On June 25, 1876, American Indians overwhelmed more than 200 soldiers, including Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer of the 7th Cavalry, in a battle forever known as Custer's Last Stand.
Among those killed that day were five members of the Custer family, including Thomas Ward Custer, one of George's brothers.
Sixty-eight years after the battle, to the day, Phil Dyer was born in Iowa, a coincidence that bears on this story.
"When I was real young I learned it happened on my birthday," recalled Dyer, a Bellingham real estate agent. "I grew real attached to it."
Indeed he did. Soon after retiring from the U.S. Coast Guard in 1989, Dyer visited Little Bighorn Battlefield National Monument for the first time. He soon joined the Custer Battlefield Historical and Museum Association, and has returned to the battlefield nearly every June for "battle week," an annual gathering of about 200 people who discuss Custer-related research, visit and do fieldwork at the monument.
Dyer is in frequent contact with other Custer researchers and has more than 300 books, articles and other publications on the subject.
"I've got a stack of books this tall that I'm behind on," he said, holding his hand about a foot above his office desk.
So it was with considerable interest that Dyer read an article linking Whatcom County to the Custer family saga. Enterprise Cemetery, Dyer learned, is the final resting place of Rebecca (sometimes spelled Rebekah) (Minerd) Behme Kearns.
While a young woman in Ohio, Rebecca bore a son out-of-wedlock with Thomas W. Custer, the dashing Civil War hero who died a bachelor at the now-famous battle in Montana.
Their son, Thomas C. "Tommy" Custer, was his father's only known child, although others are rumored to exist. Rebecca's parents raised the boy, but he kept his father's surname.
The Minerd clan and Custer clan knew each. Rebecca's parents and Thomas' parents were neighbors in eastern Ohio, and neighbors again when both families moved west to richer farmland near Tontogany, Ohio.
About five years after her son was born, Rebecca married Nathaniel (sometimes spelled Nathanael) Behme, with whom she had a daughter and two sons, and moved to Minnesota.
But "Tommy" was never far from her mind, and she grieved when, as a married man about 25 years old, he died of typhoid fever. She lacked the money to visit him on his deathbed.
When Rebecca and her husband parted ways about 1898, the children remained with Nathaniel and she moved to Washington. At some point, she married a Mr. Kearns. They, too, later separated.
Rebecca lived and worked as a seamstress in several places in Washington, sending letters to relatives about problems with her second husband, her health problems and her lack of money.
"She had a pretty hardscrabble life out here," Dyer said.
Meanwhile, during the early 1900s, Nathaniel Behme moved to Whatcom County, where a brother may have settled earlier. Nathaniel died in September 1914 and was buried in Enterprise Cemetery.
Rebecca lived with her daughter, Clara Kiggins, in Blaine from 1914 until she died of cancer in August 1915. She is buried at Enterprise, too, alongside her first husband.
According to extensive research, Thomas W. Custer, the slain soldier, and the extended Custer family publicly shunned "Tommy."
"It was a secret everyone knew but no one publicly discussed, presumably out of respect for the Custer family and others involved who felt a taint of shame," wrote Mark Miner, a researcher in Pennsylvania and the author of an article titled "Tontogany's Deep Secret."
The article was published by Little Big Horn Associates, a national group of Custer buffs and historians, including Dyer and Miner.
Dyer, too, wonders how and why the Custers managed to keep the boy's existence generally hush-hush until modern researchers pieced the story together.
"How do you keep a secret like that, especially when he's named Tom Custer?" Dyer asked.
Coincidence number two: Enterprise Cemetery is in Custer.
By the way, Custer, the local community, was named for Albert Custer, a settler, storekeeper and postmaster in the 1880s.
ANOTHER CUSTER CONNECTION
Rebecca Kearns isn't the only person connected to Whatcom County and to the Custer family.
James Forsyth, a close friend of George Custer, was an Army officer at Fort Bellingham from 1856 until 1861.
While here, Forsyth had a Coast Salish wife, with whom he had a daughter, said Candace Wellman, a Bellingham historian. Forsyth abandoned them when he left the Northwest to fight in the Civil War, she said.
Ten years after Custer died, Forsyth was given command of the 7th Cavalry. In 1890, his troops, some armed with machine guns, killed at least 150 members of the Sioux, including at least 60 women and children, at Wounded Knee, in South Dakota.
ONLINE
Custer Battlefield Historical and Museum Association: custerbattlefield.org
Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield: friendslittlebighorn.com
Little Big Horn Associates: thelbha.org
Rebecca (Minerd) Behme Kearns: minerd.com/bio-minerd,_rebeccacuster.htm
