George Armstrong Custer spent his very early years in a happy family, not unlike the mixture that many modern-day families have evolved into. As it was termed, there were Ma’s kids, Pa’s kids, and Ma and Pa’s kids. George’s father’s first wife had died, leaving him with three motherless children. Only a few months after the death of his first wife, the senior Mr. Custer married a widow who had three children of her own. The product of this new marriage was first George, born on December 5, 1839, followed by three younger brothers.
George’s father was not a wealthy man—except perhaps in children. In their hometown of New Rumley, Ohio Mr. Custer, of Pennsylvania Dutch descent, was a down to earth, hard working farmer and blacksmith.
Though the Custer household was overflowing with stepbrothers and sisters, as well as natural siblings, George grew up considering them all “Custers.” This feeling of family seems to have been felt by other members of this family as well. In 1849, George left his home in New Rumley to go and live with his older, and newly married stepsister, Lydia Reed who had been like a second mother to him. Having moved to Monroe, Michigan with her husband, Lydia missed her girlhood home filled with noisy and active children.
In Monroe George encountered two new aspects of life. The first was class distinction. The Custers and Reeds were not considered members of higher society. As one retired Army officer with aristocratic pretensions stated, “Of course we did not associate with them,” meaning the Custers and Reeds. And from another of the upper crust: “They [the Reeds and Custers] were quite ordinary people, no intellectual interest, very little schooling.”
The second aspect George Custer encountered was—love. At the time, the sparkling, dark-haired, ten-year-old girl, two years his junior, was first noticed as she swung on her front gate. It is recorded that she called out to George, saying, “Hi, you Custer boy!” grinned at him then ran into her house. And young George was smitten by little Elizabeth “Libbie” Bacon.
Elizabeth Bacon was the daughter, and only child, of widower Judge Daniel S. Bacon, a man “of imposing position, power, and wealth." Miss Bacon was far above this son of a blacksmith’s social standing. Sad though this fact may be, it didn’t deter George Custer one little bit.
George talked the judge into letting him do odd jobs for him where he could hang around the Bacon’s back yard, waiting for a site of Libbie. But this was as far as he got. George was not received in the Bacon home, the finest house in Monroe, Michigan.
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