UPDATE — Custer Invites Gibbs’ Boys to Little Bighorn!

Source: Blairs of Richmond, Virginia; the descendants of Reverend John Durburrow Blair and Mary Winston Blair, his wife. by Blair, Louisa Coleman Gordon, Publication date 1933 pp. 11

RESEARCHER’S NOTE: I assumed that the battle the boys would have been a part of would have been the Battle of Little Big Horn. However, after more thoughtful consideration, I believe the action is called the Battle of Washita River. This change in thinking occurred because this battle occurred on November 27, 1868, and Alfred Gibbs died on December 26, 1868. Peggy F. Gibbs and both boys would have been sent back east after Alfred’s death. Because the Battle of Little Bighorn took place June 25–26, 1876, the family had already traveled back east.

ORIGINAL POST: You read that right! George Armstrong Custer invited Alfred Gibbs’ two boys to ride with him on an adventure that ended in the Battle of Little Bighorn! In a note captured in the book cited above, the wife of Alfred Gibbs stepped in when  her two little sons, Alfred and Blair Gibbs, were invited by General Custer to go with him on his famous raid, an adventure Mrs. Gibbs prudently declined for them, and so the boys escaped the tragedy of that massacre. “But for the grace of God?”

I found this to be an interesting little tidbit of history.

-G

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