After almost two hundred miles and many long hot days from Pierre, they reached the Black Hills. On 2 August 1878 they settled just outside of Sturgis where the Black Hills National Cemetery is now located. Jim purchased a share of the place from John. He had bought the squatter's rights the year before from Thomas Moore who had driven stakes to mark the boundaries of the property. Immediately the family began to get settled. Jim and Mary camped in tents along the Sidney Stage Road with the children. John lived nearby in a small eight-by-ten foot cabin that had a sod roof and dirt floor. It was a dirty, vermin-infested hovel. It was here that Mary and the girls usually had to do their cooking. Jim and John also had a stage barn for eight horses on the ranch to serve the needs of passing freighters and the Sidney Stage Company.
Jim brought seventy head of purebred Durham cattle from Pecatonica. They were the first purebred cattle of that breed in the Black Hills. Durhams were large, square animals. Today, they are usually called American Shorthorns. Other agriculturists were in the Black Hills in 1878. Jim was among the first who came with a good supply of farm machinery and fine blooded stock cows though. Many of the farmers were less well equipped. For several years Jim and the boys, Will, Frank, and George, put up hay in the surrounding area. Jim also had a six-and-a-half foot reaper. He would use it on his neighbors' fields for a $1.50 an acre. Other times he did it in exchange for work or a share of the crop.
When they reached their new home, Jim and the boys immediately began mowing hay. They put up seventy-five tons and stacked part of it behind the stage barn. John later sold it to the Sidney Stage Company.
During the night, soon after they finished putting up most of the hay that first summer, robbers spirited away all of their horses except one span of mules. Many horses in the surrounding area were stolen that night by white thieves masquerading as Indians. Jim and Frank rode the two mules, as they and John tried to track down the outlaws in the hopes of getting the horses back. They recovered only a blind mare near Sevey Lake, about ten miles east of present day Piedmont. A posse also pursued the robbers but were unsuccessful.
Soon after the McFarlands arrived in the Black Hills, a pretentious army officer rode up. He did not deign to dismount and notified them that the army would be confiscating their land to use as part of the Fort Meade Military Reservation. On 1 or 2 October 1878 the army officially ordered them off to take possession of the property by the end of the month. Jim decided to move a short distance away, but it is likely he didn't leave the original place until 10 December 1878.
Losing their home and John's misappropriation of their money made the first winter in the Black Hills very difficult for Jim, Mary, and the children. Hattie took the Sidney stage to Deadwood. It was a wild town in 1878. Murders, robberies, and gold strikes were commonplace. Alice confronted her Uncle John. "Here, you have Father's money and I know it." "Yes," he replied. "I haven't got a shoe to my feet," she said. "I want money to take me to Deadwood. You have Father's money and I want some of it." Her uncle took out a roll of bills bigger than her wrist and reluctantly gave her $10 of Jim's money. Mary and Alice left for the famous gold mining town on 29 October. Alice immediately found a job and borrowed money on her wages to buy shoes for the winter. She married Michael Tonn, an early frontier merchant, on Thanksgiving Day, less than a month after she and Mary arrived by stagecoach in Deadwood.
Soon after the Tonn's marriage, they, with Mary, Hattie, and the little girls, Libbie and Maggie, moved to the more domesticated town of Spearfish. In March, Hattie married Captain John Smith in Spearfish. Smith was a frontier Army man who fought in the Indian Wars. Both the Tonn and Smith families decided to take homesteads in Spearfish Valley in Spring, 1879. The Tonns stayed in the Spearfish area. The Smiths a few years later moved to Pleasant Valley, where they lived near Jim and Mary for a short time. They left Dakota in 1885 and moved to near Chadron, Nebraska. Early in 1887 they went further west to Santa Barbara, California. In 1899 they moved for the last time further north near Creston, San Luis Obispo County, California. All of Jim's and Mary's children lived in the Black Hills between 1881 and 1884. Jane had married Monroe Ferguson in Illinois. She came to the Black Hills in 1880, followed by her brother, John Herbert, who was in the Hills by 1881.
George herded sheep for Sam Morse their first winter in the Black Hills. One evening, as he drove the sheep back to the corral, a mountain lion leaped into the herd. It dragged one of the ewes into the nearby hills. The next morning two men tracked the lion down and discovered it eating the sheep behind an outcrop of rocks. One of the men shot the lion as it raised its head above the boulder. Local hunters killed several mountain lions and wildcats in the vicinity that winter.
When Jim and Mary lived along the Sidney Stage Road, the family ran a road house. It was not a stage stop for meals, but oftentimes freighters and other travelers stopped to eat. Usually the children sat on a bench on the back wall when they ate and left the better chairs for the paying diners. One day a man stopped to eat. He insisted that Mary seat him along the back wall with the family, which gave him a view of the doorway. As he left, Mary found a twenty dollar bill with the corner torn off where he had been sitting. She hurried after the stranger to tell him of his loss, but he told her that the money wasn't his. In a manner of speaking he was probably telling the truth. Outlaws, such as Sam Bass and members of Doc Middleton's gang, often left large gratuities where they dined or boarded.
One afternoon Mary sent George to get sugar. He walked the few miles to the store, but by the time he started home it was nearing evening. He was only part way home and already the sun was setting. As he glanced up to the top of the hill into the darkening Ponderosa pines, he saw Indians on the ridge. George started running as fast as he could for home but stumbled and dropped the sugar. The cloth bag ripped open and sugar spilled over the ground. Quickly, he flipped off his cap and scooped the sugar into it. George raced the rest of the way. When he reached the safety of home he realized that he had let a mirage deceive him. The Indians were only evening shadows!
George had earned "six bits" ($.75) doing odd jobs, and decided to go to Sturgis to spend the money. He bought some stogies for "two bits," a bag of chocolate drops for another "two bits," and topped it off with a bottle of soda. He mounted his horse and started for home. George devoured the candies and downed the soda. He followed these with one of the stogies. Suddenly, after a few puffs, George was deathly sick and fell off his horse. Slowly, he recovered somewhat, located his mount, and cursed himself for being so foolish as he cautiously rode home.
George's best friend was Jay Blood, the son of James and Angella Blood, who was just a year older than George. The Bloods lived four miles from Fanshawe's Store along the Sidney Stage Road at the Hogan Station a short distance from the McFarland's way station. The Bloods and McFarlands became good friends. Jim and Angella Blood and their family went to the McFarland's stage station on Thanksgiving Day in 1879. George and Jay decided to go deer hunting in the Hills late one fall. The hunt was a failure. It rained and drizzled, and the raindrops immediately froze on the crisp pine needles and grass. The game animals easily heard the boys coming as they walked over the ice glazed ground. George and Jay returned home four days later, very hungry.
Another nearby neighbor of Jim and Mary was Madame Bulldog, Mrs. Sarah Ann Erb. The lady earned her nickname as she had two large white bulldogs to prevent passing cowboys from lassoing her chickens. Her place was just below Jim and Mary's, and it was known as the Bulldog Ranch. She was a huge woman. A man who stopped to eat at her place wrote that she weighed "an eighth of a ton." Her ranch had a large log house where she served meals to travelers. On the other side of the road was a barn built from hewn cottonwood.
Jim and Will discovered a corpse during a raging blizzard on 5 February 1880. It was about a mile and a half from Fort Meade. His hat covered his face and his riding whip rested across his arms. The dead man was Curly Grimes, lying frozen in the snow. The McFarlands knew Curly well. He had boarded his horse at Jim's stage barn that fall and winter, plus he had been at the McFarland's on both Thanksgiving and Christmas Days. He was a bull whacker with Morris Appel's outfit. Supposedly Curly was a member of Doc Middleton's gang from Nebraska. In late Fall, 1879, the U.S. Department of Justice sent out special agent W. H. H. Llewellyn to capture the outlaws who robbed the post office at Bone Creek, Nebraska. One of the men Llewellyn decided to pursue was Curly Grimes, also known as Lee or Lew Grimes, and as Lew Wilson. Grimes earned the nickname Curly as he had long, dark, curly hair that came to his shoulders. Rumors abounded concerning Curly. He was supposedly one-fourth Cherokee, one of the fastest guns west of the Missouri, and a fleet runner.
Llewellyn received a tip that Grimes had headed towards the Cheyenne River with Appel's freight train. He hired Boone May to assist him in capturing Grimes. May had the reputation of being a ruthless and barbarous gunman. The previous year May gunned down a man to collect the bounty money. He turned in only the mans severed head to save the weight of carrying the entire body.
Special Agent Llewellyn and May captured Grimes on the trail as planned. They brought him back through Rapid City where they ate lunch. From there they set out for Deadwood, via Fort Meade. The group stopped at the Bulldog Ranch and had supper with Madame Bulldog. They next passed the Hogan Station, where the Bloods lived, and the McFarland ranch. Jim watched them ride by his place late in the evening of 2 February 1880, as they continued to Fort Meade. It was extremely cold and snowing that night. Their voices carried through the storm, but Jim could not make out what they were saying. Curly was complaining that the iron cuffs were actually freezing his hands. He promised that he wouldn't try to escape if they would take them off. Llewellyn complied under the condition that Curly would not try to escape. The party veered right off the Sidney Stage Road onto the Fort Meade cutoff. The officers maintained that Grimes soon afterward made a run for it through the deep drifting snow towards the nearby brush and trees. Llewellyn and May contended that they yelled for him to `halt', but as Curly continued they both started shooting. Llewellyn fired at him with his shotgun, flung it down, drew his revolver, and the duo bombarded Curly until his foot hung limply out of the stirrup.
Jim heard the reports and odd noises. The two agents then rode to Fort Meade to report the killing to the commanding officer. After hearing their story, he ordered a party of men to go out and bury the body as soon as the storm lessened. Jim and Will discovered Curly's body about sixty feet off the trail on Wednesday, 5 February. He had a wound under his arm, another in his back, plus several shots in his clothing. By Saturday the weather had cleared so the soldiers could finally bury Curly. They came to get Jim to help them locate the body. Only Jim and Mr. and Mrs. Blood were there to observe the interment of the twenty-two year old man.
The coroner held an inquest at the burial site on 11 February. They disintered Curly's corpse, so Jim, Will, the Bloods, plus the rest of the coroner's group, could examine the cadaver. There was a hole on his left side about the size of a mans hand and about as deep. Powder marks covered the back of Curly's saddle. Public sentiment ran strongly against Llewellyn and May. Many felt the evidence against Grimes in the post office robbery was unconvincing. Others believed that May and Llewellyn were bloodthirsty thugs. Llewellyn and May high-tailed it out of the country and did not return for more than four months. They finally returned in June when the public's outrage had ebbed. The judge promptly charged them with murder and bound them over to U.S. District Court.
They tried the case of the U.S. vs. Llewellyn and May in Deadwood the third week of August, 1880. Jim and Will were both witnesses. Unfortunately the prosecution was weak. The jury quickly found Llewellyn and May not guilty, as there were no eyewitnesses to contradict their story. Years later, Llewellyn claimed that the Union Pacific Railroad paid him $5,000 for capturing Grimes. May died several years later as a fugitive from justice. South American authorities wanted him, and he died hiding in the mountains there. An historical marker now indicates the site of Curly's murder.
At the time of the trial, Madame Bulldog had some serious problems. Mrs. Erb and her husband Joe were estranged, which led to a disagreement about the division of their property. Madame Bulldog became so angry that she started taking wild shots at people. She supposedly married one of her hired men, George Hammond, in August, 1880 before she was officially divorced. Hammond was only twenty years old, and Mrs. Erb was thirty-one. She and the young man were called to court on bigamy charges. Rumor had it in August, 1880 that she was going to leave the country and owed Fanshawe, the post trader, $700. Sheriff Gale Hill went to place her under bond. When he arrived she met him with a three-foot six-shooter. Hill decided it was best not to provoke a lady, much less Madame Bulldog, and retreated to come back with some reinforcements. Two days later he deputized a couple of men who accomplished the mission. The deputies had a pleasant meeting with Madame Bulldog. They left when they learned that she had paid Fanshawe. The two lawmen believed that she was more sinned against than sinning. The Sidney Stage Road was becoming a lesser used trail in August, 1880. She moved to south of Deadwood, where she started a new Bulldog Ranch.
Jim had established a second place at the mouth of Pleasant Valley Creek on Morris Creek the summer before the murder. On 15 August 1879 he filed for the first time on the land, and again on 1 November 1881. He eventually earned the patent for it in September, 1884. The property remains in the family. Several other family members applied for homesteads in this locale. All of Jim's and Mary's sons, their daughter Libbie, plus their sons-in-law, Monroe Ferguson and Captain Smith had homesteads nearby. All of their children except Alice lived in the Morris Creek-Pleasant Valley vicinity. Jim's brother, John, moved instead to north of Rapid City on Box Elder Creek.
The Pleasant Valley and Morris
Creek Years