My Great Grandfather, Robert Rich Wilson

BIOGRAPHY: ROBERT RICH WILSON

          A letter written to Ilah Allgood Jacobsen from her Uncle Bernard John Wilson about his father, Robert Rich Wilson:

Robert Rich Wilson

       "My father had his first marriage beyond which the door was locked  as far as we children were concerned and I believe also to great extent as far as mother too was concerned.  I'm sure this was intentional in respect for his new family. From scraps of information from different sources I ascertain the following:
       Dad's father (Robert Wilson) was a colonel having come west from the State of Virginia.  I'm not sure but somehow I seem to have it deep in mind that he eventually became a post trader as some western out-post and that was when dad was still a baby.
       It has been said, I don't remember the source, that Dad when a sucking baby was kidnapped and turned off an indian women's breast and later retrieved by his parents.
       I ascertain that Dad was a scout for General Custer, and was the first, or one of the first on the battlefield after the Little Bighorn massacre. He would have been in the battle had he not been away to the bedside of his sick sister in Chicago, Illinois.
      Although very young, I still  remember when Bill Cody (Buffalo Bill) visited Dad in Ogden at Grandfather's Lamoreaux's place, and they talked over old scenes of the battlefield.
       Dad's prior marriage was to a Carter girl of a very reputable family. By their marriage Dad had a son named Devoe, who after his mother passed away, was raised  by  the  Carter family. Devoe, my half brother, although possibly still alive, I've never seen.
      I'm finding it increasingly difficult to reveal any certainties of my father's life or of my mother's life prior to my childhood. All I know are wee bits of truths and possible some untruths which I've never given any serious consideration."