SOURCE: Biography information- http://www.destinationdeadwood.com/ SOURCE: Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt http://www.bartleby.com/55/ BIOGRAPHY: Seth Bullock: the man behind the legend The following was reprinted with permission from The Bullock Hotel. Seth Bullock was born in 1849 in the little village of Sandwich, Ontario to retired British Major George Bullock and his Scottish wife. Little is known of his boyhood, except that he was frequently at odds with his father’s strict attitudes concerning discipline. Accepting Greeley’s advice to “go West, young man” at face value, Seth arrived inHelena, Montana in 1867 to become a permanent part of the Western scene. He ran for the Territorial Legislature at the early age of 20, but was defeated. However, he was successful in being elected as a Republican member of the Territorial Senate of Montana, serving in the 1871 and 1872 sessions, and during which he introduced a resolution memorializing the Congress of the United States to set aside Yellowstone for all time to come as a great national park. The resolution was adopted by the Legislature and shortly thereafter a bill was introduced in both houses of Congress. Yellowstone Park was established by Federal Statute on March 1, 1872. He is mentioned many times in the Autobiography of Theodore Roosevelt. He and the President were good friends, and Seth was a member of the President's "Tennis Cabinet". In 1873 Bullock was elected Sheriff of Montana Territory in Lewis and Clark Territory. In addition to his other activities, he soon made a mark for himself as an auctioneer and commission merchant in early-day Helena. He entered into a partnership with Sol Star in the hardware business as well as serving as Chief Engineer of the Helena Fire Department. In 1876, Star and Bullock followed the gold rush to Deadwood, South Dakota to open a soon-successful hardware business in the hell-roaring camp, after first sending his bride Martha with their first-born infant daughter back to the security of her Michigan home. Bullock was elected treasurer of the Board of Health and Street Commissioners, organized to combat a threatened smallpox epidemic and which quickly became the first unofficial governmental unit in Deadwood. The death of Wild Bill Hickok in August of 1876 triggered a growing demand for law and order in Deadwood, resulting in Bullock’s appointment as the first Sheriff of Deadwood a few months thereafter. He quickly appointed several able, fearless deputies and before long order had settled upon Deadwood Gulch with little fanfare or gun smoke. With the elimination of the ”roughs” from Deadwood, Bullock devoted his time to ranching and raising thoroughbred horses on the ranch he and his partner established at the confluence of the Belle Fourche River and Redwater Creek, as well as dabbling in mining, politics and promotion while continuing to serve as Deputy United States Marshal. In the spring of 1881, Bullock planted alfalfa on his ranch, which is generally credited as being the introduction of this important crop in the State of South Dakota. Continuing his youthful dedication to conservation, Bullock successfully secured a Federal fish hatchery for the Black Hills area, located near modern-day Spearfish. Bullock became the founder of the town of Belle Fourche (later to become the largest livestock shipping point in the United States and the county seat of Butte County) by persuading the railroad to build through the old site of the DeMore Stage stop on the Bullock-Star Ranch and offering free lots for any building moved from the town of Minnesela to his “new” town. During the Spanish-American War, Bullock volunteered for active service in the Cavalry and was named a Captain of Troop A in Grigsby’s Cowboy Regiment. The outfit never saw combat, but did sustain quite a few casualties from typhoid which was rampant in the Louisiana training camp where they impatiently sat out the short war. During the ‘90s, Bullock continued to maintain a close contact with Teddy Roosevelt. This close personal friendship between the Bullock and Roosevelt families had begun years prior when the two men shared coffee and beans over the tailgate of a chuckwagon on the rangelands near Belle Fourche. Roosevelt, the newly-elected Vice President under President McKinley, appointed Bullock as the first Forest Supervisor of the Black Hills Reservoir. In 1905 President Teddy Roosevelt appointed Seth Bullock as United States Marshal for South Dakota. Seth was reappointed in 1909 by President Taft and continued in office for one year under President Woodrow Wilson. Roosevelt’s death in January, 1919 was a fearful blow to Captain Bullock who was in a weak, emaciated condition himself. By mid-February, however, Bullock was busily engaged in his last act of devotion to his beloved friend, enlisting the aid of the Society of Black Hills Pioneers to erect a monument to Roosevelt on Sheep Mountain. The peak was renamed Mt. Roosevelt and on its crest Bullock and his fellow pioneers erected a tower constructed of native Black Hills stone. This, the first memorial to Theodore Roosevelt in the United States, was dedicated July 4, 1919. Trail’s end came for Captain Seth Bullock two months later in September, 1919 at the age of 70. Comments about Seth Bullock by President Theodore Roosevelt: It was while with Bill Jones that I first made acquaintance with Seth Bullock. Seth was at that time sheriff in the Black Hills district, and a man he had wanted—a horse thief—I finally got, I being at the time deputy sheriff two or three hundred miles to the north. The man went by a nickname which I will call "Crazy Steve"; a year or two afterwards I received a letter asking about him from his uncle, a thoroughly respectable man in a Western State; and later this uncle and I met at Washington when I was President and he a United States Senator. It was some time after "Steve's" capture that I went down to Deadwood on business, Sylvane Ferris and I on horseback, while Bill Jones drove the wagon. At a little town, Spearfish, I think, after crossing the last eighty or ninety miles of gumbo prairie, we met Seth Bullock. We had had rather a rough trip, and had lain out for a fortnight, so I suppose we looked somewhat unkempt. Seth received us with rather distant courtesy at first, but unbent when he found out who we were, remarking, "You see, by your looks I thought you were some kind of a tin-horn gambling outfit, and that I might have to keep an eye on you!" He then inquired after the capture of "Steve"—with a little of the air of one sportsman when another has shot a quail that either might have claimed—"My bird, I believe?" Later Seth Bullock became, and has ever since remained, one of my stanchest and most valued friends. He served as Marshal for South Dakota under me as President. When, after the close of my term, I went to Africa, on getting back to Europe I cabled Seth Bullock to bring over Mrs. Bullock and meet me in London, which he did; by that time I felt that I just had to meet my own people, who spoke my neighborhood dialect. " While in the White House I always tried to get a couple of hours' exercise in the afternoons—sometimes tennis, more often riding, or else a rough cross-country walk, perhaps down Rock Creek, which was then as wild as a stream in the White Mountains, or on the Virginia side along the Potomac. My companions at tennis or on these rides and walks we gradually grew to style the Tennis Cabinet; and then we extended the term to take in many of my old-time Western friends such as Ben Daniels, Seth Bullock, Luther Kelly, and others who had taken part with me in more serious outdoor adventures than walking and riding for pleasure."... ..." On March 1, 1909, three days before leaving the Presidency, various members of the Tennis Cabinet lunched with me at the White House. "Tennis Cabinet" was an elastic term, and of course many who ought to have been at the lunch were, for one reason or another, away from Washington; but, to make up for this, a goodly number of out-of-town honorary members, so to speak, were present—for instance, Seth Bullock; Luther Kelly, better known as Yellowstone Kelly in the days when he was an army scout against the Sioux; and Abernathy, the wolf-hunter. At the end of the lunch Seth Bullock suddenly reached forward, swept aside a mass of flowers which made a centerpiece on the table, and revealed a bronze cougar by Proctor, which was a parting gift to me. The lunch party and the cougar were then photographed on the lawn." At one of the regimental reunions a man, who had been an excellent soldier, in greeting me mentioned how glad he was that the judge had let him out in time to get to the reunion. I asked what was the matter, and he replied with some surprise: "Why, Colonel, don't you know I had a difficulty with a gentleman, and ... er ... well, I killed the gentleman. But you can see that the judge thought it was all right or he wouldn't have let me go." Waiving the latter point, I said: "How did it happen? How did you do it?" Misinterpreting my question as showing an interest only in the technique of the performance, the ex-puncher replied: "With a .38 on a .45 frame, Colonel." I chuckled over the answer, and it became proverbial with my family and some of my friends, including Seth Bullock. When I was shot at Milwaukee, Seth Bullock wired an inquiry to which I responded that it was all right, that the weapon was merely "a .38 on a .45 frame." The telegram in some way became public, and puzzled outsiders. By the way, both the men of my regiment and the friends I had made in the old days in the West were themselves a little puzzled at the interest shown in my making my speech after being shot. This was what they expected, what they accepted as the right thing for a man to do under the circumstances, a thing the non-performance of which would have been discreditable rather than the performance being creditable. They would not have expected a man to leave a battle, for instance, because of being wounded in such fashion; and they saw no reason why he should abandon a less important and less risky duty. Jeff Scism, IBSSG http://blacksheep.rootsweb.com/ e-mail postage paid by sender, @SanBernardino,Ca