CHARLES ALEXANDER REYNOLDS:

Charles Alexander "Lonesome Charley" Reynolds likely was born March 20, 1844, in Warren County, Illinois. Conflicting accounts, however, also list his birth date as 1841 or 1842 and his birth site as Stephensburg, Elizabeth, or Warren County, all in Kentucky.

In 1859 his family moved to Pardee, Atchison County, Kansas. Shortly thereafter Reynolds left his family and moved farther west, where he developed skills as a hunter, trapper, and scout. He returned to Kansas in 1861 and served three years with the 10th Kansas Regiment, Company B, during the Civil War. By 1865 he was back on the western frontier.

In 1873 he served as scout for the Seventh U.S. Cavalry during the U.S. Army's Yellowstone Expedition, which was formed to protect the Northern Pacific Railroad Company's surveyors. The next year he was the Seventh Cavalry's scout on its Black Hills Expedition; he carried the first dispatches telling of the discovery of gold in the Black Hills through 150 miles of hostile territory to Fort Laramie, Wyoming. In 1875 he served as chief scout on General James Forsyth's exploration of the Yellowstone River, and in 1876 he was again with the Seventh Cavalry, as chief of guides and scouts, on the Big Horn Expedition into Montana Territory against the Dakota Indians. He was killed on June 25, 1876, during the Battle of the Little Big Horn and is buried at the Custer Battlefield National Monument.

No biographical information on Alexander Brown could be located. It is known, however, that he was the only non-commissioned officer in the Seventh Cavalry's Company G to survive the Battle of the Little Big Horn.

Biographical data on Reynolds was taken from Remburg, John E. and George J. Remburg, Charley Reynolds: Soldier, Hunger, Scout and Guide (Kansas City, Missouri: H . M. Sender, 1931). The diary is reprinted in Michael J. Koury, Diaries of the Little Big Horn (Papillion, Nebraska: The Old Army Press, 1969).

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This worn leather diary contains entries by scout Charles Reynolds and Sergeant Alexander Brown, members of the Seventh U.S. Cavalry during the Big Horn Expedition. Walter C. Gooding, custodian of Fort Abraham Lincoln, Dakota Territory, gave Reynolds the diary in order to "make a few notes in [it], of the sights and sounds you see on the expedition." Upon Reynolds's death at the Battle of the Little Big Horn, Sergeant Brown retrieved the volume and used it to record information on Company G's subsequent march to Wolf Point on the Missouri River.

Because the diary is written in pencil, many entries are smudged and difficult to read. Therefore, several transcriptions have been made over the years. No single transcription has been made of the diary in its entirety. Of these, the fullest version was prepared in 1985 and is included on the microfiche version of the diary.

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Access Restrictions:

Access to and use of reserve materials requires the curator's permission.

Preferred Citation:

[Indicate the cited item and/or series here]. Charles Reynolds and Alexander Brown Diary. Minnesota Historical Society.

See the Chicago Manual of Style for additional examples.

Microfiche Production:

St. Paul, Minn. : Minnesota Historical Society, 1985. 3 microfiches.

Accession Information:

Accession numbers: 1879C; 9041; 13,634

Processing Information:

Processed by: Cheryl Thies, April 1985

Digitized by: Patrick Blaine, December 2011.

Digitization of reserve material was made possible by the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the vote of Minnesotans on November 4, 2008.

Catalog ID number: 001733843

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This collection is indexed under the following headings in the catalog of the Minnesota Historical Society. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons or places should search the catalog using these headings.

Topics:

Dakota Indians -- Wars, 1876.

Little Bighorn, Battle of the, Mont., 1876.

Persons:

Brown, Alexander.

Gooding, Walter C.

Organizations:

United States. Army. Cavalry, 7th.

Places:

Montana -- Description and travel.

Document Types:

Diaries.

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