Dr. Henry R. Porter

Dr. Henry R. Porter PDF

Author: L.G. Walker, Jr., M.D.

Publisher: McFarland

Published: 2010-07-27

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0786482419

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"Custer came to me and said: 'Porter, there is a large camp of Indians ahead, and we are going to have a great killing.'" The words of army contract surgeon Henry R. Porter are chilling today in their matter-of-fact reference to the battle to come--a battle of which Porter would be one of the few white survivors. Drawing on his writings, this biography tells the story of Porter's transformation from young easterner to ambitious frontier settler and medical practicioner in mid-19th century America. In its details of frontier life, of the infamous Battle of Little Bighorn, and of Porter's later travels around the world (which ended with his death in Agra, India), the reader finds richness that brings history vividly to life. Appendices contain a list of items from the North Dakota Historical Society's Henry R. Porter collection and a detailed Porter lineage.

Deliverance from the Little Big Horn

Deliverance from the Little Big Horn PDF

Author: Joan Nabseth Stevenson

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2012-10-29

Total Pages: 232

ISBN-13: 0806187905

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Of the three surgeons who accompanied Custer’s Seventh Cavalry on June 25, 1876, only the youngest, twenty-eight-year-old Henry Porter, survived that day’s ordeal, riding through a gauntlet of Indian attackers and up the steep bluffs to Major Marcus Reno’s hilltop position. But the story of Dr. Porter’s wartime exploits goes far beyond the battle itself. In this compelling narrative of military endurance and medical ingenuity, Joan Nabseth Stevenson opens a new window on the Battle of the Little Big Horn by re-creating the desperate struggle for survival during the fight and in its wake. As Stevenson recounts in gripping detail, Porter’s life-saving work on the battlefield began immediately, as he assumed the care of nearly sixty soldiers and two Indian scouts, attending to wounds and performing surgeries and amputations. He evacuated the critically wounded soldiers on mules and hand litters, embarking on a hazardous trek of fifteen miles that required two river crossings, the scaling of a steep cliff, and a treacherous descent into the safety of the steamboat Far West, waiting at the mouth of the Little Big Horn River. There began a harrowing 700-mile journey along the Yellowstone and Missouri Rivers to the post hospital at Fort Abraham Lincoln near Bismarck, Dakota Territory. With its new insights into the role and function of the army medical corps and the evolution of battlefield medicine, this unusual book will take its place both as a contribution to the history of the Great Sioux War and alongside such vivid historical novels as Son of the Morning Star and Little Big Man. It will also ensure that the selfless deeds of a lone “contract” surgeon—unrecognized to this day by the U.S. government—will never be forgotten.

A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn

A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn PDF

Author: James Madison DeWolf

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2017-05-25

Total Pages: 288

ISBN-13: 0806158123

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In spring 1876 a physician named James Madison DeWolf accepted the assignment of contract surgeon for the Seventh Cavalry, becoming one of three surgeons who accompanied Custer’s battalion at the Battle of the Little Big Horn. Killed in the early stages of the battle, he might easily have become a mere footnote in the many chronicles of this epic campaign—but he left behind an eyewitness account in his diary and correspondence. A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn is the first annotated edition of these rare accounts since 1958, and the most complete treatment to date. While researchers have known of DeWolf’s diary for many years, few details have surfaced about the man himself. In A Surgeon with Custer at the Little Big Horn, Todd E. Harburn bridges this gap, providing a detailed biography of DeWolf as well as extensive editorial insight into his writings. As one of the most highly educated men who traveled with Custer, the surgeon was well equipped to compose articulate descriptions of the 1876 campaign against the Indians, a fateful journey that began for him at Fort Lincoln, Dakota Territory, and ended on the battlefield in eastern Montana Territory. In letters to his beloved wife, Fannie, and in diary entries—reproduced in this volume exactly as he wrote them—DeWolf describes the terrain, weather conditions, and medical needs that he and his companions encountered along the way. After DeWolf’s death, his colleague Dr. Henry Porter, who survived the conflict, retrieved his diary and sent it to DeWolf’s widow. Later, the DeWolf family donated it to the Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument. Now available in this accessible and fully annotated format, the diary, along with the DeWolf’s personal correspondence, serves as a unique primary resource for information about the Little Big Horn campaign and medical practices on the western frontier.

Steamboats in Dakota Territory

Steamboats in Dakota Territory PDF

Author: Tracy Potter

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2017-07-17

Total Pages: 127

ISBN-13: 1625857632

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Steamboats transformed the Missouri Valley. Enterprising men like Joseph La Barge and Grant Marsh braved financial and mortal danger to reap fantastic profits from trade in furs and buffalo robes. But steamboats also brought smallpox, soldiers and settlers to the lands of Native Americans. Although they began as agents of commerce, steamboats came to represent confinement and war to Sitting Bull and his people. Railroads made Yankton, Bismarck and Fargo rise as ports for a few years and then drove steamboats out of business, ending an era filled with colorful characters and dramatic moments. Author Tracy Potter takes an in-depth look at the boats, trade and cultural and military relations between the United States and the native inhabitants of Dakota Territory.

A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn

A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn PDF

Author: Todd E. Harburn

Publisher: University of Oklahoma Press

Published: 2023-02-23

Total Pages: 257

ISBN-13: 0806192445

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Of the three physicians at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Doctor George Edwin Lord (1846–76) was the lone commissioned medical officer, an assistant surgeon with the United States Army’s 7th Cavalry—one more soldier caught up in the U.S. government’s efforts to fulfill what many people believed was the young country’s “Manifest Destiny.” A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn tells Lord’s story for the first time. Notable for its unique angle on Custer’s last stand and for its depiction of frontier-era medicine, the book is above all a compelling portrait of the making of an army medical professional in mid-nineteenth-century America. Drawing on newly discovered documents, Todd E. Harburn describes Lord’s education and training at Bowdoin College in Maine and the Chicago Medical College, detailing what the study of medicine entailed at the time for “a young man of promise . . . held in universal esteem.” Lord’s time as a contract physician with the army took him in 1874 to the U.S. Northern Boundary Survey. From there Harburn recounts how, after a failed romance and the rigors of the U.S. Army Medical Board examination, the young doctor proceeded to his first—and only—appointment as a post surgeon, at Fort Buford in Dakota Territory. What followed, of course, was Lord’s service, and his death, in the Little Big Horn campaign, which this book shows us for the first time from the unique perspective of the surgeon. A portrait of a singular figure in the milieu of the American military’s nineteenth-century medical elite, A Life Cut Short at the Little Big Horn offers a close look at a familiar chapter in U.S. history, and a reminder of the humanity lost in a battle that resonates to this day.

New York Mills

New York Mills PDF

Author: Eugene E. Dziedzic

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 0738597589

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New York Mills, named for the textile factories that were once the backbone of the surrounding village's economy, ranked among the foremost producers of quality fabrics in the country. Originally a wilderness area just south of the Mohawk River, the community began with a few scattered homes after the establishment of a small textile mill in 1808. Nourished by a growing economy, the village attracted a mosaic of Welsh and French-Canadian workers in the 19th century, followed by Poles, Syro-Lebanese, and Italians in the early 20th century. A hotbed of abolitionism in the antebellum years, it sent high percentages of its residents off to the Civil War, World War I, and World War II. In 1912 and 1916, its Polish residents founded a union and led textile strikes that were considered the most successful in the nation at that time. With the eventual closing of the mills in the 1950s, residents found employment in the surrounding area as the village evolved into a stable and prosperous suburban community.