March of the 4Th Cavalry - 1897

By Walter W. Clark

March of the 4th Cavalry - 1897" is a history surrounding a brief period in the life of Trooper A. Jay Lacey during which he wrote a daily diary of a march from Fort Walla Walla, Washington to Yellowstone National Park. Included is a biographical sketch of A. Jay Laceys life, brief histories of the Forts in the Northwest, a short history of the cavalry, rules and regulations under which Lacey had to live, his equipment and the subsequent participation of his Troop H and the 4th Cavalry in the Philippine War. While Lacey himself proved to be a bit of a mystery, his diary tells of the daily hardships of the march and opinions on the Towns he encountered, and it tells us much of the man himself. Laceys diary should be of interest to military historians and the people residing along the route Troops D and H followed through Oregon, Idaho, and on into Yellowstone.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trafford Publishing
• Release date: Mar 13, 2012
• ISBN: 9781426988431

Walter W. Clark

Retired lecturer,High School and College teacher of: History, English Literature, Writing, American History, Military History. Author of soon to be released Historical Fiction works on CIA and Courts. Lectured in New York over ten years and lectured in Texas for ten years where he presently resides with his son and his family in Dallas, Texas. Past member of Board of Governors, Empire State College.

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© Copyright 2012 Walter W. Clark.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the written prior permission of the author.

ISBN: 978-1-4269-8843-1 (e)

Trafford rev. 02/08/2012

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MARCH OF THE 4TH CAVALRY - 1897

By:

Walter W. Clark

Based Upon The Diary of Pvt. A. Jay Lacey

Troop H, 4th United States Cavalry

MARCH OF THE 4TH CAVALRY - 1897

by:

WALTER W. CLARK

Based Upon The Diary of Pvt. A. Jay Lacey

aka. Ford Lamont

Troop H 4th United States Cavalry

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To the Loving and Cherished

Memory of Connie Clark

FIDDLER’S GREEN

Halfway down the trail to Hell

In a shady meadow green

Are the Souls of all dead troopers camped,

Near a good old-time canteen.

And this eternal resting place

Is known as Fiddlers’ Green.

Marching past, straight through to Hell

The Infantry are seen.

Accompanied by the Engineers,

Artillery and Marines,

For none but the shades of Cavalrymen

Dismounted at Fiddlers’ Green.

Though some go curving down the trail

To seek a warmer scene.

No trooper ever gets to Hell

Ere he’s emptied his canteen.

And so rides back to drink again

With friends at Fiddlers’ Green.

And so when man and horse go down

Beneath a saber keen,

Or in a roaring charge of fierce melee

You stop a bullet clean,

And the hostiles come to get your scalp,

Just empty your canteen,

And put your pistol to your head

And go to Fiddlers’ Green."[1]

Contents

PREFACE

PROLOGUE

INTRODUCTION:

CHAPTER I – FAMILY BACKGROUND

CHAPTER II – FORT WALLA WALLA

CHAPTER III – BRIEF HISTORY OF CAVALRY

CHAPTER IV – LIFE IN THE CAVALRY OF A. JAY LACEY

CHAPTER V – WEAPONRY

CHAPTER VI – SOLDIER’S HAND-BOOK

CHAPTER VII – YELLOWSTONE

CHAPTER VIII – THE LACEY DIARY

CHAPTER IX – SPANISH-AMERICAN WAR

CHAPTER X – A. JAY LACEY IN THE PHILIPPINES

CHAPTER XI – PHILIPPINE CAMPAIGN

CHAPTER XII – HOME AGAIN

BIBLIOGRAPHY: BOOKS AND ARTICLES

PREFACE

In 1897 a minor historical event occurred which I have simply titled March of the 4th Cavalry – 1897. The manner in which this book came to be holds a certain degree of historical significance as well as contemporary application. It is based upon the short diary of A. Jay Lacey.

On March 15th, 1969 my Great Aunt Mrs. May Belle Lacey died in Magnolia Center, Riverside, California; she was 93 years old. Her husband, A. Jay Lacey died in Riverside March 6th, 1948. May B. Lacey was my mother’s aunt, for whom my mother, Doris May Clark (maiden name Corl), was named. Aunt May had no tangible possessions when she died, just personal clothing, featherbed quality blankets and similar items of no serious value to be considered an estate. My personal contact with her was possibly twice, once when she traveled to Rochester, New York from Riverside for her sister Lulu’s funeral, and possibly a second time when their other sister, my Grandmother Minnie McGinley died in 1959. Aunt Lou left a considerable amount of money to May and Minnie, without which Aunt May would have had no reason to travel all the way from Riverside, California to Rochester, New York and I would probably never have seen her or eventually come into possession of her husband’s documents upon which most of this work is based.

This then is the story of Trooper A. Jay Lacey, Great Aunt May Belle Lacey’s husband, and the diary he kept of a 37 day march Troop D and H of the 4th Cavalry made in 1897 from Fort Walla Walla, Washington to Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming.

From an historical point of view, it wasn’t exactly true that Aunt May had no possessions when she died; although, indeed, all of her money had been spent for her care during her old age, she did leave something of value – her husband A. Jay Lacey’s diary, written about a march he participated in during the time he was in the United States Cavalry in 1897, and also his Soldier’s Hand Book which he was required to carry for the three years of his enlistment. May’s lawyer sent her husband’s diary and his Soldier’s Hand Book to my mother, Mrs. Doris May Clark, in 1969 when May died. May and her husband appear not to have had any children and May’s lawyer knew of no close relatives other than my mother. It was indeed fortunate that May’s sister Lulu died while living in Rochester where my family was living. Her other sister, Minnie, also lived in upstate New York, on a farm near the Town of Palmyra. I probably would never have come into possession of A. Jay Lacey’s books if all three sisters lived in another state other than New York.

Aunt Lou was a somewhat famous character in her own right and could easily become the subject of a very interesting publication on the ‘roaring twenties’. Prior to prohibition Aunt Lou owned a very elegant saloon on Main Street in Rochester, New York. She acquired many properties, some bars and some apartments and, after prohibition, she settled down to owning one bar along Lake Ontario near an amusement park called Seabreeze. Family ‘legend’ was that she had several ‘ladies’ working for her in her bar. She increased her fortune by taking out insurance policies on drunks and itinerants who she allowed to sleep in her place during the colder seasons. She always knew where they were and most of them died during the winter.

My mother died in Rochester, New York in 1989, leaving only her personal belongings and some insurance policies to be divided up among her five children. After dividing her insurance money equally to all five of us, we decided to divide her personal belongings between all of us based upon who wanted what; my brother and I having decided to give our sisters whatever they wanted first. It was during the arduous final cleanup of my mother’s retirement apartment that I found A. Jay Lacey’s personal diary and his Soldier’s Hand Book in a box in her closet. Since no one else in the family was interested in history, and as it was my major in college, I took Mr. Lacey’s books and packed them away with other documents I had been saving.

A. Jay Lacey’s books were kept by him for 49 years; May kept them in her care for another 21 years after Jay died; my mother kept them stashed in her closet for yet another 20 years after May died. I have kept the books in a box, totally forgotten until we started unpacking boxes when my wife and I moved to Texas from Rochester; another 17 years of obscurity for the Lacey documents. It has been over 110 years since A. Jay Lacey finished his small diary, and I feel his book contains some excellent narrative of a little known time period in the history of our military – a time in our history that needs to be shared.

The diary of the march or ‘trip’, as he referred to it, consists of a record of 37 days in 1897, from May 18th to June 26th, written in pencil in cursive handwriting on 79 separate pages in a lined paper notebook . There are no corrections, additions, or editing of his text; it is as he wrote it the first time in 1897. Pages 1 and 2 of his diary are examples of his handwriting as it appears throughout his work. A copy of back pages in the notebook shows that it was used in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s as a business ledger. The historic value and significant importance of this document was not always recognized as it passed to other hands over many years. It is a stroke of historic fortune that this book was not thrown away. The primary reason the notebook was kept by May Lacey could very well lie in the legal requirements to retain financial business records for tax purposes, regardless of the primitive nature of the bookkeeping methods. Whereas the diary portion of the notebook is of great historic value, we probably owe a debt of gratitude to whomever chose to use the notebook for business records, thus requiring them to keep these records for several years.

I have not uncovered information as to whose business was recorded in the back of the diary. It might be a Lacey business ledger, or it might be someone else’s notes. A. Jay Lacey died in 1948; the bookkeeping in the back of his diary covers Expenses on Houses and Income from1947 to 1951. The book was his, kept while he was alive, with no indication that it was used by anyone other than A. Jay or May Lacey.

We will never know why, in over 110 years, no one chose to finally throw the diary and the Soldier’s Hand Book out, since, in all these years, everyone who was entrusted in the final ownership of these books could not have truly understood and appreciated the historic value of them. A. Jay Lacey wrote the diary with the idea that someday someone would read and enjoy it. Aunt May possibly kept the books because she could share his thoughts and relive his experiences whenever she felt lonely and missed the happiness they had when he was alive.

My mother kept the books for nostalgic reasons, while I doubt she ever read the whole diary or glanced in the Soldier’s Hand Book. I have to believe she planned on giving the books to me but forgot and packed them away because I wasn’t living near my mother at the time of Aunt May’s death; I was living in Virginia and my mother was living in Rochester, New York.

The books have traveled great distances over many years before coming to rest, so to speak, in a book form that I hope will keep A. Jay Lacey’s experiences alive and be of some historic value to new generations.

We are living in a time that directly reflects a serious relationship between the American experience in the Spanish-American War/Philippine-American War of 1898-1935 and the American experience in the Middle East in the 21st Century. A. Jay Lacey and the 4th U.S. Cavalry have left us a reflective similarity as history appears to be repeating itself with very ominous results. It was important for me to deal with this similarity within this narrative.

This project began with the editing of a simple soldier’s personal diary covering a 37 day march. It was my intent to limit this book to the march of 1897 until Lacey’s Soldier’s Hand Book indicated Lacey had also served in the Philippine Insurrection in 1899. This was a small surprise made greater when I attempted to research Lacey’s service records. A. Jay Lacey has no service records. He enlisted and served under the name of Ford Lamont. Now the story of a simple march has become something of a mystery.

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(Lacey Diary/Author’s Collection)

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(Lacey Diary/Author’s Collection)

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(Sample Page of Ledger in Rear of LaceyDiary/Author’s Collection)

PROLOGUE

History is a relative science based less on fact than on political perceptions, ‘fine tuned’ to current philosophies and beliefs and less than honest interpretations of contemporary beliefs and true motives. In history, what we know to be true, based upon direct, first-hand knowledge and hands-on personal experience, and what we must assume to be true, based upon second-hand ‘informed’ sources, often must balance between hypothesis and proven truth to become our learned history, both factual and ‘legendary’.

Herein is an honest, day-by-day accounting of a 37 day march – what we know to be true – coupled with the obscure research of historical events that I