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1. Transcript of Register of Baptisms, parish of Brown Candover, Hampshire Record Office, Winchester. Brown Candover (Pop. 272 in 1851) lies in the picturesque Candover Valley, five miles north of the beautiful and historic Georgian town of New Alresford (pronounced Allsford), which itself is seven miles east-north-east of Winchester.
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Note: Military Register of Custer’s Last Command, by Roger L Williams (Arthur H. Clark, 2009) and Participants in the Battle of the Little Big Horn, by Frederic C. Wagner III (McFarland, 2011) both incorrectly show Pitter as being born in Alesford in 1850. The ‘Muster Roll’ on the Friends of the Little Bighorn Battlefield website [as at 20 May 2014] mistakenly states 10 February as being the date of birth, not baptism and Men With Custer: Biographies of the 7th Cavalry, edited by Ronald Nichols with Daniel Bird (CBHMA 2010), gives February 1845.
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2. Harriett, dau. of James and Caroline Pitter, was buried at Brown Candover on 11 March 1836 – she was less than four weeks-old.
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3. The 47th United States Infantry Regiment had its headquarters in Broad Street, New Alresford, from 1943 to D-Day 1944.
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4. Register of Deaths, Alresford District, Sub-district Alresford, June Qtr 1862, Vol. 2c Page 78.
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5. Register of Deaths, Alresford District, Sub-district Ropley, No. 191, 1870.
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6. The Census of England was taken on the night of 2 April 1871; no-one fitting Felix Pitter’s description could be found in these records.
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7. 7th U.S. Cavalry Regimental Returns for September and October 1873.
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8. Keogh was on leave for seven months from 6 April 1874 and First Lieutenant James Porter took over command of Company I during his captain’s absence. Porter was reported missing, presumed killed, at the Battle of the Little Big Horn and was one of three officers whose body was never recovered or, at least, positively identified.
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9. In March, 1872, President Grant signed the bill authorising the remainder of the survey between the Lake-of the Woods, Minnesota, and the summit (Continental Divide) of the Rocky Mountains (49th parallel), thus completing the boundary survey between the United States and Canada.
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10. The Sweet Grass Hills lie close to the Canadian border about 35 miles northeast of Shelby, Montana.
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11. Three others from the post-1921 United Kingdom serving in Company I were also killed in the battle (25-26 June 1876), namely: Edward Lloyd (Gloucester), referred to above; Archibald McIlhargey (Antrim) who carried the first message from Reno to Custer, reporting that the Indians were in front of the command in strong force; John Parker (Birmingham).
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Captain Myles Keogh (Carlow) was killed with his men on Battle Ridge but his remains were exhumed in July 1877 and reinterred in Fort Hill Cemetery, Auburn, New York.
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12. The revelation in the newspapers soon after the battle that half buried bodies were left strewn across the barren field inevitably caused a public outcry. High-ranking army officers demanded that Congress allocate funds for a cemetery to properly bury the fallen, which led to the Custer Battlefield National Cemetery being established on 1 August 1879 (renamed Custer National Cemetery in 1991). At the same time troopers from Fort Custer erected a log memorial on top of Last Stand Hill (aka Custer Hill) and marked the scattered shallow graves with substantial wooden stakes. In 1881, the remains of the enlisted men were re-interred in a common mass grave at the base of the white granite monument we see today.
Comments:
Pitter reduced his age at enlistment by over five years and was actually born in the village of Brown Candover, near Alresford, Hampshire, not ‘Alesford.