Custer, General George A.—Famous American cavalry leader in the Civil War, and the hero of the battle of the Little Big Horn, Dakota, in which he and his command were destroyed by the Sioux Indians, June25, 1876. Of German descent. Frederick Whittaker in “A Complete Life of General George Custer” (Sheldon & Co., New York, 1876) says: “George Armstrong Custer was born in New Rumley, Ohio, December5, 1839. Emanuel H. Custer, father of the General, was born in Cryssoptown, Alleghany County, Md., December10, 1806. The name of Custer was originally Kuster, and the grandfather of Emanuel Custer came from Germany, but Emanuel’s father was born in America. The grandfather was one of those same Hessian officers over whom the Colonists wasted so many curses in the Revolutionary war, and were yet so innocent of harm and such patient, faithful soldiers. After Burgoyne’s surrender in1778, many of the paroled Hessians seized the opportunity to settle in the country they came to conquer, and amongst these the grandfather of Emanuel Custer, captivated by the bright eyes of a frontier damsel, captivated her in turn with his flaxen hair and sturdy Saxon figure, and settled down in Pennsylvania, afterward moving to Maryland. It is something romantic and pleasing, after all, that stubborn George Guelph, in striving to conquer the colonies, should have given them the ancestor of George Custer, who was to become one of their greatest glories.”