It’s rare that I have a difficult time locating a cemetery but sometimes it happens.

Before I get into that, I’d like to share a little bit about the history of Yellowstone National Park. It’s the first U.S. National Park, established in 1872 and covers parts of three states (Wyoming, Montana and Idaho). It’s vast, covering 2,219,791 acres. But it did not start out as the family-friendly tourist destination it is today.

First U.S. National Park

While Yellowstone was a haven of unspoiled wilderness that attracted adventure seekers, it also beckoned to those who weren’t above breaking the law. Ongoing poaching and destruction of natural resources within the park went on unstopped until the U.S. Army arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs in 1886 and built Camp Sheridan. It was located near the northeast border of the park, close to the Wyoming/Montana border.

Over the next 22 years, as the Army built permanent structures, Camp Sheridan was renamed Fort Yellowstone. Soldiers were needed to maintain law and order in this newly developing part of the country.

When the National Park Service (NPS) was created in 1916, many of the management principles developed by the Army were adopted by the new agency. The Army turned control over to the NPS on October 31, 1918.

Many of the old buildings (35 to be exact) from those Army days still exist in Mammoth Hot Springs and it was fun to walk around them. The Aldridge Visitor Center is a historic structure originally built by the Army in 1909 as bachelor officers’ quarters for the cavalry troops who protected the park before the creation of the NPS.

Before we arrived at Mammoth Hot Springs (which was no easy undertaking due to extensive road construction), I knew that Fort Yellowstone Cemetery was located somewhere in the area. I just wasn’t sure exactly where because there’s little information online about where it is. Looking on Google Maps now, I am thankful someone has since added it.

History of Fort Yellowstone Cemetery

Fortunately, the book “Death in Yellowstone” does provide some history about the cemetery. The original 58 interments took place between 1888 and 1957. U.S. Army soldiers, members of their families, and civilian employees of the Army along with members of their families were buried there. However, 20 of the graves were moved to the Little Bighorn Battlefield near Crow Agency, Mont. in 1917.

In 1947, historian Aubrey L. Haines surveyed the cemetery and produced a list of the 37 graves that remain present today. Of those, 16 appear to be for children.

Our first attempt to find the Fort Yellowstone Cemetery did not go well. Someone had created a page for it on Find a Grave that included GPS coordinates that were incorrect. We ended up at the entrance of a campground outside of Mammoth Hot Springs and they had no idea what we were talking about.

Searching for a Cemetery

Unwilling to be deterred, we returned a few days later and this time I went to the Aldridge Visitor Center to ask a park ranger. The first person I asked, a young employee, had never heard about it.

Fortunately, a ranger who had been there some years overheard my inquiry and knew exactly where it was. He gave us directions to where the old horse stables were located. It’s where a park concessionaire used to provide horses for tourists to ride on the trails. Fort Yellowstone Cemetery is in the woods right next to it, hidden from sight.

Frankly, I still wasn’t sure we’d find it. The skies were overcast and it was spitting rain. But there was no way I was giving up. We parked where the ranger told us and began walking down a rough trail going toward some trees. When I spotted the green fence, I knew we’d found it.

Small But Powerful

The first thing I noticed was the stillness of the place. The grass was a bit high in places but navigating the cemetery wasn’t hard. The grave markers were scattered about. Some were the white government issued ones, others grander. You can tell few tourists ever set foot in this place, much less actual park employees.

But as I walked around, I began to feel as if I’d stepped back in time about a hundred years. When Fort Yellowstone was home to soldiers and the people who did the hard work of keeping the place running, civilians and families attached to the buzz of activity. Some were older, but quite a few were young. Of the 37 graves there, 16 appear to be for children. Some of their stories are unknown but one sadly is written about in detail.

Murder in Yellowstone

The story of the murder of five-year-old Joseph Trieschman jolted me as few others have. I knew nothing about it when I photographed his grave, which is surrounded by a metal fence. I had no idea what horror had happened to this precious boy.

German immigrant George Treischman arrived in America at age 19 in 1866 and enlisted in the U.S. Army a few months later. He served three years, working as a wheelwright while stationed in Montana. After being discharged, he continued living in the West. George was married to Margaret “Margie” Gleason on an unknown date and they were at Fort Custer, Montana, (built in 1877) by 1886.

George and Margie had five children. Daughter Anna, was born in 1885 and Elizabeth in 1886, with son Harry born not long after. Another son, Arthur, died in infancy in 1892 and is buried at Fort Custer. Son Joseph was born in 1893. By then, George was a wheelwright at Fort Yellowstone.

I don’t know what was taking place in the mind of Margie Treishman but there were signs she was becoming unstable. On March 21, 1899, an item in the Billings Gazette reported she attempted to kill herself with a butcher knife. But 11-year-old Harry had found her in time and she survived. Another newspaper item reported on April 15, 1899 that she was “adjudged insane” and committed to the insane asylum in Warm Springs.

Her stay at Warm Springs was obviously brief and in June, Margie was back with her family. At least that’s what I can tell from newspaper accounts. On June 3, 1899, Margie grabbed little Joseph and cut his throat, killing him almost instantly. She attempted to do the same to Anna, Elizabeth, and Harry but they managed to escape.

A Fatal Leap

Over the next days, plans were made to take Margie to a facility in Washington to treat her mental illness and she was kept in the guard house at Fort Yellowstone. But the troubled mother had other plans. While in the custody of her husband and a Deputy U.S. Marshall, she slipped away and jumped off the train that was taking her to Washington. Her body was never found.

Joseph’s stone is styled in a way I have seen before, little shoes and socks on top. The motif always hurts my heart. The inscription on the bottom of Joseph’s stone reads:

Tis’ a little grace, but Oh Take care
For the hopes are buried there.

George Trieschman tried to pick up the pieces of his life after the tragedy, raising his children as best he could. He never remarried. He continued to live at Yellowstone until May 1928 when he was admitted to the U.S. National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers at Sawtelle, Calif. where he died on May 12, 1929. He is buried at Los Angeles National Cemetery.

Anna married and had children but Elizabeth remained single her entire life. Both lived to ripe old age. Harry became a Yellowstone park ranger, where Trieschman’s Knob was named after him. He died in 1950, all of his pallbearers fellow park rangers. He is buried at Mountain View Cemetery in Livingston, Mont.

Causes of Death Unknown

I know far less about other children’s graves I photographed that day. Harry Wilson was the son of Henry and Lizzie Wilson. I only know that Henry served as a commissary sergeant at Fort Yellowstone.

One reason Harry’s plot caught my eyes was because I noticed it was exactly like the one for Myrtie Scott at Gardiner Cemetery.

For reasons unknow, Harry died at the age of 14 months on May 3, 1893. That was only three years after Myrtie died. I suspect the same person supplied the fence.

Humble White Stones

Standing by itself was the simple white government issued gravestone for Baby Elliott. No first name, no dates. But according to “Death in Yellowstone”, the infant was the son of William J. Elliott, electrical engineer. The child died on Sept. 29, 1912.

What I did not known that in another part of the cemetery, Chris had photographed the grave of another Elliott child. This one was for Katherine Elliott, who died on Oct. 4, 1909. Again, we don’t known how old she was or how she died.

Located by Joseph Trieschman’s plot is the gravestone of little Emily Sievert. She died just short of her second birthday on Aug. 13, 1903. She was the daughter of Capt. Herman Sievert, who was an officer of Company F of the Ninth U.S. Cavalry Regiment.

From what I can piece together, Capt. Sievert was on leave while visiting Fort Yellowstone with his wife and Emily when the child died. He was stationed at Fort Walla Walla in Washington with the Ninth Calvary at the time.

So many little lives, ended far too soon.

Next week, I’ll be focusing more on the adults buried at Fort Yellowstone Cemetery.  I hope you join me.

I’m still at Gardiner Cemetery, after a two-week break. As I said, it’s a smallish cemetery but still has plenty of stories to offer. I was saddened to learn that just this week, a fire that began in a business on Main Street in Gardiner swept through a number of stores. Fortunately, nobody was injured but it will take time for those businesses to recover.

Montana was definitely the wild frontier for many years, even up through the early 1900s. Unfamiliar landscapes and drastic weather changes could catch many unawares, leading to an untimely demise.

Death of “Mormon” Brown

Alexander “Mormon” Brown probably got his nickname from having lived in Ogden, Utah much of his life. But by 1886, the 35-year-old was living in the Gardiner area. According to Lee Whittlesey’s book, Death in Yellowstone, the winter of 1886-1887 was brutally cold. Brown left Gardiner with a friend, Thomas Garfield, to stay in Thomas’ cabin some five miles away for a few days.

Unfortunately, because Brown struggled with alcoholism, he suffered from DTs (delirium tremors) while at the cabin. While Thomas slept, Brown left the cabin on the night of January 4, 1887 and disappeared. Brown was found the next day by a search party, his body nearly frozen halfway in the water of the Yellowstone River.

You can barely make out Brown’s name and dates on what looks to me to be a wooden marker. I suppose it could be petrified rock. Regardless, it’s rather amazing that it still exists at all.

Struck by Lighting

Mormon Brown’s demise was certainly an agonizing death but in the case of Robert Wright, he had no warning whatsoever of what was coming.

Although a native of Montana, Robert S. Wright was the son of Scottish immigrants. His father, Edward, arrived in America around 1895 and married Sibel Somerville around 1897. Robert was born in 1908.

According to Whittlesey, Robert was working for the Yellowstone Park Transportation Company. On July 18, 1929, he was driving a company truck on the Mammoth-Tower Road. The truck broke down near Oxbow Creek. It began to rain, so he sat down under a large tree. Lighting struck the tree, killing him instantly. According to a newspaper report, his body was found leaning against the split tree. He was only 21.

Another article I read said that Robert’s funeral reunited the extended Wright family for the first time since they had left Scotland, a group of about 35 of them attending. Robert is buried between his parents in the Wright family plot. Sibel died in 1937 and Edward died in 1938.

Two Markers, Two Cemeteries?

There’s a marker that looks fairly new for a child named Marie L. Douglass. It states that she was traveling with her parents, Nebraskans Volney and Florence Douglass, through Yellowstone Park in a covered wagon (along with grandparents and a sister named Ruth) when she died of a sudden illness on Aug. 13, 1906.

From what I could discover, the Douglass family lived in Bloomington, Neb. most of their lives. Volney was a native of New York but had lived in Nebraska from the time he was a boy. Sadly, Florence Douglass died the following year in 1907. Volney remarried and died in Bloomington in 1946.

The puzzling thing about all this is that there is also a marker for Marie in Maple Grove Cemetery in Bloomington, Neb. beside those of her parents. Is Marie buried in Gardiner Cemetery or in Maple Grove Cemetery? Which one is a cenotaph? I can understand why the family would choose to bury Marie in Montana while remembering her with a marker at home. But I still wonder exactly where Marie is buried.

UPDATE: In June 2021, I received an e-mail from Ruth Marie Steinkruger, whose mother was the half-sister of Marie Douglass. The stone in Maple Grove Cemetery in Bloomington, Neb. is indeed a cenotaph. Here’s what Ruth wrote: “Marie is buried at Gardiner. The stone at Bloomington, NE was placed by her parents when they returned from the trip to Yellowstone. My dad designed the stone that is in Gardiner on the 1980s to replace a very small marker that was originally there.”

“Little Gus” Smitzer and “Morphine Charley” Reeb

I photographed one grave marker for its unusual name than the look of it, since it appeared to be fairly new. “Little Gus” Smitzer, as it turns out, had a colorful past his stone did not hint at in any way.

Born in 1849, “Little Gus” Smitzer got his nickname for his short stature. I don’t know what his family background was but he was born in New York. By the 1890s, he was living in the Yellowstone area and had become friends with German immigrant George “Charley” Reeb. Like Gus, Charley was a bit of a drifter. Charley, who had an addiction to drugs, went by the moniker “Morphine Charley”. Together, the pair hatched a plan to rob a stagecoach to finance their itinerant lifestyle.

Lying in Wait

On August 14, 1897, Gus and Charley stationed themselves on Solfatara Plateau about four miles from the Canyon Hotel in Yellowstone Park. Each had a pistol and rifle, and wore a mask. They awaited the line of stagecoaches traveling from the Canyon Hotel to Norris Geyser Basin. Six stages filled with tourists and an army ambulance carrying two officers, their wives, and a doctor, rounded a bend to face the two armed bandits.

One by one, the robbers halted the coaches at gunpoint and relieved the passengers of their cash and coin. Nobody was injured and when it was all said and done, Gus and Charley netted about $650. But they were careless and left evidence of their misdeed on the trail of their escape, so arrests soon followed.

Charley and Gus were later sent to Cheyenne, Wy., where in May 1898 they were tried in U.S. Federal court, convicted of highway robbery, and sentenced to 2.5 years in the federal penitentiary by Judge Riner.

A Fresh Start

When the ex-thieves emerged from their incarceration, both were determined to stick to the straight and narrow. Charley was actually released four months early on good behavior. Upon his return home, Reeb personally stopped at Fort Yellowstone to thank Judge Meldrum for helping him to break his morphine habit. He went on to marry (and divorce) twice, fathering several children. But he never broke the law again.

Judge Meldrum assisted Gus as well, helping the former drifter get hired on at the buffalo ranch in Lamar Valley as an irrigation worker. Gus proved to be a good employee for a number of years. He died in 1931 at the age of 81.

The Short Life of a Young Wife

The last story I’m going to share is that of a young wife who died at the age of 19. She is alone in her plot but it is surrounded by a handsome wrought-iron fence that still retains decorative chains on each side. I find it somewhat amazing that they are still there.

Myrtle “Myrtie” Johnson was born on March 10, 1873 in Enterprise, Mo. to Noah Johnson (a Canadian) and Catherine Bechtel Johnson. She was one of several Johnson children who moved with her parents to North Dakota in her childhood.

On Nov. 17, 1890, at the age of 17, Myrtie married F.M. Scott in Pembina, N.D., just a few miles from the Canadian border. Her new husband was 33. I don’t know if they had any children. Myrtie Scott died on Feb. 27, 1893 for reasons unknown. It may have been childbirth or diphtheria or typhoid.

I could not definitively trace F.M. Scott after Myrtie’s death but there was a Frank Scott living in Gardiner in 1900 who was married in 1895 and had two young children. That may have been him.

I like to think that F.M. must have loved his young wife a great deal by providing such a pretty fence and marker for her. A single finger points to Heaven where surely she must now reside after her brief life.

Next time, I’ll be within the borders of Yellowstone National Park as I share stories from Fort Yellowstone Army Cemetery.