Lucretia Marchbanks: A Black Woman in the Black Hills
Todd Guenther
South Dakota History, volume 31 number 1, 2001
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Early in the summer of 1876, a determined former Tennessee slave woman in her mid-forties took her place in the predominantly young, white, and male throng that crowded the streets of the booming new town of Deadwood in the Black Hills of Dakota. In addition to her race, gender, and age, Lucretia Marchbanks differed further from many of her contemporaries in that she was a veteran of older mining booms. As a teenager, she had been taken in bondage across the continent to California during the greatest of all American gold rushes. She and several siblings spent the decade after the Civil War in Colorado mining camps. Moving on to Deadwood, she parlayed her worldly experiences into success and fame. Independent and unmarried, she supported herself" as a cook, boardinghouse manager, and, later, hotel owner. Ten years after her arrival in the Black Hills, she "retired" to a homestead across the border in Wyoming, on the western edge of the Hills, and took up ranching.
From the time of her arrival until her death in 1911, Marchbanks was one of the best-known figures in the Hills, recognized far and wide as "Aunt Lou." Wlien her reputation filtered back to the East Coast, a perplexed New York newspaper editor queried, "Who is Aunt Lou?," to which the Black Hills Daily Times responded, "Well Tell You Who She Is":
Aunt Lou is an old and highly respected colored lady who has had charge of the superintendent's establishment of the DeSmet mine as housekeeper, cook and the superintendent of all the superintendents who have ever been employed on the mine. Her accomplishments as a culinary artist are beyond all praise. She rules the ranch where she presides with autocratic power by divine right, brooking no cavil or presumptuous interference. The superintendent may be a big man in the mine or mill, but the moment he sets foot within her realm he is but a meek and ordinary mortal. Aunt Lou is believed to be the first lady of color who set foot in the Hills. Her check is good at these banks for all she may sign for, and no one stands higher in the community than the sable lady of the DeSmet.
That 1881 response amounts to little more than a teaser and offers little substantive information to identify who she was, how she came to be a prominent figure in Black Hills history, and what kind of life she, as a female of a racial minority, experienced in the community she helped shape.
Other evidence reveals that Marchbanks identified so completely with the dominant white, Euro-American culture that, late in life, she claimed to have been the first white woman in the Black Hills, even though the color of her skin was 'black as the ace of spades."' She was considering the "big picture when she made her claim, and such a statement was not unique. George Bonga, who was "so black that his skin glistened," described himself as one of the first two white men in the fur country of Minnesota. Though frontier race relations were complex, and African Americans were unarguably second-class citizens in comparison to whites, Marchbanks, Bonga, and their contemporaries, whether black or white, ultimately recognized only two kinds of people: Indians and "us." Marchbanks and other African-American pioneers were part of, not distinct from, the Euro-American cultural front engaged in conquering the landscape and native inhabitants of the West. American Indians regarded the racial situation in much the same way, making little or no distinction between African Americans, whom they sometimes called "black white men," and white settlers. They saw people dressed similarly, using identical tools and weapons, living in comparable houses, and threatening their ages-old way of life.
In some ways, Marchbanks's gender made her stand out as much as her race did. Although female gold-rushers were less numerous than their male counterparts, western opportunities had attracted "gentle tamers," too. Women, African Americans among them, sought their fortunes in the mountains and prairies of the western territories. Life on the frontier may have seemed risky, especially for an unattached woman without a husband to protect her, but from the moment of her birth, Lou Marchbanks had nowhere to go but up.
She was born a slave near Turkey Creek, east of Algood in Putnam County, Tennessee, about seventy-five miles due east of Nashville, on 25 March 1832 or 1833- Her owners, a white family named Marchbanks, had roots in South Carolina. Her own father was the product of one of the horrors of slavery: the son of a slave woman and her white master. He was thus the illegitimate half-brother of the master's legitimate white son, Martin Marchbanks, who inherited their father's property, an inventory that included his own siblings and their offspring. Prior to the Civil War, Lucretia Marchbanks's father somehow managed to buy his freedom by paying his halfbrother the unimaginable figure of seven hundred dollars."
Lucretia was the oldest of eleven children. Her name was of Latin origin, suggesting that she was christened by her owners rather than her uneducated parents. She had four sisters, Margaret, Martha Ann ("Mattie"), Charlotte, and Mirah ("Myra"), and six brothers, Walter, Chester, Charlie, Finella, Finley, and Crocket. She grew up on her uncle/master's plantation, where she was trained as a housekeeper and kitchen slave. She never attended school and never learned to read or write. When Lucretia was in her late teens, Martin Marchbanks gave her to his youngest daughter, and she became the property of her cousin. Her new owner took her to California in 1849 or the early 1850s during the gold rush there. Although she eventually returned to her childhood home in Tennessee with her owner, the young black woman had seen the possibilities inherent in the developing West. Like others of her color, she viewed it as a place of economic opportunity and potential refuge from racial restrictions.
Freed during the turmoil of the Civil War, Marchbanks returned to the land of opportunity. Several of her siblings also succumbed to the westering urge that shaped the nation and settled in Colorado. By 1870, the Marchbankses were among 284,000 African Americans who lived in the western states and territories, where they comprised about 12 percent of the regional population. In Wyoming and Dakota, they represented a smaller proportion of the overall population, no more than one or two percent. As a region, the West was not a Utopia, and several territories limited black freedom with prohibitions against voting, jury service, and interracial marriage. School segregation was a recurrent issue. Even so, the West was a place comparatively full of possibilities, where new rules might be written for new communities. Between 1867 and 1869, several measures were enacted that enfranchised black men throughout the nation, and while these and other federal measures were sometimes protested by territorial citizens, the West still offered greater economic and political freedoms in comparison, for example, to Marchbanks's native Tennessee.
Lucretia Marchbanks's relocation to the Black Hills was a direct result of publicity surrounding Custer's 1874 discovery of gold in the area. In 1876, lured by the stories of wealth, she traveled to Deadwood, a boomtown in Dakota Temtory, via Cheyenne. A later, probably embroidered account relates that the party she traveled with had their horses stolen near Piedmont at the eastern edge of the Hills. The travelers recovered their stock with the help of a man identified as Wild Bill Hickok, whom Marchbanks otherwise had little use for and remembered as a rounder and broken-down gambler who ate in her restaurant, or so the story goes. Whether it happened to Marchbanks or not, the tale underscores the risks travelers took. A less-fortunate black woman named Rachel Briggs also traveled the Cheyenne-Deadwood Trail that summer, but she was not rescued from her attackers and paid with her life. Such experiences were not unique that dangerous year; many people were robbed or killed by white criminals or American Indians, including Lieutenant Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his command not too far away at the Little Bighorn River.
When Marchbanks first stepped down into the dirty streets of Deadwood on 1 June 1876, she found a crowd that differed little from those she had seen in California and Colorado. "Like all previous mining frontiers," explained mining historian Rodman Paul, "the Black Hills attracted a mixture of the restless, the ambitious, the curious, and the outlaws."'- On any given Sunday, when prospectors and miners came to town to get mail and supplies, you could find representatives from "every prominent mining district" in the West and newcomers from all over. Here, the buckskin-wearing hunter "jostled the dandified gambler and the pilgrim from New England." Everywhere were signs and sounds of new construction. On either side of the street, one could hear "the impassioned call of an itinerant minister of the Gospel" or "a loud-voiced gambler crying. The majority of these fortune-seekers were United States citizens still reeling from an economic downturn that struck the nation in 1873. News of gold in the Black Hills attracted thousands of men and a few women looking for ways to support their families or, as in Marchbanks's case, themselves. They were determined to better their lots in spite of all obstacles, "I will lose my life or find out what there is in the Black Hills or die, you bet," one man wrote of his quest.
Marchbanks was after gold, too, but had no intention of becoming a miner herself. That was man's work. While a few women tried their hands at prospecting, most worked in support or service industries, supplying the wants and needs of miners in exchange for some of their gold. Providing meals for the prospectors whose time was devoted almost exclusively to toiling through rock and mud after an elusive bonanza was one important source of income; Marchbanks promptly secured employment as a cook in Carl Wagner's Grand Central Hotel, a two-story frame building with offices, saloon, dining room, and kitchen on the first floor and a parlor and sleeping rooms upstairs. Cooking was a job that allowed Marchbanks to support herself and still maintain her feminine respectability. Generally speaking, women during the Victorian era were expected to remain home, tending the family unless circumstances required them to enter the realm of gainful employment. Occupations such as cooking and cleaning were seen as extensions of the home and, therefore, acceptable for women.
Maintaining feminine decomm was sometimes a challenge during the first violent summer. A little over two months after her arrival, a situation arose that would have terrified a less intrepid individual than Marchbanks. In August 1876, a Mexican man cut off the head of an Indian who had been killed by a third man and paraded the gruesome trophy around town. His riotous debauch eventually took him to the Grand Central, where he "boasted that he had killed an Indian and perhaps let it be known that he wasn't above adding another notch to his gun." As the nervous customers sipped their coffee and kept a watchful eye on the strutting killer, "Aunt Lou decided he wasn't exactly an attraction to the establishment and confronted him with a gleaming knife in hand and fire in her eye." Noting her keen blade, the man "decided he had urgent business elsewhere." In an era when women were expected to be quiet, submissive, and retiring, Lucretia Marchbanks gained a reputation for being unintimidated by male bravado or death.
On the lighter side, the Grand Central hosted Deadwood's first ball, a crude affair, on 4 July 1876 to celebrate the United States centennial. The floor and walls constructed of recently milled lumber wept "great amber tears" through decorations of barrel hoops twined with pine boughs. The celebrants' heads were protected from dripping sap by yards of unbleached fabric tacked across the ceiling. Candle shavings facilitated the dancers who glided across the sticky, unplaned floor. Only nine women were present, but that was enough for two quadrille sets as the one-fiddle "orchestra" serenaded partygoers. Whether Marchbanks was counted among the nine or excluded because of race or occupation is unknown.
Marchbanks, nicknamed "Mahogany" that first summer, was in charge of the Grand Central's kitchen. It quickly became evident that she was no ordinary, boomtown hash slinger. Although the hotel's guest rooms were crude, the board on her table was justly famous. The cost for room and board at hotels varied from twelve to twenty dollars a week. At about eight to ten dollars, boarding houses were cheaper, but people were willing to pay higher prices at the Grand Central to enjoy the results of Marchbanks's efforts over the stove. Her sunny temperament, outstanding biscuits, wondrous plum puddings, among other delights, set the culinary standard for the whole town. A competing hotel, the Overland, advertised that their kitchen was "presided over by a clean, neat, and intelligent white man." The race-based advertising campaign apparently failed and the Overland cook's name, unlike Marchbanks's, has been forgotten. In mid-September 1876, General George Crook and his staff, just arrived from the field, obtained quarters at the Grand Central, "the only first-class hotel in Deadwood City." Crook's adjutant, John G. Bourke, commented that, though the hotel was crude, the board was "decidedly better than one had a right to look for" in such a community." Not surprisingly, Marchbanks was soon offered a better position in the well-known Golden Gate Hotel. During these years, she became renowned among the camps for her wizardry in the kitchen and for her noble character. An employer's dream, she reportedly observed "the principles of right living—industry, frugality, honesty, and love of mankind."
While at the Golden Gate, the illiterate ex-slave's fame took a tremendous leap. In August of 1879, the community held a fundraiser to build a Congregational church. A diamond ring was to be raffled off and given to the most popular woman in the Hills. The contest created great excitement, and prominent among the competitors was Lou Marchbanks. Miners and mine officials alike rallied to the support of their "sable benefactress." Over thirteen hundred votes were cast at fifty cents each for three contestants, and Marchbanks won handily with a total of 652. She was declared the
most popular woman in the Black Hills and took home the diamond. The affair raised seven hundred dollars after expenses and was considered a great success. In a similar contest, she won a valuable silver service, including a sugar bowl, a butter dish, a cream pitcher, and a spoon holder.
As her renown grew, Marchbanks continued up the ladder of success. An offer of still better wages convinced her to manage the boardinghouse of the rich Father DeSmet Mine and cook for the executive table at its headquarters mansion near Central City. She worked there for four successive superintendents at the impressive salary of forty dollars a month. Marchbanks was by now considered the finest cook in the Black Hills, a compliment not to be regarded lightly WonderRilly varied and delightfully high-quality dining could be in many mining boomtowns. Lonely miners tended to eat out often, and those with enough gold in their pockets were willing to pay large sums for elaborate tables spread with well-prepared, even imported, foods. Competition among the various eateries was stiff, but Marchbanks was in a league of her own. She once baked such a marvelous mince pie for a man that he bought her a silk dress. the best known photograph of Marchbanks, taken 8 November 1881, shows her wearing the dress.
Her time at the prestigious DeSmet was not without turmoil. In May of 1880, the superintendent of the mine resigned. After the evidently unpopular foreman was promoted to the superintendence, the purchasing agent, the mill superintendent, the assistant superintendent, the superintendent of the ditch that supplied the mill with water, the mill engineer, and "Aunt Lou, the colored housekeeper, threw up the sponge" and resigned en masse.' The foreman did not last long, and after his departure, Marchbanks returned to the DeSmet. The following January, she accomplished a magnificent feat, feeding one hundred people in the "DeSmet mansion." The occasion was a testimonial dinner marking the departure of another superintendent and one of the finest gatherings to line a table in the Hills.-" Witliin the course of a few years, she became so completely associated with the mine in the public's mind that she was known as "Aunt Lou DeSmet," "Mother DeSmet," and "the last survivor of the DeSmet outfit."
Marchbanks's personal life is harder to discover, but a few episodes are recorded. On 25 July 1881, for instance, she attended a mountain picnic with mine superintendent Harry Greg's wife, two children, and two other women. While gathering berries, they got lost and spent nearly the entire night in the forest, as "a host of friends were barking their shins as they waltzed over the hills looking for them," Later that same month, Marchbanks received a telegram informing her that one of her brothers was dying in Leadville, Colorado. She caught the next stage to Sidney, Nebraska, where she continued her hurried journey by train. She finally arrived at Leadville, high in the Colorado Rockies, "just in time to close his eyes and feel his warm breath once more upon her cheeks before he breathed his last." She remained in Colorado, perhaps visiting other relatives, for nearly a month. She was welcomed back to Deadwood on 13 September.
In 1883, having worked for others for most of her fifty years, she resigned permanently from the DeSmet payroll. The Black Hills Daily Times reported that "Aunt Lou, relict of Father DeSmet, . . . has severed her connection with Ithe mine] and opened a private boarding house in Sawpit Gulch [near Central City], [and] is doing well and looks twenty years younger." She christened her establishment the Rustic Hotel. Within days, the venture was ''overrun with custom," a
simation a newspaper reporter predicted was likely to continue "as long as she provides such dinners as we partook of."^" In previous years, Marchbanks had worked hard for a salary. Now, she worked even harder for herself. She would not accept money from just anyone, however, and was not above turning away unsatisfactory customers. She was considered a good judge of human character. A boarder related that she would study an applicant for shelter at the Rustic and, if she did not like him, would say, "My dear boy, you had better board somewhere else." She could be even harsher. She once took in a penniless fourteen year old, kept him for two months, and affectionately called him her boy. When he foolishly loaned ten dollars to a man who would not repay the debt, she kicked the lad out, saying she would spank him if he did not go.
Lucretia Marchbanks was not the only African-American businessperson in the Black Hills, though she was certainly among the most respectable, Edmond Colwell ran a saloon in Deadwood in 1880. In Stuigis, then known as Scooptown because of the money that could be scooped from the pockets of troops stationed there, a black man named Abe Hill owned a saloon that catered to black soldiers at nearby Fort Meade. Though the Hills population was mobile and often visited between communities, it is doubtful that Marchbanks associated with eather Colwell or Hill, given their lessthan-savory professions. It is also unlikely that she had much to do with the black "soiled doves" who entertained the soldiers in Abe Hill's tawdry establishment. But there were others among whom she could seek friendship, for she was only one of a sizeable African American community, Negro Gulch, one of the many valleys draining Negro Hill in the northwestern Black Hills, was named for a halfdozen black miners who took out seventeen hundred dollars in gold (about 100 ounces) in a single day Anotlier group of black miners washed out fifteen hundred dollars in half a clay. In 1880, the one hundred African Americans in the Hills were among the most easily distinguished minorities among the many races and nationalities to participate in the gold rush (the Chinese were another). Marchbanks did not lack for opportunity for companionship with others of her race, but there is no evidence that she was romantically involved with anyone of any color.
Mirroring the general population, most blacks in the region were male and single. Though less cohesive than the Chinese community, African Americans met in large numbers on at least one occasion. On 1 August 1879, they held a large picnic celebration and ball to honor the anniversary of freedom for blacks on the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo. They were obviously concerned with issues related to racial equality around the globe. A white reporter described them as appearing to be "industrious, enterprising, [and] legal citizens." Even though the African-American community had a recognizable presence, its members did not control great wealth or have sufficient numbers to influence the political processes. In spite of the fact that blacks were generally regarded as intellectually and morally inferior to whites, white politicians nevertheless occasionally tried to court their votes. In 1880, recorded historian Watson Parker stated, "A certain 'Colonel John Lawrence' of Silver City, a town composed of one deserted log cabin somewhere at the head of a small gulch in the Bald Mountain District,' was busy trying to work up black support for his favorite political candidates. However, neither he nor his candidates had 'ever been known to do a disinterested act for the good of our colored citizens."
A significant black military presence also played a role in the settlement and development of the Black Hills. Their presence does not seem to have directly affected Lucretia Marchbanks, but it did catalyze race relations in the Hills for several years. In August of 1880, units of the black Twenty-fifth United States Infantry marched into Fort Meade, on the north end of the Hills, to join the white Seventh Cavalry in monitoring the Lakota Sioux Indians on reservations after the Custer debacle. During the early 1880s, the Twenty-fifth proved to be a considerably disciplined, meritorious outfit. In August 1884, however, a series of killings, rape charges, and lynchings of whites and blacks who frequented the red-light districts of Sairgis, including Ate Hill's establishment, came to a head, A black corporal who was accused of murdering a respected local doctor was dragged from the jail and lynched. His compatriots believed him innocent and responded by shooting up the town. Military investigators blamed the community for the problems. By 1888, peace relations had been restored, but the soldiers" services were necessary elsewhere, and the Twenty-fifth Infantrymen were transferred to posts in Montana.
Throughout the years of gold-rush excitement, racial harmony, and racial tension in the Black Hills, Lucretia Marchbanks's personal reputation continued to grow. Her nickname, "Aunt Lou," is evidence of broad acceptance on two levels. Admirers singing her praises often associated Marchbanks with their own mothers. And, indeed, she was a surrogate mother to many. She reportedly "guarded the human flotsam and looked after the health, comfort, and welfare of the miners as if she were their natural mother." One miner stated that, next to his own mother, Marchbanks was the finest woman he ever knew. An early woman resident claimed that "Aunt Lou" was like a mother to all die women in the Hills. She delivered their babies and nursed young and old when they were sick or hurt. Her services to the victims of mountain fever were especially appreciated. She assumed roles typically played by family members back home. This familial warmth and responsibility contributed to her nickname. The sobriquet, however,
was commonly applied to black women all over the West who "knew their place" in society. Being called "aunt" was a sign of white acceptance, a flag signifying that this black woman was not "uppity." African Americans who openly questioned race-based social stratification or related issues were often regarded as dangerous. Marchbanks's social prominence, her positions of responsibility in hotels and boardinghouses, and her subsequent status as an independent businesswoman could have caused some consternation, but the force of her remarkable personality seems to have overcome many stigmas. Even so, some people could not accept that a woman of her caliber and success could be black. On one occasion, when asked if she had any white blood in her veins, she responded, "No child, .. . all I ever seen was red.
With reddish hair and dressed conventionally in bustle, ruffles, stays, and a long chain around her neck, Marchbanks was an attractive woman. In a community with many men and few eligible females, she was much sought after in spite of the stumbling block of race. Although there is no evidence to suggest that she ever encouraged any suitor, her playfulness with gender and racial roles is on record. A "backward" young Gennan immigrant who had never seen a black person before behaved awkwardly in her presence. "Asking him in a joking way if he would like to many her, a query that completely cowed the young man," an early historian noted, "she pretended to be much discomfited because he did not accept her overture." The same source maintains that many "an ebony colored man, and probably not a few lonely prospectors of a lighter hue, would have been proud to call her his wife. .. . if anyone is to believe the old time miners. Providence left her a virgin that the people of the Black Hills might call her Aunt Lou. Possessed of a deep religious nature, she was a sincere, devout Christian, a communicant of the Methodist church. The smut of early-day scandal never touched the life of this lowly colored woman. There was truth in her quaint remark, intended no doubt as a jest, that she was the first respectable woman in the Black Hills.
When the boom ended and the crowds departed, leaving hotels and restaurants sparsely populated, Marchbanks chose to remain. She encouraged her family to come to the Hills that had been so good to her and find work themselves. Her younger sister, Martha Ann, called Mattie, finally took her advice. On 27 March 1885, she arrived on the stage after a long, cold trip from Sidney, Nebraska. The newspaper noted the event, listing "Miss Marchbanks" in the Arrivals and Departures column. The younger Marchbanks became popular and did not remain single long, marrying Hany Marshall, an African-American barber at Lead City. Not too long afterward, the couple moved to Pueblo, Colorado, where he served as a policeman and she raised a family.
A few months after Mattie first arrived in the Hills, and only two years after opening her own Rustic Hotel, Marchbanks announced that following a half-century spent slaving in the kitchen, she was tilled of cooking and cleaning for the hordes, even in her own establishment. By June, she had a ranch near Rocky Ford in the western Black Hills between Beulah and Sundance, Wyoming. The ex-slave woman and former hotelier was going into small-time ranching across the border where women, regardless of color, had been able to vote and participate fully in governing their affairs since 1869- That fall, she did some remodeling on the Rustic before selling it, and by 1886, she owned a small herd of forty-nine range cattle worth $784. In October of that year, she paid $500 to A. C. Settle to complete the purchase of her ranch and Ixícame a deeded landowner, attaining an equal footing with the grandfather who had owned her as a child.
The transition was not without its rough spots. In June 1885, Marchbanks was returning to Central City, Dakota, still her primary place of residence, after a visit to the ranch when she was involved in a buggy accident. Thrown violently from the vehicle, she was fortunate that only her left arm was broken. Within a few weeks, The Deadwood paper reported that she and Mattie had visited both that city and Lead to do some shopping and that all her many friends were pleased to see her. "She has so far recovered as to be able to attend to business again, but she has but one arm she can use.
As Marchbanks prepared to move to her ranch, she found that some aspects of Wyoming's geography and demographics were not markedly different from South Dakota. For one tiling, she would still be in the Black Hills, which overlapped into eastern Wyoming. In both states, the population was largely rural and worked in mining or agriculture. Most residents were white or Indian, with only a tiny fraction being African American. In 1890, only 541 blacks lived in all of South Dakota, while Marchhanks was soon to be one of 922 in Wyoming. Hundreds of black troops stationed at Wyoming forts artificially inflated tiie latter figure. According to census data, in 1900, there were only two black famis or ranches in Wyoming and seventeen in South Dakota. In 1885, Marchbanks's new home was still pan of the Wild West by eastern standards. It was sparsely populated by cowboys and American Indians with lonely homesteads and mines scattered across miles of dangerous, virgin wilderness. Only twelve years before Marchbanks acquired her spread, Custer's first exploring expedition, accompanied by Sarah C Aunt Sally") Campbell, a black cook who really was the first normative woman in the Black Hills, had camped just a mile or two west of Marchbanks's ranch site. In 1885, the famed Johnson County War between cattle barons and homesteaders was years in the future, and periodic "Indian scares" still kept the "white" people of Wyoming and Dakota Territory on edge.
Marchbanks did not immediately take up residence on her ranch, choosing instead to board for a time with H. Cole in Sundance and keep her primary address in Central City. In 1887, she at last moved onto the ranch, which at that time consisted of a part-frame house on 160 deeded acres with access to portions of the open range. Her deeded real estate was valued at $750. Later, through purchase and by taking advantage of homestead laws, Marchbanks enlarged the size of her ranch, claiming an additional 80 acres to give her a total of 240 deeded acres.
County tax records reveal interesting details about her life on the ranch. In 1887, she sold most of her cattle and began acquiring other types of goods and equipment necessary for country living. The county placed a total value of $1,019 on her property. She had two milch cows ($70), ten range cattle ($135), one 'ordinary" horse ($75), two ponies ($50), a carriage or wagon ($20), and miscellaneous household and other goods. She registered her own brand, an "ML" burned onto her horses' left hips. In 1888, her land dropped in value to $650, but her total valuation was $1,115. She still had two milch cows but only two range cattle, one "American" horse and two ponies, a twenty-four-dollar wagon, and fifty dollars' worth of farming tools and household furniture. She had acquired two hundred dollars worth of musical instruments. Clearly, Marchbanks was settling into her new home.
During the following years the value of her land and other property rose and fell, reflecting the national and regional economies and events such as the recession of the 1890s. The number and types of stock she raised also fluctuated annually. Changes were so drastic that one suspects she traded not simply for profit but because she enjoyed dickering and visiting with her neighbors. In 1889, for example, she had twelve cattle and five horses. In 1890, she owned only three cattle, two horses, and a pig. In 1895, she was taxed on twenty cattle, twelve horses, and two pigs. In 1902, at about seventy years of age, she was down to eight cattle and two horses, but four years later, she had thirteen cattle, two horses, and five pigs. In 1908, her stock included fourteen cattle and four horses.
Although Marchbanks had retired from the hotel and cooking business, one source erroneously claims that she operated a roadhouse at Rocky Ford. This contention is probably an outgrowth if her reputation as a cook and boardinghouse manager in the gold districts and the fact that her ranch was located about a mile east of the Beulah-Sundance trail near the two-story way station called the Rocky Ford Inn. Nevertheless, on infrequent occasions, she did again perspire over large commercial cookstoves during these years, either as favors to friends or to augment her income. She cooked off and on at a cafe in Beulah, Wyoming, and at Guidinger's hotel in the same town, where meals were fifty cents a plate,
Well liked by many local families, Marchbanks played an intimate part in their lives during the next two decades. Most residents were new people, not the old-time bachelor prospectors who remembered her from boom times a quarter century earlier. Tliey were families who came from diverse locations to settle on homesteads and build stable communities in which to raise their children. Except, perhaps, for the color of their skin, they were her kind of people. One clan far from their own relatives considered Marchbanks to be essentially one of their family matrons. Her neighbors often called upon "Aunt Lou" to act as a midwife, and she delivered babies for many families. At least one white child, Annie Lucretia Smith, was named for her. They all depended on Marchbanks, who always seemed to be on hand when someone was ill.
As before, Marchbanks was not the only African American in her rural neighborhood. When she moved onto the ranch, she engaged Moses W, ("George") Bagley to undertake the heavy labor of stock-tending, plowing and planting, fencing, fuel hauling, and so on. Bagley, born in 1845, probably began life as a slave. He started working for Marchbanks during the mid-1880s but may not have taken up residence on the ranch until 1895, in that year. Marchbanks began paying poll taxes for two people. It is unknown if he lived in the main house or had his own bunkhouse on the ranch. Oddly, Marchbanks seems not to have paid him. Years later, after she died, Bagley submitted a claim against her estate, stating that he had worked for her without remuneration for twenty-five years. He received $450 from the estate and the proceeds from the 1912 crop. Why he would work so many years without compensation is unknown, but there is no evidence to suggest that theirs was anything more than a business relationship. Had they been "living in sin," Marchbanks's reputation for respectability most likely would not have survived her neighbors' Victorian-era judgments, nor would she have been described as the virgin mother to everyone in the Hills.
In 1896, Marchbanks welcomed two more family members to the Hills, Her sister Margaret's son. Burr Officer and his son Ted settled near Beulah and, on 8 March 1901, applied for a homestead almost immediately north of hers. Like Marchbanks, Burr was born a Tennessee slave. He was born in Algood, Tennessee, on 10 October 1882. Burr's wife had died about 1891 and never lived in the West. Burr went to work cowboying. Ted spent the winters in school in Lead and devoted his summers to riding the range and becoming famous for his whistling. He apparently finished school, and by the time he was grown, he was better educated than many of his cowboy compadres. In 1905, the young Officer was Marchbanks's agent to the county assessor's office. Ted Officer also became good friends with Kate Reynolds and her niece, another black family homesteading on Little Spearfish Creek about twenty-two miles south of Spearfish and only two and a half miles from the Wyoming border, roughly fifteen miles east of Marchbanks's ranch.
Lou Marchbanks's holdings were relatively small, and she did not make a concerted effort to pursue wealth. According to one possibly apocryphal rendition of her life on the ranch, she enjoyed her last days—she would sit on her porch and happily puff on her pipe. Occasionally she would go back to the Hills and visit her many friends in Central City and Lead. They would also visit her and sometimes their children would spend several days on the ranch. The area people also thought a lot of her and during round-ups she was well-supplied with choice quarters of beef.
In the early 1900s, Lucretia Marchbanks's health began to fail. Sundance, Wyoming, physicians R. C. Knode and J, F. Clarenbach did what they could for her. The bill Clarenbach submitted to her estate suggests urinary-tract problems, as does a bill from a pharmacist for kidney pills. Beginning in February 1907, Clarenbach performed many tests, including numerous urinalyses. Finally, on 19 November 1911, he made his last "call to the ranch," and the tired old woman passed away the next day at about seventy-eight or seventy-nine years of age. Sundance Undertaking Company charged die estate $99 for one bottle of preserving fiuid, four bands of crepe, a ladies robe and cap. an octagon-end casket, black cloth and trimmings, and an "'R, Box," plus two-days' time for work and travel to the ranch and back. The Deadwood Granite and Marble "Works charged $65 for her monument and placement. The half lot in the Beulah cemetery cost $6. The estate also paid a $19.50 bill for boarding several relatives and friends who came for the funeral.
The funeral service, conducted by Reverend M. C. Roberts from the Methodist church in Sundance, was held in her ranch house. When she died," Roberts later recorded, "I had the honor to go to Beulah and conduct services. A large crowd of friends and admirers were present to pay their last tribute of respect to one whom they loved, although her skin was black. I remember well the occasion. I preached from the text, 'She hath done what she could.' We returned her body to the earth, believing her soul had gone to the God who gave it. Early historian Thomas Odell recorded that "loving white hands laid to rest the good woman—Lucretia Marchbanks, the black queen of the Hills. . . . When the Recording Angel opens the great Judgment Book, the name of Lucretia Marchbanks . . . deserves to head the list of all the argonauts who followed the rainbow to the wild Black Hills in quest of the pot of gold." White hands alone did not lay her to rest, however. A number of African-American relatives and friends, including Marchbanks's only surviving sibling Mattie Marshall, also attended the funeral. All the regional newspapers printed lengthy eulogies and obituaries as the Hills mourned her passing.
Her simple estate, tlie end result of a lifetime of labor begun in slavery but ended in freedom on the front porch of her own ranch, was offered for auction on 15 June 1912. The inventory, consisting of one old mare, two younger mares, three calves, two yearling colts, two dozen chickens, four geese, a half share in a breaking plow, a wagon, one yearling heifer, one yearling colt, three cows, a set of harness, two oil paintings, one grindstone, chairs, a trunk and contents, one gray mare, a mower, a harrow, a kitchen range and utensils, one commode, two beds, one clock, cupboards, dishes, chairs, stands, and a "whatnot," fetched a total of $504. Augmenting the meager list of belongings were her real estate holdings, which were valued for tax purposes at $1,840. She also had a life insurance policy valued at $2,400, a small savings account, and other lesser assets. Her physical estate did not reflect the wealth of affection she had received from the friends and loved ones whose lives she had enriched.
By the time of Marchbanks's death, only a handful of African Americans still remained in the Black Hills. Deadwood had only thirty-eight black residents in 1900. During the following years, more people moved away and only a few new residents immigrated to the area. Her nephew. Burr Officer remained in Beulah as late as 1915. Ted Officer cowboyed for George Berghoffer of Sundance and other area ranchers, eventually becoming a range and timber foreman. He passed away in 1946 and is buried in Beulah. George Bagley died 20 June 1922 and is buried beside Marchbanks in the Beulah cemetery.
Lucretia Marchbanks, ex-slave and veteran of the California gold rush, came to the Black Hills in 1876 at the height of the boomtown excitement. In doing so, she fulfilled the 1855 prophecy of San Francisco minister Darius Stokes, who, in addressing the first state convention of the Colored Citizens of California, declared, "The white man came, and we came with him; and by the blessing of God, we shall stay with him, side by side. . . . Should another Sutter discover another El Dorado ... no sooner shall the white man's foot be firmly planted there than looking over his shoulder, he will see the black man, like his shadow, by his side.'"^ Lucretia Marchbanks personally played a role in the process of settling and developing the American West. Moreover, the single, female, non-white cook, hotel owner, and rancher was not content to be a mere shadow. Instead, she worked diligently to live her own life on her own terms, to the greatest extent possible. The reputation she established and the property she acquired under difficult frontier circumstances were nothing short of remarkable for a woman who had started out her life as someone else's property. Altogether, she gained the respect and even love of those who knew her—black and white—and was able to live a modestly comfortable life in spite of the complex world of frontier race relations.
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