Brave Women
Kate Boyd Dyer Mifflin Loud with her two oldest children, circa 1877
Late last year, the Austin Chronicle published a short Texas history trivia quiz. One of the questions was as follows:
Q: After statehood in 1845, the U.S. built a series of around three dozen frontier forts along a boundary that kept shifting westward. Native Americans only attacked one. Which one?
A: 40 soldiers at Fort Lancaster held off 400 Kickapoo in 1867. The fight was the first major battle of the Buffalo Soldiers 9th Cavalry Regiment (McLeod 2023).
I found this bit of trivia quite interesting because my great-great-grandfather John S. Loud was one of the white officers who commanded the black troops of the 9th Cavalry, and he was, in fact, serving in Texas in 1867 (Hutchinson 1896). So I set out to determine if he had been a part of this battle. What I learned was actually quite a surprise. John S. Loud was most likely not at the battle, which took place on 26 Dec 1867, as he was part of the regiment’s quartermaster staff and was stationed at the regiment’s headquarters at Ft. Stockton, 80 miles from Ft. Lancaster. However, his future wife, my great-great-grandmother Kate, was definitely present at Ft. Lancaster during the attack.
Kate Boyd Dyer Mifflin, age 21, Philadelphia, February 1866
Kate Boyd Dyer was born in 1844 in Pennsylvania. She lost her parents quite young and was adopted by her aunt Theresa “Tacy” Worrell Mifflin. Tacy had married into an affluent and well-known Philadelphia family. Her husband's great-uncle Thomas Mifflin, for example, was the first governor of Pennsylvania following the American Revolution. So Kate grew up in Philadelphia in comfortable environment and would presumably have been expected to marry a Philadelphia merchant and live a life much like that of her aunt.
In 1867, however, Kate's life changed dramatically. In April of that year, her younger cousin/adopted sister Dorothea “Dollie” Mifflin, then only 16, married a much older military officer named William T. Frohock. Dollie most likely met her future husband while he was serving with the 7th U.S. Veteran Volunteer Infantry at Camp Cadwalader in Philadelphia during 1865-66. Frohock left Philadelphia in April 1866, when his regiment was disbanded, and then re-enlisted in the 15th US Infantry, dropping in rank from a brevet Brigadier General to a 1st Lieutenant.[1] He returned to Philadelphia from his post in Mobile, Alabama, a year later to marry Dollie and then rejoined his unit, leaving her behind in Philadelphia.
In June of 1867, Frohock transferred to the 9th Cavalry and relocated to Texas, from where he presumably wrote to ask his new wife to join him. So Dollie, accompanied by Kate, traveled from Philadelphia all the way to Texas, a journey of a week or more by train (Brown 2017). I have not been able to determine the details of their trip, but by December 1967, they had joined Frohock, who was then commanding the 9th Cavalry’s K Company, stationed at Ft. Lancaster.
Harper’s Weekly, 23 March 1861
I have a copy of a 1925 letter from Eugene D. Dimmick, another officer in the 9th Cavalry, to Kate's son James Mifflin Loud. In it, Dimmock describes traveling from San Antonio to Ft. Stockton in late December 1867 with a detachment of new recruits. Learning enroute of the Native American attack, his troops diverted to Ft. Lancaster, arriving shortly after the battle had concluded. He writes
We found that the Indians in strong force had attacked the post. Mrs. Frohock and your Mother, brave women, had rendered assistance by passing out ammunition to the men.
I can only imagine what this experience might have been like for Kate and Dollie, but it didn’t deter Kate from marrying a cavalry officer herself. Kate and John S. Loud were married in June of 1868 at the Menger Hotel in downtown San Antonio. The bride was given away by Edward Hatch, commander of the 9th cavalry, and the wedding was covered in some detail in the weekly San Antonio Express.
Wedding announcement for John Sylvanus Loud and Kate Boyd Dyer Mifflin
San Antonio Express, June 10, 1868.
Menger Hotel, 1865 (photo is hanging on the wall of the Cavalier Room at the hotel)
Kate went on to join her husband at many of his posts with the 9th Cavalry, in which he served from January 1867 until his retirement in June 1898. From the Texas frontier through New Mexico Territory, where my great-grandmother—also named Dorothea—was born, through Kansas and Nebraska, and eventually to Ft. Washakie in Wyoming, she kept house at various Army posts and raised three children (two others died young). And she did all this while wearing ankle-length skirts and a corset.
I have quite a bit of sympathy for the Kickapoo who attacked Fort Lancaster in 1867. After all, at the time, the border of U.S. was rapidly moving further west into lands held by Native Americans, with little attention to their interests or concerns, and their attack on the fort seems like a reasonable response to this invasion.
At the same time, it's pretty remarkable to think about my great-great-grandmother, then 23 years old, passing ammunition to soldiers in a frontier fort as it was under attack. And what a life she led, spending 30 years on the furthest frontiers of the nation! After her husband’s death, she went on to travel the world with my great-grandmother’s family, spending time in Hawaii, Switzerland, and Australia. But that’s a story for another post.
Kate Boyd Dyer Mifflin Loud and John Sylvanus Loud, circa 1900
[1] This loss of rank was common for soldiers who re-enlisted following the Civil War. The number of soldiers in the U.S. Army dropped from over 1 million in 1865 to about 57,000 in 1867, significantly reducing the number of officers needed. (Scheips 2005).
Works Cited
Brown, Mike. 8 Feb 2017. “These Maps Show How Ridiculously Long U.S. Travel Took in 1800.” Inverse.
Hutchinson, Grote. 1896. “Ninth Regiment of Cavalry.” The Army of the US: Historical Sketches of Staff and Line with Portraits of Generals-in-Chief. Theophilus Francis Rodenbough and William L. Haskin, Eds. New York: Maynard, Merrill, & Co.
McLeod, Gerald E. 22 Dec 2023. “Day Trips: A Little Texas Trivia.” The Austin Chronicle.
Scheips, Paul T. 2005. “Darkness and Light: The Interwar Years, l865-1898.” American Military History, Volume 1: The United States Army and the Forging of a Nation, 1775-1917. Richard W. smith, Ed. Washington, DC: Center of Military History, United States Army. https://history.army.mil/books/amh-v1/ch13.htm.