.

U.S. Marshal Steve Burke captured 13-year-old Cattle Annie climbing from a window in 1895. (Marshal Bill Tilghman had a more difficult task apprehending Little Britches, who engaged in a physical confrontation with the famous lawman before he took her into custody.) Annie was sentenced to one year in the Massachusetts Correctional Institution in Framingham. Because of health issues, she was soon paroled. She remained in Framingham for some time, having informed corrections officers that, if she returned to Oklahoma, she would likely have fallen back into her criminal ways. In 1898, she was working as a housekeeper for Mrs. Mary Daniels in Sherborn in Middlesex County south of Framingham. A few months later, she may have moved to New York City, where she may have died of tuberculosis.

Another scenario

Another legitimate report claims that Annie left Framingham to return to Oklahoma where she wed Earl Frost of Perry on March 13, 1901. The couple had two sons, Robert C. Frost (1903-1993) of Oklahoma City and Carlos D. Frost, later of Malibu, California. The Frosts divorced in Noble County, Oklahoma in October 1909, probably because Annie had joined a Wild West show. The historical museum in Guthrie maintains that, soon after the divorce from Frost, Annie married Whitmore R. Roach (1879-1947), a Texas native, veteran of World War I, and painting contractor in Oklahoma City, where they lived after 1912. They had resided from 1910 to 1912 in Fort Worth, Texas. This "Emma McDoulet Roach" is interred at Rose Hill Burial Park in Oklahoma City. She died in 1978, just short of her 96th birthday. Her newspaper obituary makes no mention of her early days or even the first name "Anna" but instead refers to "Emma", the shortened form of "Emmaline". The obituary indicates that she had been a bookkeeper in her later working career. Her services were held in her home church, Olivet Baptist in Oklahoma City.

Meanwhile, Little Britches also served a short sentence at the reformatory in Framingham, but her whereabouts thereafter is unknown. Some reports indicate that Little Britches returned to Tulsa, where she was married, had a family, and led an exemplary life.

In popular culture
Film

Johnson's film, Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), features Burt Lancaster as an historically inaccurate and much older Bill Doolin, Rod Steiger as Marshal William Tilghman, Scott Glenn as Bill Dalton, and Buck Taylor, particularly known to audiences as the blacksmith-turned-deputy Newly O'Brien on CBS's Gunsmoke, as the outlaw Dynamite Dick, presumably Dan Clifton, called "Dynamite Dan.
 

Mary Fields (c. 1832–1914), also known as Stagecoach Mary and Black Mary, was the first African-American woman star route mail carrier in the United States. She was not an employee of the United States Post Office's; the Post Office Department did not hire or employ mail carriers for star routes but rather awarded star route contracts to persons who proposed the lowest qualified bids, and who in accordance with the Department’s application process posted bonds and sureties to substantiate their ability to finance the route. Once a contract was obtained, the contractor could then drive the route themselves, sublet the route, or hire an experienced driver. Some individuals obtained multiple star route contracts and conducted the operations as a business. Fields obtained the star route contract for the delivery of U.S. mail from Cascade, Montana to Saint Peter's Mission in 1885. She drove the route with horse and wagon, not a stagecoach, for two four-year contracts: from 1885 to 1889 and from 1889 to 1893. Author Miantae Metcalf McConnell provided documentation discovered during her research about Mary Fields to the United States Postal Service Archives Historian in 2006. This enabled USPS to establish Mary Fields' contribution as the first African American woman star route mail carrier in the United States.

Mary Fields 1895

Born a slave in Hickman County, Tennessee, circa 1832, Fields was freed when slavery was outlawed in the United States, in 1865. She then worked in the home of Judge Edmund Dunne. When Dunne's wife Josephine died in 1883, in San Antonio, Florida, Fields took the family's five children to their aunt, Mother Mary Amadeus, the mother superior of an Ursuline convent in Toledo, Ohio.

In 1884, Mother Amadeus was sent to Montana Territory to establish a school for Native American girls at St. Peter's Mission, west of Cascade. Learning that Amadeus was stricken with pneumonia, Fields hurried to Montana to nurse her back to health. Amadeus recovered, and Fields stayed at St. Peter's, hauling freight, doing laundry, growing vegetables, tending chickens, and repairing buildings, and eventually became the forewoman.

The Native Americans called Fields "White Crow", because "she acts like a white woman but has black skin". Local whites did not know what to make of her. One schoolgirl wrote an essay saying, "She drinks whiskey, and she swears, and she is a republican, which makes her a low, foul creature."

In 1894, after several complaints and an incident with a disgruntled male subordinate that involved gunplay, the bishop ordered her to leave the convent. Mother Amadeus helped her open a restaurant in nearby Cascade. Fields would serve food to anyone, whether they could pay or not, and the restaurant went broke in about 10 months.

Postal service

In 1895, although approximately 60 years old, Fields was hired as a mail carrier because she was the fastest applicant to hitch a team of six horses. This made her the second woman and first African American woman to work for the U.S. Postal Service.

She drove the route with horses and a mule named Moses. She never missed a day, and her reliability earned her the nickname "Stagecoach". If the snow was too deep for her horses, Fields delivered the mail on snowshoes, carrying the sacks on her shoulders.

Later life

She was a respected public figure in Cascade, and the town closed its schools to celebrate her birthday each year. When Montana passed a law forbidding women to enter saloons, the mayor of Cascade granted her an exemption. In 1903, at age 71, Fields retired from star route mail carrier service. She continued to babysit many Cascade children and owned and operated a laundry service from her home.

Death

Fields died in 1914 at Columbus Hospital in Great Falls, but she was buried outside Cascade