Page 56 - 88-BOOK3

54
As the more active sportsman of the two brothers, a rifle presented by him to his brother is certainly fitting. All three of Leonard’s daughter’s married British gentlemen, including Jeanette (named for Swedish singer Jenny Lind) who married Lord Randolph Churchill and was the mother of Prime Minister Winston Churchill.
As discussed in the included copy of “Custer, Cody, and Grand Duke Alexis: Historical Archeology of the Royal Buffalo Hunt,” the included January/ February 1987 issue of “Sporting Classics” in the article “The Millionaires Hunt” by John H. Daniels, as well as various period newspapers and subsequent publications, in 1871, the Jerome brothers were members
of Lt. General Philip Sheridan’s “millionaires hunt” that was guided by Buffalo Bill Cody and included prominent New York lawyer General Henry
E. Davies, editor and publisher James Gordon Bennett Jr. of the New York Herald, New York Stock Exchange member Carroll Livingston, New York businessman John G. Heckscher, Bvt. Brigadier General Charles L. Fitzhugh, Philadelphia businessman M. Edward Rogers, New York sportsman John S. Crosby, Chicago businessman Samuel Johnston, Western Union Telegraph Central Division superintendent Anson Stager, Chicago newspaperman Charles L. Wilson, Col. David Rucker, Assistant Surgeon Dr. Morris Asch, Lieutenant Colonel Michael Sheridan, and Colonel William H. Emory. They were escorted by Company E of the 5th U.S. Cavalry. The party had six
wall tents, a hospital tent for dining, another hospital tent for the servant quarters and kitchen, and tents and other provisions for their cavalry escort, an expensive affair that required a train of sixteen wagons plus three four-horse ambulances for their guns and baggage. Shortly after this hunt, Cody guided another hunt with very similar arrangements for Russian Grand Duke Alexis. The party arrived at Ft. McPherson via the Union Pacific and then hunted south across 194 miles down to Ft. Hays on the Kansas Pacific and killed over 100 bison, 75+ turkeys, 10 elk, 10 antelope, 25 ducks, as well as various fish, black-tailed deer, prairie dogs, rabbits, and coyotes.
Just before the hunt, Leonard Jerome and General Sheridan had
been in France during the Franco-Prussian War on behalf of the Grant administration. Jerome was serving as a diplomatic courier to Prince
Otto von Bismark, and Sheridan had been sent as a military observer
and became friends with Bismark. Jerome, Bismark, and Sheridan met together at Versailles during the siege of Paris in February of 1871. In the included copy of “Ten Days on the Plains” by Henry E. Davies (1985 edited edition), Davies writes about Jerome’s participation in the hunts. He notes that Jerome “filled, to the satisfaction of all, the part of the heavy father
of the expedition,” and that Leonard Jerome “is too well known to require
description.” On page 105, He also writes, “Lawrence Jerome, mounted on his charge, Buckskin Joe, and envied by all for having so good a mount, was doing his utmost when his career was brought to an untimely end. He had dismounted to take a particularly careful shot at a buffalo he wished to secure and incautiously let go of his horse’s bridle. The buffalo, contrary to the rule, running off at the shot, instead of dropping as he was bound to do, was followed by Buckskin Joe, determined to do a little hunting on his own account, and perhaps wishing to show Mr. Jerome how the thing should properly be done.” The horse then ran off and turned up at Fort McPherson, leaving Jerome stranded until he was brought another horse. Magoon in his letter indicated an account from Buffalo Bill suggested Jerome dismounted because he had dropped his rifle which Magoon suggested might explain the wrist repair, but, in the included copy of
“Life and Adventures of ‘Buffalo Bill’,” Cody’s telling of “Leonard Jeromes’ Predicament” on pages 227-228 has the same tale of him dismounting to take a careful shot and also indicates they had a jovial “court-martial” to try Jerome for the crime of “aiding and abetting the loss of a government horse, and for having something to do with the mysterious disappearance of a Colt’s pistol. He was charged also with snoring in a manner that
was regarded as fiendish, and with committing a variety of other less offenses too numerous to mention.” Jerome’s defense on the part of the lost horse was that it was the horse that had lost him. His sentence was suspended by Judge Cody. At the end of the trip, Davies also wrote about the presentation of “a magnificent cane, made of a growth peculiar to the planes, handsomely mounted and adorned with an appropriate inscription” to Jerome by his fellow hunters that he was moved by. You can imagine he must have been very pleased with being presented this rifle by his brother.
Per an included provenance letter from William Magoon, he purchased this rifle in January 1972 from a dealer in northern Minnesota. The following winter, he contacted James Jerome of Bennington, Vermont, who he later found out was Lawrence R. Jerome’s great-grandson. He told him about the rifle which Jerome said “was the real deal” and indicated it had probably found its way to Minnesota with Leonard Gerome’s eldest daughter, Clara, whose husband, Moreton Frewen, had purchased and cleared 1,000 acres across the bay from Duluth in what is now Superior, Wisconsin, to try to ship cattle from his failed operation in Wyoming. Jerome also indicated
the family wouldn’t have sold the rifle but may have given it as a gift to an acquaintance or guide. Additional books and Jerome/Churchill family genealogy are also included.