Prussian soldiers were in greater demand than they had been in the days of Baron von Steuben, and Frank cashed in. He Germanized his name still further by calling himself “August Finckle” and put down his birthplace as “Berlin, Prussia,” and his occupation as “clerk.” The year before “Finckle” enlisted, Prussia had scored a double-edged victory over Louis-Napoleon and over the new Republic of France. Army in 1872 was an admission of economic incompetence if you were a native-born American as Frank Finkle was, and a lot of young men signed up under assumed names, but Frank Finkle went the government one better-he assumed a name that could help him win prestige and promotions. Peter Finkle died in 1868, and some of the older sons, including Frank, left a farm that was too small for six men and went to look for work.ĭown on his luck in Chicago in January 1872, Frank Finkle did what a lot of young men did if they were “too proud to beg and too dumb to steal”-he enlisted.
Peter and Magdalena Finkle had six sons and a daughter, and while they spoke German at home, they sent their children to public schools, so that Frank Finkle grew up bilingual and fully literate in English. The census taker spelled the name “Finkle” in 1860, continuing the drift from the Germanic “Finckel” to the Americanized “Finkel” that occurred through Frank’s long life. census, about the average for that time and place. George Armstrong Custer to the banks of the Little Bighorn River in Montana Territory on June 25, 1876.įrank Finkel was born in January 1854 in Washington County, Ohio, the third son of Peter and Magdalena Finckle, German immigrants who owned a farm valued at $500 in the 1860 U.S. After the discovery of the final pieces of the puzzle, with information from published books, it is clear that Frank Finkel was what he claimed to be-the only known white survivor of the five companies that followed Lt. Census Bureau and the records of the Columbia County Auditor’s Office in Dayton, Wash. But before this article, the last few points of confirmation that clinch Frank Finkel as a survivor of Custer’s Last Stand were hidden in the National Archives, the U.S. One man’s story was completely different-because he was telling the truth. Their stories fell into one of three predictable patterns: disguised themselves as Indians by wrapping up in blankets hid inside a scooped-out horse or a scooped-out buffalo rescued by the chief’s daughter, who found them irresistible. In the years between 1876 and the later 1920s, 70 grizzled galoots and geezers told amused journalists and historians that they were the lone survivors of the Battle of the Little Bighorn. Survivor Frank Finkel's Lasting Stand | Historynet Close
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