User:MinorProphet/George C. Crager

This draft is dedicated to two US judges, Elmer Scipio Dundy (1830–1896) of the United States District Court for the District of Nebraska, and George. C. Barrett (1838-1906), US Supreme Court Justice. Their profound and deeply-considered words stand out starkly amid the fast-moving, free-wheeling and frenetic profit-driven world of the US Entertainment Business™

Judge Dundy ruled in Standing Bear v. Crook (1879):


 * "An Indian is a person within the meaning of the habeas corpus act. [...] During the fifteen years in which I have been engaged in administering the laws of my country, I have never been called upon to hear or decide a case that appealed so strongly to my sympathy as the one now under consideration On the one side, we have a few of the remnants of a once numerous and powerful, but now weak, insignificant, unlettered and generally despised race; on the other, we have the representative of one of the most powerful, most enlightened, and most Christianized nations of modern times. On the one side, we have the representatives of this wasted race coming into this national tribunal of ours, asking for justice and liberty to enable them to adopt our boasted civilization, and to pursue the arts of peace, which have made us great and happy as a nation; on the other side, we have this magnificent - if not magnanimous - government resisting this application, with the determination of sending these people back to the country which is to them less desirable than perpetual imprisonment in their own native land."

Judge George. C. Barrett uttered the following words some three years later, in a seduction trial in 1882:


 * "There is something to me inexpressibly sad about this case. I find nothing amusing in it. At the same time I am not sorry (revolting as are many of its details) that it has been brought before us. Entirely independent of your verdict, entirely independent of the particular interests of these parties, I think it is well that the community should occasionally see something of our boasted civilization, see just what it means, and be brought face to face with what there is beneath the surface. I am not one of those who believe in ignoring vice. That is neither wise nor safe. The only true philosophy is that which seeks the truth below the surface and does its best to remove what is dangerous to the public health or to the public morals."

Begin. Welcome.

Major George Carlton Crager (19 September 1859 - 15 August 1920), was an American soldier, Sioux interpreter, US Indian Special allotting Agent, journalist, theatrical business manager, and US Consul. He was the interpreter for the Sioux performers in Buffalo Bill's Wild West, some of who were the surviving defeated chiefs of the Indian Wars? Sioux Wars. In 1891 Crager, on tour with the Wild West show, sold The Ghost Shirt, a possible relic of the Wounded Knee Massacre, to Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow. He was the manager of the dancer Loie Fuller and the soprano Alice Nielsen. In 1913 he was the business manager of Joseph Menchen (see also unfinished draft User:MinorProphet/Joseph L. Menchen), who made The Miracle (1912), the world's first full-colour feature film.

Early life: Army orderly and trumpeter
George Carlton Crager was born in Bronx County, NY in 1859. His father, Adolph (or Adolphus), was born in Spain, according to Crager's entry in the 1880 US Census for Wyoming. , but he seems to have been of German origin. His mother was Minnie Meyers, who was born in England according to the Wyoming 1880 Census.

<-- ;1874 George Crager, a man of steady habits and in apparently sound mental and bodily health, residing some three miles south of Ithaca, on the Owego (sic) turnpike, on Sunday, February 8tjh, went to that village to attend the funeral of Mr. Lyons, and on that evening disappeared, since which time nothing has been seen or heard of him. -->

Sunday at The Tombs: The Prodigal Son. "George Crager produced his son, Adolphus, whose character he vouched for as probably the worst enjoyed by any young man of his years in the world. He wished him sent to the Island, or hanged, or something. After some persuasion, the Justice induced the father to give him one more chance, and the boy, whom a judicious lecture had reduced to an agony of tears and terror, caught his father round the neck and hugged him. The father, repressing his apparent inclination to castigate his offspring, led him away. It was conjectured that the father did not organise a special veal-pot-pie in honor of his prodigal son's return."
 * 8 June 1875
 * Hmmmmmmz, a man with the same name: but almost certainly not our George, who would have been only 16 in 1875... On the other hand, Adolphus was the name of Crager's father, and this may be a case of switched identities.

Crager, aged 16, enlisted in Company M, 3rd Cavalry Regiment on 20 May 1876.
 * 1876

Periods spent in the US Army:
 * 20 May 1876 to 1 March 1878
 * 19 March 1880 to 7 October 1881

According to later newspaper reports, Crager claimed—indirectly—to have been at the Battle of the Rosebud a month later, and carried the wounded Captain Guy Henry off the battlefield. However, there are a number of reasons to question his claim:
 * Troy Daily Times (NY), 3 June 1876:
 * Crager, a recruiting orderly (no doubt with the gift of the gab) for the United States cavalry at No. 174 Hudson street, (Troy, NY), witnessed a 14 year-old boy murder another boy of the same age and seized the malfeasant one and his weapon. This news item is dated 3 June 1876. It is possible, that Crager (a recruiting orderly in New York) became General George Crooks' orderly at the battle of Rosebud Creek six days later on 9 June 1876, 1,900 miles away. However, this claim appears to be somewhat optimistic (if it was indeed the same man). The Transcontinental Express took 4½ days to get to Bryan, Wyoming in 1869,, and then he would have to traverse of the whole of Wyoming to get to the Rosebud Creek in southern Montana.


 * In another account Crager gave a different name to the battle, calling it the 'Battle of Goose Neck, Montana'.


 * In a newspaper article dated 22 January 1900 (nearly 25 years after the event), Crager claimed that the battle was fought on St. Patrick's Day 1876, which is 17 March. However, this is the date of the Battle of Powder River, and he apparently didn't join the Army until 20 May 1876.

George Crager, reportedly acting as General George Crook's orderly, claimed to have found Captain (later General) Guy Henry wounded in the eye at the Battle of Rosebud Creek, Montana, on 9 June 1876.
 * 9 June 1876

Death of Crazy Horse, war-leader of the Oglala Sioux: while in the process of surrendering, he was stabbed to death by a soldier (probably) at Camp Robinson near the Red Cloud Agency.
 * September 5, 1877

In c1878 Crager was adopted by old chief Two Strike, "having had an intimate relationship with the Sicangu for a number of years."
 * 1878

Crager was discharged the Army on 1 or 20 March 1878 on medical grounds. 1 March 1878

Many Companies of the 3d Cavalry (A, B, D, E, F, H, and possibly C & G) were stationed at Fort Robinson, where the Fort Robinson massacre of the Northern Cheyenne took place.
 * 1879

Having evaded their 3d US Cavalry pursuers for a fortnight, the last of the Northern Cheyenne who escaped from Camp Sheridan during the Fort Robinson massacre were eventually trapped in a gully and died in a firefight.
 * 22 January 1879

Sooo, at last: we find out about US Special Agent Colonel James R. O'Beirne, while in the Indian Agency. As he was only a brevet-brigadier general in the Civil War, he would have technically remained a Colonel in the Army. I think that superintendents in the US Indian Service were also 'Colonels', but if he was only a special US Agent, it would have been his Army rank. And that's how he was at Pine Ridge, and Crager was an interpreter at the Camp Sheridan/Spotted Tail Agency (see next entry).
 * Late April 1879

O'Beirne was temporarily in charge of the Pine Ridge agency while Valentine McGillycuddy was away to sort out a missed payment to the Sioux. There was a contretemps about rations being diverted from the Rosebud Agency, where Crager was later assigned.

Hmm, here's a thesis with a long chapter on McGillycuddy, who seems to have been a typical corrupt agent at Pine Ridge.

Crager was arrested in New York for impersonating a police officer after picking up a wayward girl and flashing a suspect (fake?) badge the size of a small coffin plate which bore the following inscription: "U.S.I.D. Secret Service, G.C.C." [ie, George. C. Crager]. He identified himself to the arresting policeman as a Sioux interpreter from the Spotted Tail Agency Nebraska, adding that he was on his way to Washington in response to a letter from Carl Schurz, the Secretary of the Department of the Interior. Crager was remanded in custody until the girl came to court to make a complaint against him.
 * 10 February 1880

The Brulé Sioux of the Spotted Tail agency (named for Chief Spotted Tail) in northwest Nebraska were "moved" over the border to what is now South Dakota in 1877, occupying the Rosebud Agency in 1878. Camp Sheridan (Nebraska), which had been set up near the Spotted Tail Agency to protect the agency, was abandoned on 1 May 1881. It may have been garrisoned by the 3rd Cavalry, which was stationed in the Department of the Platte, including what is now Nebraska.

George Crager re-enlisted in the 3rd Cavalry 19 March 1880 or perhaps at some point in 1879.

Crager was back with the 3rd Cavalry soon after his arrest, serving in Company F in Knoxville, Tennessee from early 1880. Sometime after January 1880 the regimental surgeon diagnosed him with 'malingering' for faking chronic diarrhoea with Epsom Salts, noting that he was a previous recruit who had been discharged the army before on medical grounds.

He was by the Mississippi in Jefferson Barracks, Missouri in May 1880, where the Post Commander was Colonel Cuvier Grover, 1st Cavalry.

According to the 1880 Census (16 June) he was stationed as a trumpeter in Fort Sanders, Albany County, Wyoming (south of Laramie). After the completion of Fort D. A. Russell at Cheyenne late in 1868, Fort Sanders was coming to the end of its useful existence. The War Department maintained it until 1882, when the property and buildings were sold at auction and the post vacated.
 * 1880


 * 1880 'Civilization Regulations'
 * These Interior Secretary rules (re-issued in 1884, 1894, and 1904) set forth a series of offenses and penalties that applied only to Indians. They outlawed Indian religions, the practices of "so-called" medicine men, religious ceremonies, and unauthorized roaming off the reservations. See also the Dawes Act of 1887.

He married Mollie Willoughby (1860/62 ? - 15 April 1939) in Cheyenne, Laramie County, Wyoming, on 18 January 1881. She was the sister of Jim “Kid” Willoughby, a peerless horseman who joined Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show in 1885.
 * 1881

He was at Fort McKinney, Wyoming Territory, near the Powder River in October 1881. He was discharged the Army on 7 October 1881, again on medical grounds - hmm, Epsom Salts again???

Their daughter Bessie Crager was born.
 * 1882

Bessie attended a Military Ball for the University of Wyoming cadet officers on 11 February 1898, with her mother, Mary Elizabeth Lee (“Mollie”) Willoughby Crager Schalk. Her marriage to Crager had ended in 1882. She married C. F. Schalk in 1888. However, she reverted to the name Crager in the mid-1920s and, upon her death in 1939, she was buried as Crager.

He (or someone else with the same name) was with his wife (one or other of them) at a temperance meeting with M. C. Wilcox at Vermilion, Saratoga County, NY. NB His daughter Minna was born in Vermilion in 1885, His 'wife' was probably Mary Chesboro.
 * March 1882

CHARGED WITH BIGAMY. George C. Crager a young man who has been been doing business in Camden, Oneida County, New York, was arrested tbe other day charged with bigamy, and lodged in the Oswego [rest of line illegible] married Miss Mary Chesboro, a young lady of good family, at Palermo, Oswego County, and went to Camden to live, A short time ago the Cheesbros received information from Cheyenne, W. T. to the effect that, on January 19 1881 Crager married one Mary Willoughby of that city. They thereupon caused his arrest. He was arraigned before the Special County Judge of Oswego county, and pleaded not guilty.
 * 1 May 1882

The Camden Journal says : "The young man (above referred to) came to Camden late last February, and hired rooms over the [illegible line] accompanied by his wife who seemed to be a very modest and intelligent young lady. They opened a ladies hair store in their rooms, [illegible line] the Singer sewing machines from his brother in law, who had been in [illegible word] in the interest of the company several times during the last few months. The young man was a great talker, and willing to delight all who would listen with stories of his Indian life. He manifested great interest in church matters and took a prominent part in prayer meetings at the Presbyterian Church. He also inquired into the temperance cause in Camden, and painted glowing pictures of the [illegible] in that direction, by aid of the addresses he would deliver and the essays which he said his wife would write."

City and vicinity: Seeking vindcation. George C. Crager's career In Wyoming Territory "The Fort Collins Express gives the following account of the career of George C. Crager during his residence in that place. Crager, it will be remembered, is now in jail at Pulaski awaiting trial on the charge of bigamy. George C. Crager will be well remembered by the inhabitants of this city. He came to Fort Collins, Colorado in company with his wife from Cheyenne, Wyoming last November. For a few days the couple stopped at the Tedmon house, but soon went to the Windsor. Crager engaged a room and advertised that he would soon open a hair dressing establishment. He, however, did not carry the project out. His wife soon left for Cheyenne. Crager began to ingratiate himself into the good graces of the people about town, and seemingly made good progress in that direction. He was a young man of easy address, and became quite popular with the young folks. He finally got the position of grocery clerk in L. W. Welch's store. About the close of December he left for the East. We next hear of him in Palermo, New York where he married Miss Mary Cheesebro, on the 12th of January last. [ie 1882?] About the middle of April the intelligence that Crager had another wife in Cheyenne reached the parents of the bride of a few weeks. The matter was reported to the authorities and Crager was arrested early one morning before he arose, handcuffed and lodged in jail. At his examination he was bound over to appear before the grand jury.
 * 1 June 1882

As the story runs, Crager married Miss Mary Willoughby in Cheyenne, January 19th. 1881. With her he lived until his sudden departure from Fort Collins for the east. His second and illegal marriage to Miss Cheeseboro, must have followed a few days after his arrival in New York. His acquaintance with Miss Cheeseboro dates from a period of about three years ago, when Crager was on his way to Wyoming, and Miss Cheeseboro en route to California to teach school. Since then a correspondence has been kept up between the two. Crager's story is that he is being persecuted, and lays the blame one J. C. Baird, of the Cheyenne Leader, whom, he says, he shot several years ago, since when he (Baird) has let no opportunity escape to persecute him (Crager.) It is stated that Baird was a witness to the marriage of Crager and Miss Willougby in Cheyenne. From all appearances we are inclined to think that Crager is guilty of the crime charged him, bigamy.. The lady who came to Fort Collins was his wife without doubt, he left this section, '''leaving not the very best of an impression on the minds of those who chanced to make his acquaintance. There are also hints that his conduct while clerking in Fort Collins would not bear close inspection.'''

It is but just, however, to add that Crager never shot at Mr. Baird, never had any trouble with him, and can not substantiate one of his statements about him. In his professional capacity as a lawyer. Mr. Baird commenced a suit against Crager, which was compromised by his marriage. Mr. Baird cannot be injured by any slurs from such a source, is far above the insignificant liar and seducer, who first wrongs a girl and then deserts her, and is too well known to fear any injury from the man who "shot him some time ago."

Saturday, Aug 19 1882 (The year is indistinct, but the day and date match.) Looking Backward: 50 Years ago. "P. T. Barnum's Circus is in town with Jumbo, largest elephant, and many attractions. George C. Crager, Oswego, only man in town able to talk with the Zulus." The Zulus were originally brought to London by William Leonard Hunt ('The Great Farini') in 1879. Dingando, Possoman, Maguibi, and Ousan appeared at the Folies Bergere in November 1879. Farini merged his circus with P. T. Barnum, and the Zulus arrived in the US in March 1881. Part of Grand Ethnological Conference of Nations exhibit at Madison Square Garden in 1882, including Sioux, Polynesians and Australian Aborigines.

Barnum's Circus became Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus after Bailey died in 1906. Lol Ringling was in Berlin c1910 with Joe Menchen

George Crager was convicted of bigamy in Oswego County, NY, and sentenced to two years in Auburn prison, where the inmates were put to work with enforced silence at all times. See also Auburn system. The prison's philosophy was that the it ought to be "self-supporting through the labor of the convicts and even show a profit to the state. Every other philosophy, reformation of the offender, the development of saleable skills, and the habits of industry and sobriety were considered to be secondary aims of imprisonment." A similar system was enforced at Sing Sing, and was opposed to the contemporaneous Eastern State Penitentiary system. See also History of United States prison systems.
 * September 20, 1882

Crager possibly married Kate Halthusen before December 1882, according to a newspaper report of a seduction case: 'Crager's Three Wives'. "George C. Crager, who was sentenced to Auburn State prison on conviction of bigamy, at Pulaski, last summer, he having married a wife in this county while he had one living in the west, now has another one charged to him in New York. He was taken to that city on Saturday evening under a writ of habeas corpus, to testify in the suit of Kate Halthusen against Benjamin Schlesinger for seduction under promise of marriage. The defendant is the son of the owner of a large toy factory where the plaintiff was employed. The defence is that the plaintiff was previously married to Crager, when he worked in the same factory. This she denies."
 * Another marriage - possibly


 * What the judge said

Judge Barrett's reflections on a story after the manner of Zola. Benjamin Schlesinger was superintendent for a New York firm in whose factory more than 100 girls, including Katie Holthusen, worked for wages averaging about $4 a week. Miss Holthusen sued him for alleged seduction under promise of marriage. The case was tried in Judge Barrett's court yesterday, and in giving it to the jury he said:

"There is something to me inexpressibly sad about this case. I find nothing amusing in it. At the same time I am not sorry (revolting as are many of its details) that it has been brought before us. Entirely independent of your verdict, entirely independent of the particular interests of these parties, I think it is well that the community should occasionally see something of our boasted civilization, see just what it means, and be brought face to face with what there is beneath the surface. I am not one of those who believe in ignoring vice. That is neither wise nor safe. The only true philosophy is that which seeks the truth below the surface and does its best to remove what is dangerous to the public health or to the public morals.

"To me is a very pitiable picture, that of those one hundred girls employed at low wages, wages barely adequate for sustenance, surrounded by every possible temptation, maybe the greatest of all temptations, that which springs from actual want and pressing need. There to another very sad thing to me about this case and that is the low atmosphere or vulgar animality which runs through it and the cheapness with which female virtue and female honor have been treated. That feature of the case is positively sickening; the utter disregard or those sacred things which are implanted in every decent man's breast; the tightness, the levity, and even the brutality with which reference has been made to the weaker and the gentler sex. I shall say no more upon that subject lest my feelings should affect your judgment for I confess that I feel too much about it." The jury were directed to bring in a scaled verdict this morning.

"Pardon for Crager. A correspondent of the Oswego Palladium, writes that William Chesbro, of Palermo is circulating a petition requesting the governor to pardon George Crager who was sentenced to a term in Auburn last fall for bigamy. The petition is being generally signed."
 * 10 May 1883

In December 1883 he was making harnesses in the prison harness shop.

He was finally pardoned by Grover Cleveland, the Governor of New York 1883-1884, and released early from jail (his sentence would have been completed in May, with deduction for good conduct) on compassionate grounds because his daughter had died, and his wife had pleaded for him to be present at the funeral.
 * 11 February 1884

Buffalo Bill's Wild West
Alas, the sad story of the first nations in the US is complicated and not in the forefront of many peoples' minds, especially not on Wikipedia. See "Tribal Nations Map: our own names and locations" by Aaron Carapella for a thought-provoking approach.

Grover Cleveland's 1st presidential term, 4 March 1885 – 4 March 1889 (he was previously Governor of New York).
 * (1885–1889)


 * 1885
 * Jim ‘Kid’ Willoughby began performing with Buffalo Bill’s Wild West (founded in 1883, hereafter BBWW). Photos show Crager with Buffalo Bill, General Miles et al. after Wounded Knee in December 1890; who knew who first? did Crager know Cody before either met Jim Kid Willoughby?


 * Crager's daughter Minna was born in Vermilion, Saratoga County, NY in 1885. Her mother was Mary Chesbro or Chesebro.

He began working as an interpreter for the Native Americans performers in BBWW. Crager had reportedly lived amongst the Sicangu Lakota for a number of years, and reportedly spoke fourteen or fifteen Sioux or Indian dialects/languages by 1917. He said there were seven Indian dialects spoken in the BBWW camp in 1891. His brother-in-law, 'Jim Kid' Willoughby had been riding with BBWWS since the previous year
 * 1886

A charm bracelet belonging to Annie Oakley featured a number of gold coins from various members of BBWW, including a Victorian sovereign (coin), overstamped G. C. - probably George Crager. Sold at auction in November 2013.


 * 1887
 * The Dawes Act of 1887 banned Native American religious practice, not repealed until 19xx when? Complements the 'Civilization Regulations' of 1880.

His second wife Mary Cheseboro seems to have died on 23 October 1887 in Volney, Oswego County, NY.

He was present with - apparently - another wife at a birthday reception in Newark, [NJ?].
 * 1 October 1888
 * "The friends of Mr. A. B. Meyer and Mr. D. Strauss were tendered a reception on Saturday evening at the residence of Mr. and Mrs. L. Meyer, at Newark [NJ?], the occasion being the birthday celebration of the hosts. They were Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin Schlesinger, Mr. and Mrs. G. C. Crager, Miss Mary Strauss, I. Schlesinger, F. Rauch, R. Schleslnger and Al Fisher, of this city; M. Meyer, of Paterson, Mr. and Mrs. R. Trier, Mr. and Mrs. L. Meyer, Misses C. Schwab, Helen and Henrietta Straus, Rose and Laura Cohen, Ida and Frank Newcity and Minnie Rose.
 * Hmm, lots of Schlesingers, any relation to Leo Schlesinger, owner of the toy factory where his faithless son Benjamin worked, along with George Crager back in 1882? And what about Kate Halthusen?

So who was this new wife? She may well have been the former Mrs. August Seligmen (see below). Sadly, the date of the divorce case isn't mentioned. <>Oswego Herald Courier, Tuesday, March 17, 1890, p. 3c. "A summons brought George C. Crager to court in 1890, to face the lawyers who haven't been paid for their work in his new wife's divorce suit against her previous husband. The Langbeins hadn't seen a cent since Crager promised - some two years ago - that he would pay the costs himself." <>

ie His wife at the Meyers' party was possibly the former Mrs. August Seligmen (whom may he have married before 1 October 1888), and whose lawyers sued him for $160 for the balance of the divorce costs which he had promised to pay himself.

The Ghost dance
During the solar eclipse on 1 January 1889, the Paiute prophet Wovoka had a vision, and began preaching to the Indian nations that the Messiah was in the world. The Ghost dance, a traditional round dance, was an integral part of his teachings, and he brought many tribes together to perform the dance. Wovoka's (father or possible relative) founded an earlier Ghost Dance in 1870. Orphaned at 14, Wovoka was given the name Jack Wilson by David Wilson, the man who put him to work. The latter was a devout "(United) Presbyterian" (perhaps United Presbyterian (although the church's influence was originally centred in the East and Mid-West), and Wovoka was exposed to "family bible readings, evening prayers, grace before meat, and similar devotions." It seems that although a contemporary observer felt that Wovoka's message and dance was an essentially Christian one, [ref needed, some Army ?Captain's report] it has been described as a "confused" and "jumbled" syncretic one which includes elements of the ?Indian? Shakers Religion; of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (particularly the Endowment Robe worn by married Mormon couples, and also of Presbyterian/nonconformist/Calvinist Christian ideas.
 * 1 January 1889

Complete account of Wovoka and the Ghost Dance: Other contemporary sources:
 * Mooney, James (1990). "A Message from the Ghost-Dance Messiah". New England Review, Vol. 18, No. 3 (Summer, 1997), pp. 72-76. JSTOR 40243216. NB Mooney's account of Wovoka's message accords in general with the verbatim one told to Indian agent Arthur I. Chapman by Wovoka himself. Mooney was a gummint ethnologist, and went to Nevada to talk to Wovoka. Lol, Mooney thought that "an interpreter is generally at best a necessary evil"
 * Fletcher, Alice C. (1891). "The Indian Messiah". The Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 4, No. 12 (Jan. - Mar., 1891) American Folklore Society, pp. 57-60 DOI: 10.2307/532937. JSTOR 532937. Accessdate=9 July 2016. NB Now discredited somewhat, part of the well-meaning brigade.
 * For a wholly negative view of Native Americans, "a degraded, brutal savage, devoid of pity, feeling or mercy", see Blackmore, William (1869). "The North-American Indians: A Sketch of Some of the Hostile Tribes, Together with a Brief Account of General Sheridan's Campaign of 1868 against the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Kiowa, and Comanche Indians". The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London. Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 287-320. DOI: 10.2307/3014409, JSTOR 3014409.
 * For a wholly negative view of Native Americans, "a degraded, brutal savage, devoid of pity, feeling or mercy", see Blackmore, William (1869). "The North-American Indians: A Sketch of Some of the Hostile Tribes, Together with a Brief Account of General Sheridan's Campaign of 1868 against the Sioux, Cheyenne, Arapahoe, Kiowa, and Comanche Indians". The Journal of the Ethnological Society of London. Vol. 1, No. 3, pp. 287-320. DOI: 10.2307/3014409, JSTOR 3014409.

Kicking Bear and Arnold Short Bull (or Black Elk) brought the idea of the Ghost Dance (and/or Ghost shirt) back to the Pine Ridge Agency, where the Wounded Knee massacre took place in late December 1890. The Lakota Sioux were (possibly) the only tribe to believe that the ghost shirt clothing would protect them from the bullets of the white man. Both Kicking Bear and Short Bull were imprisoned in Fort Sheridan, Illinois, after the murder of Sitting Bull, and joined BBWW on their release.

Red Shirt (Oglala) opposed Crazy Horse and the Ghost dance; he was one of those progressive leaders who realised that assimilation rather than extinction was essentially the only way forward. He was with BBWW on the 1887 European tour, and for many years after. He was involved with the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Carlisle, Cumberland County, Pennsylvania. George Crager lived in Pennsylvania - (see See Philadelphia.

Crager later sold The Ghost Shirt to Kelvingrove Museum, Glasgow, at the end of the 1891 BBWW European tour.
 * NB Maddra's PhD thesis (Parts 1 & 2) mentions that Crager had several ghost shirts in his tent and lots of other bits & pieces. They almost certainly belonged to him, having bought or been given them. Also i fink that he noticed the Africans (Zulus) doing some signing while talking: he got them communicating with the American Indians, who have a mutually intelligible sign language.

NB Where did the particular twist come from, that the Indian American Messiah was going to result in the downfall of the white man? Pine Ridge, or was it more general? I can see that there is lots of wrong information around.

"Hard Stories Told by Indians of the Way Buffalo Bill Used Them" New York Herald, 22 July 1890. "...For months past the warriors have been straggling back in groups of three and five, sick and disgusted with their treatment while abroad.... Gen. O’Beirne, who was special Indian agent under Commisioner Hoyt, sent for interpreter George C. Crager on Sunday morning, and through him the braves related their sufferings while in Europe. Bear Pipe said that Rocky Bear, their acting chief in the show, and Broncho Bill, the interpreter, treated them very cruelly. The food they received was not fit for dogs, he said. They had to eat what the cook supplied. “Buffalo Bill” insisted that the braves should strip to the waist and come out in war paint and feathers at every show, and he refused to let them wear shirts even in the coldest weather. Many of them were taken sick and were obliged to go to hospitals. Their emaciated features and gaunt frames told the story of their sufferings."
 * July 1890

Hmm, the Indian Commissioner may have been called Hayt, there was also a Governor Hoyt of Wyoming Territory which included part of the Black Hills.

Many Indians complained of poor food and ill-treatment, several met with accidental deaths on tour, and on their return No Neck was paid $100 by Cody to cover up the charges with the reporters. Aha! here is the bit about showmen being prevented from taking Indians abroad. O'Beirne wrote to [Indian] Commissioner Morgan about the incident, and the next day John Noble, the Secretary of the Interior, directed 'that no permits be granted for Indians to go with these shows, under any circumstances'. Commissioner Morgan was instructed to investigate the facts in and regard to the treatment of the Indian performers." It seems that the ban was only temporary, because BBWW was touring again the following year, and again Europe in 1901-4-ish.

Langbein Brothers & Langbein, lawyers, (J. C. Julius Langbein and George F. Langbein) recovered a verdict for $160 in Justice [Alfred] Steckler's court yesterday against George C. Crager. Mrs. Crager was formerly Mrs. August Seligmen, and procured a divorce from the latter on the ground that he was insane. Crager promised the Langbeins to pay all the expenses of the divorce. He paid $250, leaving a balance of $160.
 * 27 September 1890 - married again

He may well have married "the former Mrs. S." before 1 October 1888, when "Mr. and Mrs. G. C. Crager" were at a reception. See above.

Sitting Bull, a Hunkpapa Lakota and victor of the Battle of Little Big Horn, was pre-emptively arrested on the orders of the Indian Agent James McLaughlin who suspected he would the join the Ghost Dance movement of Sioux at the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, who refused to be corralled on the reservations into which the US military and government had forced them since the end of the Indian Wars. When Lakota police came to arrest him at dawn in his camp by the Grand River in the Standing Rock Agency, Sitting Bull was killed along with seven of his followers and eight Lakota police officers.
 * 15 December 1890

At the Massacre at Wounded Knee, 7th Cavalry troops with four M1875 mountain guns massacred approximately 200 Lakota, mostly women and children, and some warriors and old men. George Crager was there after it happened, (when, exactly?) and appears in photographs of the aftermath. For instance, he is shown in a photo after Wounded Knee with Buffalo Bill Cody (who he knew through having worked in BBWW), General Nelson A. Miles and Captain Baldwin. Baldwin had been assigned in 1869 to the 5th Infantry, commanded at the time by Col. Miles Baldwin was one of 19th-century America's most-decorated soldiers, winning the Medal of Honor twice (once in the Civil War, once in the Indian Wars), although his promotion to General and receipt of the 2nd Medal of Honor were delayed for over 20 years after the Civil War, until haha Grover Cleveland submitted a list to Congress in April 1894.
 * 29 December 1890 - Wounded Knee

According to Crager in a newspaper report of 1900, in December 1890 (Colonel) Guy Henry rode to the Pine Ridge Agency with four companies of African American 9th Cavalry and managed to relieve Company K of the 7th Cavalry which had perpetrated the massacre the day before. This was the Drexel Mission Fight, the very last armed conflict between US forces and American Indians. The company was being attacked by the remnants of the Northern Cheyenne, and only Henry's arrival with his 9th Cavalry troopers after apparently riding 190 miles from Fort Robinson, Nebraska in a day and three-quarters saved them. (NB The distance appears to be only about 70 miles.... - check again.)
 * 30 December 1890 - Drexel Mission Fight

It is recorded that Crager was the only journalist permitted to witness the (Lakota?) Chiefs' Council at Pine Ridge on 17 January 1891 and that he "gave General Nelson A. Miles a copy of his verbatim report of the event, which the latter forwarded to the War Department (US) in Washington as an official document."
 * 17 January 1891

An article by Crager entitled “In Indian Guise” appeared in New York's somewhat scurrilous and circulation-hungry The World (owned by Joseph Pulitzer) in which Crager claimed that he visited a hostile Sioux camp disguised as an Indian to interview Chief Two Strike. "The following interviews with the head chiefs of the Sioux nation were obtained at Pine Ridge by The Worlds special correspondent. Mr. George C. Crager. who, dis­guised as an Indian, passed Gen. Miles's pickets at night and entered the hostile camp. Mr. Crager speaks the Sioux language fluently, and (as told in yesterday's World) being an adopted son of Chief Two Strike. Chief of the Brulé Sioux, was able to enter the camp and get the story of their complaint against the Government from the lips of the hostile chiefs themselves. Returning to Pine Ridge, Mr. Crager got the views of the friendlies. He was Government interpreter for Gen. Miles at the great peace council held after the hostiles came in. Chief Two Strike led the procession of hostiles, bear­ing a Worlds flag, which Mr. Crager had taken to him."
 * 1 February 1891
 * 2 February 1891

Mr. Harrison talks: Discussing the Indian question with a "World" man
 * 2 February 1891

"I called upon the President to ask his views upon the recent outbreak and to pre­sent to his attention the complaints made by the hostiles to "The World" through Mr. Crager, whom I took with me. A great political delegation had struggled through a large influx of twittering brides in the lower hall and was waiting with feverish expectancy in the Cabinet Room, but I was admitted at once. The President showed both by words and manner that he was keenly interested in the subject and had closely studied the situa­tion at Pine Ridge."

Crager seems not to have been telling the whole truth, however. His claims were debunked by the Chicago Herald's investigative journalist Theresa H. Dean. In her article “He Was a Daring Man” published a few days later (NB can't find a copy yet), Dean exposed his story as a fabrication and pointedly questioned the excessive firepower carried by all the eastern reporters: “...it looked to me as if the only people at the reservation who seemed to be at all conscious of danger were the newspaper men.”
 * 5 February 1891

The Ghost Shirt
Lots of pics and info here: Scottish National Buffalo Bill Archive.

Crager rejoined BBWW at some point from October-November 1889 up to February 1890, when he was definitely involved. According to a British newspaper article of 10 October 1891. "Mr. Crager, although he has been associated with the exhibition for nearly a year [...]"

Some twenty selected, high-profile Lakota prisoners returning to Fort Sheridan, Illinois, were 'allocated' to Cody, to enhance his BBWWS, which toured the US?, Britain, and Europe as well, I fink. Crager was the interpreter for the Native Americans and given general charge of the Indians. He seems to have been generally/universally? liked,

On its third European tour, BBWW was in Belgium, and the company toured the battlefield of Waterloo, where Crager explained the original battle to the Indian performers; Buffalo Bill compared the site to that of Custer's last stand.
 * 2 June 1891

Haha, here's a photo taken on the steps of the Lion's Mound, dated 2 June (not 7th), plus the visitor's book, where it says that BB's Cowboy Band played 'The Star-Spangled Banner'. In the photo you can see a big drum on the left and a tuba almost level with it on the right.

Lol - Just found Crager's own account of his life, which appeared in the Staffordshire Sentinel, 20 August 1891 while he was on tour with BBWW. Let's see how his tale matches up with what I have discovered.
 * Stoke-on-Trent, August 1891


 * "George C. Crager, the Sioux interpreter, is one of the most intelligent and courteous officials connected with the show, and under his guidance our representative saw and heard much that was extremely interesting. Mr. Crager was exceedingly modest when speaking of his own experiences in the Far West, although they must have been at times of a very exciting and dangerous nature. He let fall, however, that at the age of thirteen he ran away from home, and got as far as Cheyenne, in Wyoming Territory. Here he met one Major Frank North, who was then chief of the Pawnee Indians, and lived with him some three years. Thence he drifted on to the Indian reservations about sixty miles farther out, and from that time until 1876 he was employed by the Government in several capacities such as clerk, courier, and mail-carrier. In 1876 Mr. Crager enlisted to go on the well-known Crazy Horse expedition, the rising among the Indians in which the ill-fated Custer met his death. Four times he was wounded, either with gun or arrow. One bullet went right through the elbow, and it was only by the narrowest chance that amputation of the arm was avoided. [Possibly...]


 * Well, in this post-truth world, I suggest that Crager's Trump-like claim that he shot at J. C. Baird of the Cheyenne Leader (see 1 June 1882) is the exact opposite of the truth, and that his elbow wound was sustained at that time, and perhaps not at any other time. MinorProphet (talk) 00:08, 1 February 2017 (UTC)


 * "Subsequently Mr. Crager helped in the removal of the Spotted Tail Indians from their reservation at Spotted Tail Agency to a point on the Missouri river known as Ponca, where an agency had been provided for them. Afterwards Mr. Crager went to Yankton, Dakota Territory [now in South Dakota, declared capitol of Dakota Territory in 1861] where he was employed as private interpreter for the Governor until 1880, when he re-enlisted for another campaign. Subsequently, on a surgeon's certificate for wounds received, he was again discharged from the army, and he now holds two honourable discharges. Both enlistments were in the 3rd United States Cavalry. Mr. Crager has been present at all the principal councils and treaties held between the Sioux nation and the United States Government. He has seen the whole of the Sioux nation with all its phases, and in December, 1890, entered into a contract with the New York World to secure for that newspaper the latest reports of the Indian rising. His experiences on that expedition he graphically narrated in his letters to the paper named, and they form a chapter of thrilling interest, which we have no space to refer to at any length. On one occasion he was disguised as an Indian by some of the friendly chiefs—No-Neck, Rocking Bear, and others — and sent into the hostile camp, with the result that six hours before the actual surrender of the rebels, he was enabled to telegraph the news to the New York World. All through this expedition, Mr. Crager says, he was materially assisted by the friendly Indians, who had just returned from Europe with the Wild West. In March of this year, Mr. Crager agreed to accompany Colonel Cody across the water, and he speaks warmly of the consideration and kindness extended to the Indians who accompany the exhibition.

The remaining paragraphs are rather more factual: apart from a claim to own a gun identical to the one which killed Jesse James, Crager claimed to own an eagle feather worn by the great chief, Sitting Bull, on the day of his death, and his moccasins.
 * "Mr. Crager also offered for inspection the leggings worn by the chief Spotted Tail when he was assassinated at Ponca Agency by Crow Dog, another chief who was jealous of him." Questioned as to the language and character of the Indians, Mr. Crager said that none of them were able to speak English, and there were used in the camp seven different dialects, with all of which he was pretty well familiar. It had taken him six years, he said, to acquire the language.'"


 * I bet you never thought, George Carlton Crager, that one day I would piece most of your life together from newspaper reports from around the globe, thanks to the Internet. He only started with BBWW in c1886, and the stuff about "living with the Sicangu Lakota for many years" is IMNSFHO complete bollox. Out of the mouths of babes/horses, etc. So: I put it to you, m'lud, that he only started learning native American languages when he joined BBWW, and the rest is lies, lies and more lies. I rest my case. MinorProphet (talk) 00:47, 1 February 2017 (UTC)
 * My maths has let me down, as usual. He married Mollie Willoughby in 1881, ten years previously to this interview. So, I revise my thoughts about the time it took him to learn Lakota. Still wouldn't trust him at the far end of a bargepole, tho'. >MinorProphet (talk) 21:37, 11 April 2019 (UTC)


 * Report continues: "They have no written characters, and it is only by constant intercourse with the Indians themselves that their language can be acquired. Mr. Crager was kind enough to allow an inspection of two of the Indian tents or tepees, one presided over by the celebrated Kicking Bear, and the other by Short Bull, two very prominent chiefs. [...] In conclusion, Mr. Crager said he had received nothing but civility and kindness from all the Indians he had ever come in contact with."

Paul Eagle Star, one of the Native Americans in the Buffalo Bill Wild West Company, died in Sheffield UK in August 1891, after tetanus set in following a fall from his horse. Crager was at his bedside when he died, and was full of praise for the medical care that Eagle Star received.
 * August 1891

The mysterious John M. “Arizona” Burke was with BBWW from the beginning to the end, and was instrumental in “the transformation of William F. Cody into the iconic persona of Buffalo Bill”. If there is anyone more likely to be a role model for Crager, it is the other 'fake Major', Burke. Burke was deliberate in his selective myth-making about Cody, and as reticent and deceptive about his own past as Crager: Burke wasn't a Major of any sort, the middle initial M is an invention, and there was no connection with Arizona. He dedicated his life to promoting Cody, acting as combined advance agent, press agent, copy writer and publicist extraordinaire; author of Cody's biography, etc.
 * 'Major' John M. Burke

"The Indians who visited St. Paul's were members of Buffalo Bill's party. They were under the charge of Major Burke [General Manager of BBWW] and were accompanied by Mr. G. C. Crager, the Sioux interpreter attached to the combination, and by the writer and the HERALD artist." "Colonel Cody gave his last performances at Croydon last evening. He will open at Glasgow in a week and remain there for nine weeks."
 * 25 October 1891

The restaurateur J.C. Galloway hosted the troupe at his Stockwell Street Restaurant on 4 December 1891.
 * December 1891, Glasgow

While in Glasgow - i fink - Crager wrote down - in English only - one of the tales told by Arnold Short Bull relating to The Ghost Shirt, "As Narrated by Short Bull". It seems to be important in discovering the authenticity of the Ghost Dance shirt, I fink. HOW? Because, as Maddra shows, it is fairly obviously a verbatim translation of a conversation with Arnold Short Bull, and includes marginal notes by Crager where he tries to get Short Bull to explain further. NB Picture of Short Bull] at pinterest.com. At last, the honest face of someone who you can definitely rely on!

On Saturday 19 December 1891 George C. Crager wrote to James Paton, curator of the newly-revitalised Kelvingrove Museum, intimating that he held various artefacts which he wished to dispose of prior to returning to America, including The Ghost Shirt (possible relic of the Wounded Knee Massacre). Some correspondence between Crager and Henry Solomon Wellcome may also date from this period. Very soon thereafter Crager sold 'a' Ghost Shirt to Kelvingrove Museum, and donated a number of other items. Tom F. Cunningham, in a review of Sam Maddra's ''Hostiles? The Lakota Ghost Dance and Buffalo Bill’s Wild West'', notices that the beaded waistcoat in the Kelvingrove Museum is being worn by a figure in the photo taken at Pine Ridge on 16 January 1891. Cunningham's review is really quite useful. Author of ‘Your Fathers the Ghosts’ - Buffalo Bill’s Wild West in Scotland. Black & White Publishing, Edinburgh (16th November 2007) ISBN: 978-1-84502-117-7
 * Sells Ghost Shirt

On New Year's Eve an Olglala Sioux Chief, Charging Thunder (Wakinyan Watakpe or Wakiinya Wakuwa) got drunk in an East End (Glasgow) pub and returned to the show while the afternoon performance was in progress. He made an unprovoked assault on Crager and struck him over the head with a block of wood or with an Indian club The Indian was arrested, and taken to the Police Station in Tobago Street, Calton, Glasgow. He was sentenced to 30 days in Barlinnie Prison.
 * 31 December 1891
 * NB The website says that Charging Thunder's assault was made "[f]or reasons that have never been entirely clear". Having learned a fair bit about our Geo. C., it seems almost entirely clear to me that the assault (which was technically battery) was in response to Crager's (possibly clandestine) actions. Hmmmmmmmmmz, various reasons:
 * Crager didn't tell anyone else (or at least any American Indians) in advance that he was going to sell the shirt.
 * He sold the shirt etc. even when it wasn't his to sell.
 * If so, whose was it? Charging Thunder's? Was he retaliating because it was his, or did he do it on behalf of someone else (or their memory), or even for all the Native Americans?
 * Since Crager seems to have been generally liked within BBWW, this seems to be somewhat of an exception to the Indians' general behaviour towards him. Quite frankly, I wouldn't put a limit on Crager's deceptiveness. I would tend to believe the worst of the man and be pleasantly surprised if the truth turns out to make me revise my ideas.

March 1892
Anyway: "Charging Thunder was among the 24 Indians who departed early from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West, sailing from Glasgow aboard the SS Corean (Allen Line) in early March 1892. Upon arrival in Chicago, eleven of the Indians returned to Camp Sheridan (Which one?? see Camp Sheridan) for incarceration to avoid any chance of reviving the Ghost Dance mania; Charging Thunder and twelve others travelled with George C. Crager to Pine Ridge Reservation, possibly after Crager returned in August. In 1898 Charging Thunder was among those Indians photographed by Gertrude Käsebier in her New York studio." He left Buffalo Bill's Wild West in 1903. Chief Charging Thunder was in BBWW in 1903? in Manchester and stayed there, changing his name to George Edward Williams, working with the elephants at Belle Vue Circus (or Zoo) and as a cinema doorman. Anythjing to do with Frank Bostock's circus?

Crager's 31 year-old wife Julia Frankeristein arrived on the SS State of California at Ellis Island from Glasgow on Feb 11, 1892, accompanied by Minna (7), Cuno Parker (5), and Winnifred (3 months), and with No Heart (41), John ?Bush (6), No Heart's son, and Two Bonnets (16).

He landed at Ellis Island, having sailed from Liverpool on the RMS Umbria, the world's largest ship at the time. No obvious candidates on the passenger list for a travelling companion.
 * 6 August 1892

Special allotting Indian Agent
Grover Cleveland's 2nd presidential term (4 March 1893 – 4 March 1897) Find out what Jim Kidd was doing 1893-1896.
 * 1893–1897

Crager was appointed as Special allotting Indian Agent for the Rosebud Indian Reservation, South Dakota, in October 1893. Crager's own personal announcement credits the Interior Department with his position: "The Interior Department has appointed G. C. Crager, who acquired some fame [emphasis added] during the outbreak of the Sioux at the Pine Ridge agency a few years ago, as special allotting agent of Indian lands for the Sioux nation." Crager seems to have been intimately friendly with Josephus Daniels, who was Chief clerk of the Federal Department of the Interior under Grover Cleveland in 1893-95. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson in 1912. Crager wrote to Daniels in 1917 on another matter, referring to his appointment by Daniels as Indian Agent. Daniels' reply speaks for itself: "Your reference to your work as Special Agent in 1893 recalls friendships of other days. Time can not obliterate the associations so pleasantly formed. Sincerely yours, Josephus Daniels."

Apart from dealing with the everyday affairs of the Sioux, one of the main jobs of Indian special allotting agents was to parcel up the land and legally register the claims of the Native Americans, and to distribute payments for treaties. However, many white settlers laid counter-claims which the native Americans couldn't afford to fight in court. A similar reservation not far from the Rosebud Agency, the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation of around 8,000 square miles had some 8,000 Sioux living there in 1879.

"Rosebud Reservation, S. Dak. Special Agent George C. Crager was given instructions for the work of making allotments to the Indians of this reservation October 13, 1893. The appropriation applicable to this work having become nearly exhausted, he was directed, February 7, 1894, to discontinue field work, and was relieved from all duty April 27, 1894. [Emphasis added.] He was ordered on July 11, 1894, to resume work, and is now in the field."
 * 13 October 1893

So instead he took some native Americans ('Flat Iron', 'Brave Bird' and his 6 year-old son 'Little Money') to see a pantomime at Abbey's Theatre theatre in New York.
 * 26 May 1894

"THE STUDY OF INDIANS. Major Burke and Wild West Indians Are Visitors at Yale.
 * 14 June 1894

"Major John M. Burke, general manager of Buffalo Bill's Wild West, accompanied by George C. Crager, a special Indian agent and Interpreter of the United States Government [lol he was suspended from duty Feb - July 1894 - see previous entry], left the city last night on the New Haven steamboat for that city to respond to an invitation extended to them by Professor O. W. Marsh (sic) [probably Othniel Charles Marsh], the archaeologist, and known as the "bone hunter." In the party were Sun Kaka-Ahaga-Enaga (Last Horse), Wamblee Kopipa (Afraid of Eagle), Zitkala Ohitika  (Brave Bird) and the child Musicaca Chicalla (Little Money). With the exception of the latter named these three are chiefs of the Sioux nation and were hostile in the late war resulting in the battle of Wounded Knee. They  go to meet professor Marsh and others of Yale College and incidentally to pay their respects to the Mayor and people of New Haven, but will return during the day. Professor Marsh takes a great interest in ethnology, as well as archaeology, and desires to study the representative Indian as closely as he would the bone of a mastodon. No doubt Major Burke and those representing the Wild West show will create as favorable an impression in New Haven and at Yale College as they deserve."


 * Alas! It seems very likely that Crager - rather than doing his job - was instead profiting in some way from the Sioux by touring with them as their manager: perhaps also some sense of having his own personal entourage or troupe. Nevertheless, in general he seems to have treated them pretty well. If this is the sort of thing that got in the papers, what else was he up to? I seem to remember reading somewhere that there was a public outcry (aargh find source!) about Native Americans being toured abroad, like BBWW and Crager in Berlin in 1906, and that the practice was made illegal.
 * Alack and alas, indeed! from Carl Schurz: "The Indian Office had been the most corrupt of the Interior Department. Positions therein were based on political patronage and were seen as granting license to use the reservations for personal enrichment. Schurz realized that the service would have to be cleansed of such corruption before anything positive could be accomplished, so he instituted a wide-scale inspection of the service, dismissed several officials, and began civil service reforms, whereby positions and promotions were to be based on merit not political patronage.



Years of drought in Nebraska in the early 1890s had devastated crops, and the settler/European/white population grew by only 7,000 in 1890-1900. Nellie Bly of "The World" went to Nebraska with Crager as her guide, to see for herself:
 * 28 January 1895

"Mr. George Crager, the noted Indian interpreter and the United States Special Agent, was my guide. No man knows this part of the country better. Doubt­less the readers of The World will remember him as the man who captured Big Turkey during the late Indian uprising in 1891 and brought him in to Gen. Miles. Mr. Crager says that thirty-one miles from Valentine, in Kewanee and Sparks, there is great destitution among the German and French settlements, but as one can only get there by driving, and as the sand is over the [wheel] hubs, to get there and back is a matter of extreme difficulty."

Her reports detail the extreme suffering of the white inhabitants whose crops had failed during the heatwave, discussed in detail here: Big Turkey seems not to have been particularly important.

Nebraska History archives

Archive.org Nebr. Hist. - refers to

another Capt. George Crager

Too late to tell him

"Rosebud Reservation, S. Dak. — February 5, 1895. Special Agent George C. Crager was directed to turn over his work to Special Agent William A. Winder, who had been appointed to succeed him. Since entering upon duty Special Agent Winder has for the most part been engaged in correcting and revising the work done by Special Agent Crager, but is now engaged in making new allotments." [Emphasis added.] It looks like Crager lost his job. All the other reservations had made at least satisfactory progress, and the most positive report of all the reservations is this:
 * February 5, 1895
 * Fort Berthold Reservation, N. Dak. — Special Allotting Agent W. S. Grady, who was engaged in making allotments on the Fort Berthold Reservation, died April 7, 1895. He had nearly completed the allotments to the Indians of that reservation, having made about 750 and prepared duplicate schedules covering the same. His work was done in a most excellent and satisfactory manner.

Reading between the officialdom of the lines, this sounds much like a case of some misappropriated funds, and/or Crager not doing the job, being investigated, reinstated and finally getting the boot.
 * Oh dear, it seems that I was entirely right. Reviewing the latest evidence, it seems obvious to the most casual observer that "Major" George C. Crager was one of those corrupt officials in the Bureau of Indian Affairs who were installed through political patronage, who abused their position for personal gain, and were consequently 'let go' during Carl Schurz's time as Interior Secretary.

At which agency did O'Beirne (the Customs/immigration Official) work? Find map of all the Bureau of Indian Affairs agencies ? Org chart?

James Rowan O'Beirne (1844-1917) was a graduate of Fordham University, a Union general and recipient of the Congressional Medal for bravery in the Civil War, deputy U.S. marshal and provost of Washington, D.C., and officially in charge at the deathbed of President Abraham Lincoln. O'Beirne became Commissioner of Immigration at the barge office at the Port of New York in 1890.
 * O'Beirne, James Rowan, 1844-1917

This was the customs man involved with the importing of the Misu Das Mirakel (1912 film) in 1912: probably not the same General O'Byrne concerned with the Native Americans, who was probably a General in the Indian Agency like Crager was a Major. Well, it does appear to be the same man: Very long article written by James R. O'Beirne, extolling Father Crafts (US missionary), Taho-Wanika (No-Neck) and George Crager and a wrongly-captioned picture. Father Crafts was shot and badly wounded by US troops at the Wounded Knee Massacre in December 1890.

Aha! Membership Roll of the American-Irish Historical Society: "O'Beirne, Gen. James R., 357 West 117th street. New York city ; in military life has held every commissioned rank up to Bvt. Brig. Gen. of Volunteers ; has also been Provost Marshal, D. C. ; Deputy U. S. Marshal, D. C. ; Register of Wills, D. C. ; editor Sunday Gazette, Washington, D. C; Special Agent U. S. Indian affairs ; Special Agent U. S. Treasury Dept. ; Asst. U. S. Commissioner of Immigration at New York city; is now Commissioner of Charities, New York city ; Past Commander U. S. Medal of Honor Legion. In business life has been President of Yonkers Electric Light Co. ; Secretary of Flemington Coal and Coke Co. of West Virginia, and Treasurer of Manhattan Distilling Co. In social life, President of the United Irish Societies of New York city and vicinity, and member of various clubs and other organizations."

Three of Crager's children, Minna and Cuno, and another Winnie? (So probably not Winnifred, born to Julia in England in late 1900), [Hmmmmz, three daughters named Winifred etc? Sounds like a fixation to me...] attended a celebrity baseball game at the Polo Grounds, New York, in aid of the Evening World sick babies' fund. The Svengalis played the Trilbys.
 * July 23, 1895

Trouble feared among the Sioux. Braves at the Rosebud Agency in Angry Mood Against Agent Wright's Decrees. SHORT RATIONS THE CRY. Major Crager, Indian Agent, Scout and Interpreter, Says There Is Just Cause for Complaint
 * 16 September 1895

"According to Major G. C. Crager, who has recently returned from the Rosebud Agency, in South Dakota, there is a fair possibility of a serious outbreak among the Brulé Sioux, growing out of the imprisonment In the guard house on Friday of Hollow Horn Bear, an acknowledged sub-chief in charge of the Cut Meat district of the agency. The troubles which caused the arrest of Hollow Horn Bear have been brewing be­tween the Indians and J. George Wright, In­dian Agent at Rosebud, for several months. The Indians have alleged that the Crook, Black Hills or "Three Star" treaty has been violated; that they have received short ra­tions, and that freight money has been with­held from them."

"Hollow Horn Bear, or Mato-he-holoch-ala. which is his Sioux name, enlisted as a scout under General Crook In 1876. He was one of the few under Spotted Tail and Charles Tagget who captured Crazy Horse, who was killed by a bayonet wound at Fort Robinson, Neb."

"When the Messiah craze was at its height, in 1890 and 1891. and the situation was alarming, Hollow Horn Bear was among the first to offer his services to Major Lee to put down the threatened uprising. Until recent­ly he was a special favorite of Agent Wright, and that he should have been put in the guard house, as one of those opposed to Wright's manner of conducting agency af­fairs, indicates that the grievances must be of a serious nature. If there were not just cause for complaint Hollow Horn Bear would never be found opposing the government."

Artiste management, 1896-c1909
This section should really be called white artiste management, since Crager had been 'managing' the Sioux from the Rosebud Indian Reservation in South Dakota on his own since 1893, and before that in BBWS since 1886.

There was a whole growing entertainment business growing up in the States around the various International Expositions. George Crager had worked as Native American translator for Buffalo Bill, who - like Crager - had been with the 3rd Cavalry during the Sioux Wars. Buffalo Bill had known Skip Dundy (of Thompson & Dundy) since Dundy's childhood. Thompson & Dundy were originally competitors at the 1893 Columbian Exposition in Chicago, and partners at the 1900 Pan American Exposition, with their Trip to the Moon and later at Luna Park where Joe Menchen provided the mechanical and electrical brains. Menchen did electrical work for T&D in their theatres, eg Hippodrome?. The vaudeville theatrical manager/impresario Robert Grau knew both Crager and Menchen, who both worked on the 1912 film of The Miracle.
 * Overview

At any rate, Crager had moved into showbiz by May 1896, first ?advance agent? for the Potter-Bellew company, followed by managing the actress Francis Drake. Then he was treasurer of the company of the operetta star Alice Nielsen and later her manager: she graduated to the stages of the Metropolitan Opera and Covent Garden, singing La Boheme with Enrico Caruso at the ROH in October 1904. She was first talent-spotted by Jules Grau (Robert Grau's cousin) and then managed by Maurice Grau (Robert's older brother and manager of the Met). Then Crager managed Loie Fuller (whom Robert Grau had previously managed), before marrying an up-and coming singer and disappearing to Europe. Joe Menchen joined a syndicate to bring American-style amusement parks (trolley parks) to Europe, and installed Luna Parks all over Europe, including Berlin, Cairo, London, Paris, Vienna and St. Petersburg. Crager pops up again as manager of a cinema/nickelodeon in the East End of London in 1910, and in 1912 Crager and Menchen would work together on The Miracle film.

So how and why did Crager get to Chicago, where Joe had a 'permanent' address in 1896, and when exactly *did* Joe get to Chicago? Possibly he went straight there from Kansas City, MO. I haven't found any refs to Joe Menchen between the time of the ad about the Rorbaugh Opera House, and him popping up in New York in 1896, with an ad about his move from Chicago to NY. Possibly because of some vague Grau connection with Chicago?: the opera company of Robert Grau's uncle Jacob Grau had opened Crosby's Opera House in 1865, and Maurice Grau had been managing the New York Met since 1891 with his Maurice Grau Opera Company, which toured Chicago in 1895 with Melba. Anyway, Vesti la giubba.

History
"One of the most picturesque sights imaginable on the plains is the white 'prairie schooner' or emigrant wagon, so familiar in the pioneer days. A genuine outfit of this sort will be seen in Miner, Winslow & Wilson's production of "The Great Northwest" a new American play depicting Western life as it really is, to be presented at Allen's Theatre on Saturday evening, April 18" Allen's Theatre, New Brunswick NJ was previously the Masonic Hall Opera House, which was bought for renovation by Frank B. Allen in 1895, and the Masonic Hall in which plays were previously performed was renamed Allen's Building. Allen's theatre burnt to the ground in the early hours of 21 December 1896.
 * 15 April 1896

Picture of The old Masonic Hall, New Brunswick, which became Allen's Theatre in January 1895 and burned down on 21 December that year.

He was present at a Boston reception given by Frances Drake (NB not Frances Drake (actress)), [who was playing the part of Grace Harding in The Great Northwest, by Herbert Hall Winslow and Will R. Wilson] at the home of her friend, Mrs. R August Witthaus, Boston, last Saturday evening to the managers and authors of The Great Northwest and a few press friends. Among those present were Prof R A. Witthaus, Herbert Hall Winslow, Will R. Wilson, (the writers) Julian Hawthorne, Floyd Wilson, Arthur Rigby, G. Twist, G. C. Crager, R. Stodard and Mrs. R. A. Witthaus. Toasts, singing and merrymaking were enjoyed. Miss Drake will sail for Europe on May 20, and will return in time to open with the company in New York on or about Sept. 7.
 * 15 May 1896

"THE GREAT NORTHWEST. A genuine Indian brass band will be a feature of The Great Northwest next season. Major George C. Crager, U.S.A. special agent, and late with Buffalo Bill's Wild West, will leave for Dakota next week to complete arrangements and secure the Indians from the Rosebud Agency [where he was allotting Agent]. Frances Drake, who has made a decided hit everywhere in the leading role of Grace Harding in this play, has been re-engaged for next season."
 * 16 May 1896
 * 16 May 1896
 * NB The likelihood of a native American brass band seems somewhat small, and this item may be a coded reference to some other nefarious activity. However, here is a (cropped) photo of Lone Bull next to an half-seen trombone player, and a drum kit on the left. Stranger things, etc...
 * Stranger things indeed: "Prof. A. Allen's Indian Brass Band will be a feature of the Chicago Great Show, which opens at Chicago, Ill., May 8. They will play as a brass band in the street parade, attired in full Indian costume, and will give a performance in the arena." (May 1873)

The above brass band announcement is below a huge ad for the NY production of the play at the top of the same page: "The One Big Novelty of the Year. An Actual $10,000 Enterprise. Miner, Winslow & Wilson's Big American Production. THE GREAT NORTHWEST." Played in Newark, Jersey City and Boston.

"It is a play of startling situations. There are bicycle and horseback riders, fire engines, a locomotive and a prairie schooner, a game of poker in which the stakes are a man's life and a woman's love, a prairie fire and a prairie blizzard, and about everything else to which the great new Northwest can properly be supposed to lay claim." - Boston Herald, 5 May (1896)

"The scenery was excellent, and the startling effects produced during the prairie fire, when the hero on horseback comes to the rescue, and during the blizzard, when the heroine climbs a windmill and summons aid for her lover, brought forth many rounds of applause." — Boston Globe, 5 May (1896)

New York Times review: "THE GREAT NORTHWEST." Melodrama of the Crassest Sort, but Apparently Successful. Much as the first night people were divided last evening, enough of them went to the American Theatre to fill that large building-up stairs and down stairs, and they were enthusiastic enough over " The Great Northwest " to make it possible to say with truth that the season opened there with great success. The play is melodrama of the acutest sort. Not for a moment have its authors, Herbert Hall Wlnslow and Will R. Wilson, deigned to deal with such tame and uninteresting things as the possibilities of human nature, and they have avoided most of its probabilities as well, but for all that their work did not seem to excite a single doubt in the mind of anybody who saw it. On the contrary, it was followed with obviously sincere interest, and at regular intervals came crashes of applause or roars of laughter. All this, from certain standpoints, is very mysterious, but from others it is simple enough. Folks who pay money to see melodrama, take their emotions along, and, instead of thinking about what is said and done on the stage, allow the playwright to assume any premises he chooses, and are content to enjoy the clear logic with which he draws from them similiar conclusions.

The fact that in real life those same conclusions are reached in a much more complete way and in wholly different circumstances is not allowed to interfere with that enjoyment in the slightest degree. Anyhow, "The Great Northwest," which has a good deal of ingenuity, but not a particle of originality or realism, was greeted with vociferous approval, its story was 'told in this paper on Sunday and need not be repeated. Its incidents nominally take place in the far West, and its characters pretend to be drawn from that section, but this is only pretense. These are the events and people of melodrama-land and differ in no wise from those of plays called Irish or Southern or metropolitan, as the case may be.

The heroine was the eternal heroine, without a shade of variance in word, manner, or experiences from her numberless other incarnations. It was the same with the hero, the villain, the wicked adventuress, and the waif beloved of the comic juvenile. Some folks get tired of these repetitions and demand a character in comedy and cohesion in its action; other folks do not, and it is for the latter that "The Great Northwest" was written. Not much money has been spent in staging the play. Most of the scenery Is commonplace in the extreme, and some of it-had been seen befote. There is one setting a windmill in a snowstorm that was effective, and it was by the aid of that mill that the heroine proved herself to be as athletic as she was virtuous by allowing herself to be carried around by the long arms on which the sails were stretched. As for the acting. Mr. Kellard put something of sincerity into his portrayal bf the villain's role, and Miss Dupree tried, not wholly without success, to give a tinge of originality to that of a waif from Missouri. The others were content to play their parts in conventional style, and there was no evidence that they were not quite as acceptable to the audience as the two just singled out for mention.


 * Captain Robert Sheaf.....William S. Hart
 * Bart Foswell.............John K. ICeUard
 * Oopner Bunch.............Joseph Conyers
 * Otnrer Clackrtt..........Albert Maner,
 * Jack Andrews.............John H. Piewne
 * Ilea Dasrs...............Percy Plunkett
 * Todd Broiler.............John Webber
 * Judge Harding............J. H. Howland
 * Jim Sneaker..............John Murray
 * Henry Johnson............H. M. Morse
 * Erie Ertecaen............Wiliam Oaf?
 * Tney Mike................Co nover Jueary
 * Oaae Jackson.............James Stewart
 * Simon Furlong............Waller Brooks
 * Grace Harding............Frances Drake
 * Ntelle Cioaa ............Maud Honford
 * Nubbins..................Minnie Dupree
 * Mrs. Todd Smiler.........Rose Mayo who was in Ruggles of Red Gap (1918) imdb
 * OH Mas Caw's daughter....Agnes Barnes

"Frances Drake, who has just closed a successful season with The Great Northwest, [at Allen's Theatre, New Brunswick, NJ] in which she originated the part of Grace Harding, will sail for Paris next Saturday to enjoy a much deserved vacation. Miss Drake has been suffering for the past week with nervous prostration, caused by the mental and physical strain in the fourth act, wherein she climbs to the top of a windmill, thirty feet from the stage, and revolves on the arm of the mill. Miss Drake has been compelled to call upon a doctor's services several times during the tour, as she has been bruised by her daring work. She has been re-engaged for the same part next season, and will return about Aug. 20 for rehearsals.
 * 6 June 1896

"George C. Crager, late business manager of the Potter-Bellew company, (Cora Urquhart Brown-Potter and Kyrle Bellew) is in town, looking out for the business interests of Frances Drake, who will shortly produce Le Petit Abbé here."
 * 11 July 1896

Two New York premieres on the same day:
 * 31 August 1896
 * Joseph Menchen and the Kineopticon opened at Pastor's's New Fourteenth Street Theatre on 31 August 1896.(ref my draft article User:MinorProphet/Joseph L. Menchen)
 * Tony Pastor's New Fourteenth Street Theatre was among the earliest vaudeville houses in New York to include early silent motion pictures as part of the show. The press agent for the 'old' Bijou Theatre at 1239 Broadway, A. Curtis Bond, acquired the American rights to the British Acres Kineopticon film projector. Menchen bought or hired one and in August 1896 began showing Edison films, which were compatible with its feed mechanism.

Cast:
 * The Great Northwest opened at the American Theatre, NY, New York city.
 * Robert Sheaf, William S. Hart
 * Bart Foxwell, John E. Kellerd
 * Gopher Bunch, Joseph Conyers
 * Ginger Crackett, Albert Mahar
 * Hen Daggs, Percy Plunkett
 * Grace Harding, Frances Drake, manager George Crager
 * Stella Cross, Maud Hosford
 * Nubbins, Minnie Dupree
 * Judge Harding, J. H. Howland

This play was continued until Sept. 12, when the house was closed. The theatre's next production started on 5 November 1896.

Crager was business manager (so say) for E. H. Sothern, whose production of "An Enemy to the King" was about to open in Pittsburgh. NB By September Crager had been apparently reduced to advance agent, if he ever was b. manager... NB find that book of reminiscences of the showbiz trade, with the para about advance agents. ✅
 * 11 February 1897, Pittsburgh
 * Advance Agent:
 * The A to Z of American Theater: Modernism
 * By James Fisher, Felicia Hardison Londré
 * https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yEKvpNYJYzcC&pg=PA15

They essentially acted as local publicity agents in the days when there was no radio, no aeroplanes, almost no automobiles, no TV, and no Twitter. To drum up advance ticket sales they wrote puff pieces such as the following, which fairly obviously comes from Crager's pen:


 * "Mr. E. H. Sothern, who has achieved such a triumph in the new romantic drama, "An Enemy to the King," will present this beautiful play of romance, love, valor, sacrifice and war for the coming week. The play goes with dash and spirit, and everything is "bright and pretty about the piece; in music, songs, dialogue, scenery and costumes, all the characters are capably represented In the most desirable way, with the necessary result for rounding all the play's ?subtleties. There is hardly a class of theater-goers who will not find plenty to amuse in "An Enemy to the King," while those who like life, spirit and color are apt to elect it a ?flret favorite from the start."

By now, all the half-truths and fabrications of the last twenty-one years since 1876 have become utterly tangled together in a well-constructed and believable tale involving well-known people and events: and so here is the fully-formed outward persona of "ex-army Major" George Crager, manager:


 * "If the advance sales are be taken as an indication, it is evident that the coming week will be remarkably successful. Maj. George C. Crager, business manager for Mr. E. H. Sothern, who is at the Hotel Victoria, was for 12 years an interpreter, guide and courier among the Sioux, in the employ of the government. He had many strong friends among the Indians, and while living in Camp Sheridan at the old Spotted Tall agency, In 1878, Chief Two Strikes adopted him as his son, according to the rites of the Sioux nation. During the Sioux outbreak of 1891 he went for the New York World to the scene of the outbreak, being at that time special Indian agent for the government. He has seen service many times in the Indian campaigns, and has won for himself honor and distinction in army circles for his courage and bravery on the field. During nine years of his adventurous career Maj. Crager was connected with Buffalo Bill's wild west show and traveled all over the world with Col. Cody. Maj. Crager's experience has furnished him with a wonderful stock of interesting tales, which, in addition to his courteous manner, makes him a most entertaining gentleman."

E. H. Sothern Co. - Daniel Frohman, manager; Valentine E. Kennedy, business-manager; George C. Crager, advance agent; Frederick A.  Thomson, stage manager This may be the Canadian stage actor and producer Frederick  A.  Thomson, who began directing films in c1910. He was a longtime director for the dreaded Vitagraph, the thorn in the side of Joe Menchen since the boxing film debacle c1897.
 * 11 September 1897

The Spanish–American War began in late April 1898. General Guy Henry (see October below) commanded the Army reserves in Cuba, which I don't think saw any action.
 * April 1898

In April, Thaddeus Stanton, the "Fighting Paymaster" wrote to George C. Crager in Chicago: "Nobody can tell, at present, what will be done in the way of calling out troops, but I don't think Indians will be accepted in any event. As far as I am concerned, if I were going into the War, I would like d__d well to command a regiment of Oglala and Brule Sioux."

Well, Thaddeus Harlan Stanton:


 * US Army Brigadier Paymaster General. With the outbreak of the Civil War, he began his military career enlisting in the Union Army as a Private in the 3rd Battalion, District of Columbia, Infantry. In October, 1861, he was elected to the House of the Ninth General Assembly and after his term, returned to the Army as a Captain in the 19th Iowa Volunteer Infantry. Promoted Major in 1862, for the remainer of the war, he served in the Department of the Paymaster General and for meritorious service was brevetted Lieutenant Colonel of US Volunteers on March 13, 1865. During the Indian Wars, he was Chief of Scouts for General George Crook and took part in the Little Big Horn Campaign in 1876. Returning to Washington D.C. after the Indian campaigns, he was promoted Colonel Assistant Paymaster General and commissioned Brigadier Paymaster General U.S. Army on March 27, 1895. Thaddeus Harlan Stanton.

Alice Nielsen Opera Company
George C Crager is to manage the Alice Nielsen Opera company.
 * 29 May 1898


 * Alice Nielsen's widowed mother moved to Kansas City when she was aged around 5; after singing c1886-8 at the White House for Grover Cleveland Alice was signed up in KC by Jules Grau (Robert Grau's cousin) for a season, who had been touring Kansas City since 1884. Joe Menchen was also living in KC from at least 1894 until c1896, although he also originally came from Illinois (Chicago, perhaps?): Menchen was showing films at Tony Pastor's in August 1896.

Alice Nielsen Opera put on The Fortune Teller in August 1898 at Wallack's Theatre, New York, where it ran for a month from 26 September to 29 Oct 1898. Nielsen toured North America for three years before reaching London in 1901 with The Fortune Teller, which ran for 88 performances at the Shaftesbury Theatre, London where the fake Das Mirakel would later show in December 1912. It could be a coincidence, or part of the intense international theatrical rivalry of the time.


 * Crager seems to have entered the showbiz world through Jim 'Kid' Willoughby, whose sister he married in 1881, but had deserted by 1882; but he stayed on and off with BBWW. The forcible public and public complaints reached someone in office who banned managers from taking Native Americans out of the USA.

George C. Crager surprised his Boston friends by riding with Buffalo Bill, his intimate friend,in the street parade last week. Mr. Crager is a great horseman, and his friends congratulated him on his appearance.
 * June 1898

He was in Buffalo, NY, arranging a date for the Alice Nielsen Opera co. in The Fortune Teller
 * August 1898

"MEETS HUSBAND'S RESCUER. Wife of Gen. Guy V. Henry Presents Lieut. George C. Crager with a Portrait. Lieut. Guy V. Henry and his mother, the wife of Gen. Guy V. Henry, now in command of the United States troops in Cuba, [NB I'm fairly sure he only commanded the reserves] arrived in New York yesterday from Fort Assinaboine. Mont., where Gen. Henry had his headquarters before he went South. Mrs. Henry is on her way to join the General at Santiago. Mrs. Henry was met by Lieut. George C. Crager, who was in Gen. Henry's command at the battle of Goose Creek [sic], and who carried the General off the battlefield when he was shot in the head. Mrs. Henry presented Lieut. Crager with a large photograph of Henry Wriley's painting of the General in full uniform. The scar made by the bullet at Goose Creek is plainly visible on the left cheek." NB Unless a picture(WHICH?) of General Henry is reversed, the scar is plainly visibule on the OTHER CHEEK.
 * 8 October 1898

Alice Nielsen and her manager, Crager, were staying at the plush Gilsey Hotel at 1200 Broadway (a favourite of the theatrical trade, and also of Diamond Jim Brady).
 * Three holes in the ground! (Well, well, well.) So now he is "Lieutenant Crager"! - How? Maybe he wangled an Army commission as some sort of embedded journalist...? Is it not strange that the General himself was away? And again this fictitious "Battle of Goose Creek".
 * 6 December 1898

"Want to go into opera. Many Kansas City Aspirants Seek Engagements With the Nielsen Comic Opera Company. The extraordinary success of Miss Alice Nielsen has inspired many other Kansas City, MO singers with the ambition to go Into opera. Mr. George C. Crager, .business manager, said last night that he had received sixty applications during the past week, but that there were no vacancies existing or likely to exist in the company, and therefore there was little hope for the applicants." There may have been opportunities for a very few prospective chorus girls, however.
 * 5 February 1899

Left in a huff
Crager leaves Perley. Owing to the fact that he could not agree with Manager Frank Perley, George C. Crager has resigned as treasurer of the Alice Nielsen Opera Company, which has been playing at the Montauk Theatre in Brooklyn during the past week. He has been succeeded by William Hale. Crager left the company on Wednesday night. Twenty-four hours later he went to Washington, where he will enter the Government's employ. He was formerly an Indian scout and served on the plains wiith "Buffalo Bill."
 * 12 March 1899

"You can depend on it, 'Fighting Guy' will see to it that the troops under his command have the finest barracks on the Island of Porto Rico," remarked Major George C. Crager, late United States special Indian agent, before a number of Philadelphians in Union County, Pennsylvania who were discussing the-future welfare of the United States forces In the Antilles...."
 * 28 March 1899

An advertisement for Johann Hoff's Malt Extract appeared in The New York Times, 17 September 1899, including an endorsement by Francis Drake dated 26 May 1899 in the form of a personal communication for 'Our Man in Havana'. It appeared in The Times (Philadelphia, PA) on 20 January 1901, and again in The Sun (NY), on 16 January 1902. See also photo of bottle. Whether these dates are somehow significant - or merely coincidental - remains to be seen.
 * 26 May 1899


 * 45-Miles on horseback through Cuba.
 * Miss Frances Drake writes: Santiago de Cuba, May 26 1899
 * "Major Geo. C. Crager, War Dept., Havana, Cuba.
 * Dear Major—I have just returned from a 45-mile spin on the new horse, and he rides like a rocking-chair; I tired out a Captain and two Lieutenants. This is a much rougher trip than I anticipated, but I can stand it provided you send me the case of Johann Hoff's Malt you have. I can't do without it. I carry a bottle of it in my saddle bag, and the officers have begged most of mine from me. Leave for Kingston to-morrow. Send box to Myrtle Bank Hotel. Yours, cordially,
 * Frances Drake.

Emma Calvé (who sang with Arnaldo Conti at the Theatre de la Monnaie, Brussels, just as she was becoming known) endorsed it in 1896: and another ad from 1898 features Madge Kendal, Nellie Melba, Calvé and Sarah Bernhardt.

"Edward Marshall's brief but eventful experience as a war correspondent was graphically described by him at Tremont Temple [Boston,] last night, to the accompaniment of bugle calls blown on an instrument found on the body of a dead bugler. The signals were made by Chief Trumpeter Gorman of the 71st NY Volunteers. The speaker was accompanied on stage and introduced by Major George C. Crager clad in the Cuban campaign uniform." [NB Effectively posing as an Army Major. The report is very careful not to say explicitly whether or not he was entitled to wear the uniform. So which rank insignia was he wearing? Trumpeter? Lieutenant (see 'Meets Rescuer' above)? Major?] "Marshall was ashore only 36 hours, and was mixed up in the action at Guasimas, where he received the wound which resulted in the loss of a leg."
 * 13 November 1899

New York - George C. Crager was in a trolley crash the other day at the junction of Fifty ninth street and Columbus avenue, and is laid up temporarily with a broken kneecap. Crager has visions of large financial compensation at the hands of the Metropolitan Street Railroad Company. His principal advantage in that direction is that his injuries are genuine and likely to disable him permanently — though that isn't so much of an advantage from some points of view. Leander Richardson.
 * 11 February 1900

Loie Fuller
"At the Exposition Universelle (1900) in Paris, Loie Fuller performed shows in her own theatre, a dance routine aided by coloured lights and costume. Fuller's performance helped introduce revolutionary audio-visual entertainment precursors of early motion picture equipment.[1] Fuller was filmed on ten 70mmm projectors that created a three hundred and thirty degree picture, patented Cinéorama.[1] Cinéorama used "handcoloured films, phonograph music and live commentary" to bring to life Loie Fuller as the Art Nouveau figure, Salomé." (From Loie Fuller article, grab refs.) Her manager was possibly George Crager, since he was definitely with her in London in November 1900. Yes, he was also there in Paris: see 2 January 1901 below.

The Expo was held from 14 April to 12 November 1900. Fred Gaisberg, later chief recording producer for EMI, was there as well. There seems to have been an early Hale's Tours of the World ride there: "One of the most novel side shows was the journey from Paris to Constantinople. The audiences are seated on an oscillating platform, and are tossed and shaken up in imitation of the movements of a ship at sea, while moving scenery passes before you." Joe Menchen owned two Pullman carriages for Hale's Tours, for sale in ?1906, see also Academy 1-2-3 (cinema). Gaisberg also saw Loie Fuller at her theatre, and recorded a troupe of Japanese musicians: "I visited the coal mine and Crystal House, also Joe [sic, ie Löie] Fuller's theatre, where we saw a very interesting drama performance by a troupe of Japanese. Later in the week we engaged this troupe of Japanese to make records for us."

Fuller left Paris a little early and did a fortnight's run of performances in London, see next.

Also performing at the Paris 1900 Expo was a certain Romanian ballet dancer named Mime Misu, who would later direct Das Mirakel (1912 film), a rival pirate version of The Miracle (1912 film)

Loie Fuller, with Crager as manager, performed some dances at Terry's Theatre, Strand, London, along with performances of La main, a "mimodrame" and L'homme aux poupées (wordless play by the composer Henri Berény, who also conducted), and La camomille by Charles Darantière and Maurice Soulié. (La main sounds like 'a play in mime with music' like Carré's L'Enfant Prodigue (1897), 1904 film.
 * 5-17 November 1900

Hahahahalol at last, all the cinema connections are revealed: Terry's Theatre was managed by Edward Laurillard! Thus in an instant, in the twinkling of an eye, Crager, Menchen, Laurillard, Sedger, Carré and The Miracle are all linked. With this bit of information it looks very much as if Crager was the prime mover for The Miracle in the London theatre world: his star Alice Nielsen sang at Covent Garden in 1904. In 1914 Laurillard put a show based on Pink Diamonds which had played at the Park Theatre, Boston in April 1913 after The Miracle had put on such a poor showing.

Horace D. Sedger was an old-time theatre manager/impresario since 1886. He put on a production of Carré's stage pantomime L'Enfant Prodigue at the Prince of Wales Theatre in 1891 which ran for 223 performances. "The piece was seen as extending considerably the realm of pantomime, and was greeted enthusiastically by audiences." Thus the connection to Michel-Antoine Carré, director of The Miracle.

Laurillard and Sedger opened up the first Electric Theatres (ie cinemas) in 1908, backed and run by NY stockbroker Jay Bamberger. They established four houses before severing their connection and starting their own Electric Palaces: "But I don't mind admitting that we started it on the wrong lines. We tried to work it on the American principle. Our prices were too low, and we naturally attracted the wrong class of people." The first two Electric Theatres were on Shepherd's Bush Green (164 Uxbridge Road, January 1908) (by White City, built for the 1908 Summer Olympics by Bolossy? Kiralfy); and in Walworth Road (February 1908), which was also the location of the London office of Joe Menchen's theatre lighting company by 1909.

Sedger joined the board of Societé des Films Menchen in 1914: "I just learn that Horace D. Sedger, who is associated with Edward Laurillard in the management of Electric Palaces (London) has joined the board of the Société des Films Menchen. This will assure for Joseph Menchen a good showing for all his productions in London. Menchen's novelty film, made by Michel Carré [the artistic director of the Studios Menchen], entitled "Tangomania," has created a big sensation."

"Loie Fuller Arrives. Brings with her thirty tons of baggage and four new steps (dances). Among those who accompanied the dancer were:.. George Crager, manager..."
 * 22 December 1900

George Crager, who lives at the Hotel Navarre, Thirty-eighth-st. and Seventh-ave., manager for Loie Fuller, the dancer, was arrested late last night on a charge of abandonment, preferred by his wife, and was locked up in the East Thirty-fifth-st. station.
 * 2 January 1901

Loie Fuller's Manager Will Support His Wife Hereafter. George Crager, manager of Loie Fuller, was arraigned in the Yorkville police court today on a charge of abandonment preferred by his wife of 222 East Twelfth street, Manhattan. Crager told the magistrate that ho had paid the sum of $4 a week which he was directed to pay by a court about a year ago. until he could do so no longer. He said while in London he was taken sick and was stranded, and had no money with which to pay. He displayed bills to the amount of $80 and said he was willing that sum should go to his wife, and that he would continue to pay the $4 a week.

Hmmm. "George Crager landed back In this country last week and his cordial greeting from his wife was to be hauled to the Yorkville Police Court to-day on a charge of abandonment. His answer to the complaint consisted largely in handing her $50,(?) - illegible- so that Magistrate Olmsted postponed the hearing until January 15, and in the meantime Crager is on parole. He is now living at the Hotel Navarre, and his wife. Mrs. Julia Crager, resides at No. 222 East Twelfth street, where she earns her living for herself and one child, who Is nine years old.

According to her allegations her husband has been a manager for Messrs. Daly and Frohman, and earns never less than $50 a week. Four years ago he abandoned her, she says. She then had him arrested and he was ordered to pay her $50 a week. He had no bondsmen, but Mrs. Crager trusted him and for three months he paid promptly. Then he stopped and Mrs. Crager alleges that he paid attention to some actress, whose name is not given.

Since then she has got along as best she could, until several days ago when she heard that he was in the city, having come from Paris as the manager of Loie Fuller. Yesterday she swore out a warrant and last night he was arrested.

Crager, is a tall, handsome man who wore a frock coat, silk hat and diamond pin, was much agitated and he sent half a dozen messages to as many friends to come to ball him out when locked up last night. Richard Stearns, proprietor of the Hotel Navarre, was the flrst to reach the police station, and furnished the $300 for the bond, and in an hour Crager was released. In his own defence Crager said that he had not paid his wife because he had been ill and unable to. He went to Europe four years ago, broke his leg, had a bad attack of erysipelas and went broke in Paris. There Loie Fuller engaged him as manager, agreeing to pay his passage home, the expenses to be deducted from his pay.

Notwithstanding his hard luck story, Crager has a roll of money which, he declared, he offered his wlfe last night He thought it was $15 (?)-illegible- but it proved to be $50. She took It from him In court, giving him a receipt and then Crager assewrted that he didn't live with his wife because her temper was bad. Magistrate Olmsted postponed examination until January 15 to give Crager and his wife a chance to come to an amicable settlement.

MYSTERY MANTLES LOIE FULLER'S PLANS. Report Says She Will Appear at the New York Theatre, but She Won't Confirm It. Persons posing as friends of both sides yesterday circulated along upper Broadway the report that Miss Loie Fuller would soon appear at the New York Theatre. Investigation developed that If any negotiations were pending they had not reached maturity. Manager Barnes, speaking for the Messrs. Sire, said he had heard nothing of a contract with the dancer. His principals declined to comment. Major George C. Crager, who is Miss Fuller's manager during the absence in Europe of Edward Stevens, said he understood an engagement was contemnplated, but was not in position to give details. "Miss Fuller," he said, "attends to all her business affairs personally, whether Mr. Stevens is here or not. Frequently she declines to admit her nearest associates to her confidence." Miss Fuller was not prepared to discuss her plans.
 * 19 January 1901

The ad for Hoff's Malt Extract including the Francis Drake appeared in on 20 January 1901 and 16 January 1902: see above

Major G. C. Crager, of Philadelphia, [Penn.,] who saw service in the Spanish war, is entertaining for a few days at the Seaside House [with] Miss Elizabeth Coulson.
 * 23 June 1902

Alice Nielsen again
"Alice Nielsen Remains Abroad. Several weeks ago a morning newspaper at some length published a rather vague story about the return of Alice Nielsen to America next season in a concert tour. Floundering about in the turbulence of verbiage was a shimmer of plain statement to the effect that George Crager would be the impresario in charge of the tour. By letter yesterday from Florence Crager took occasion to deny the story. Miss Nielsen will remain in Europe at least two years more, according to this letter, with Crager in charge of her business affairs. The principal cities of the Continent and England have been booked for concerts, and for a brief period Miss Nielsen will appear in grand opera. Crager was formerly a newspaper writer in Philadelphia. He was a member of the executive staff of the Alice Nielson Opera Company when the little prima donna was presenting The Fortune Teller and The Singing Girl."
 * 10 February 1903

"Mrs R A Lawson and little daughter are the guests of Mrs. George Crager of Milwaukee".
 * 20 July 1903

Interlude: The Girl from Dixie
GIVES JEWELS TO FREE HUSBAND. Second Wife Comes to Aid of Theatrical Man Arrested for Alimony Arrears.
 * 9 December 1903 - which particular wives?

Ignorant of the fact that Deputy City Marshal was lying in wait for him with a warrant, George Crager, the advance representative of The Girl from Dixie company, which will appear in the Madison Square Theatre on next Monday, was arrested in the lobby of the Lyric Theatre yesterday. He was charged with being $400 in arrears of alimony to his first wife. He had arrived from Philadelphia a few minutes before and was talking to George Kingsbury, the manager of the Winsome Winnie company. Crager had left his fur lined overcoat in the office upstairs and the marshal would not even permit him to go up and get it, but hurried him to the West Fifty-fourth Street Court. When his second wife, who lives in No. 42 West Thirty-ninth street, heard of his arrest she sent $250 in cash and all her jewels to bail him out. But the Magistrate would not accept any but a realty bond.

There is a slight connection with a notorious murder case: Crager was advance agent for The Girl from Dixie, a Sam Shubert production directed by Robert H. Burnside (who would later direct extravaganzas at T&D's mammoth Hippodrome from 1909 to 1921).

One of the chorus girls of The Girl from Dixie in 1903 was Evelyn Nesbit, who had been involved with the architect Stanford White. In April she 1905 married the Pittsburgh millionaire Harry K. Thaw. In 1906 Thaw murdered White at the Madison Square Theatre, Broadway, (where Dixie first played in New York): the mentally unstable Thaw was obsessed with Nesbit's previous somewhat relationship with White.

The Girl from Dixie
The Girl from Dixie is a two-act musical first produced 14 December 1903 at the Madison Square Theatre or Hoyt's, depends on dates. Press previews: Dec 12-13, 1903. Opening Date: Dec 14, 1903: Closing Date: Jan 02, 1904. 25 performances.

The book and most of the lyrics are by Harry B. Smith, "a collection of clichés he threw together" as a vehicle for his wife Irene Bentley. The idea came to him when a restaurant orchestra was applauded for playing Dixie. The music is by "nearly all of the living American composers ... and several dead ones."


 * Wafer-thin plot outline

The action takes place in Tamarack, Maryland, and New York.

An aristocrat, Lord Dunsmore, makes advances towards Kitty Calvert, a young lady from a long-established Maryland family going though hard times. Her class will alwys tell you that they used to rule the land in antebellum days, "but ain't much now". (NYT 13 Dec) Kitty politely turns him down, since she is amorously inclined towards a young man who is under the impression that she is an heiress. Finally disabused of this notion, he turns his attention elsewhere, and Kitty falls into the arms of Lord Dunsmore.

The cast featured a chorus line of "sixteen young women of haughty mien and proud carriage" (NYT 13 Dec p. 9) NYT carries on the puff: "The gowns of these same sixteen are said to have cost several mints of money, and to outdazzle the sun in brilliancy."

https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/the-girl-from-dixie-5803
 * Opening Night credits - cast


 * Irene Bentley    Kitty Calvert
 * Arnold Daly      Angelo Catalani, a music teacher [NOT IN IBdB]?
 * Wilmer H. Bentley    Nick Calvert, a schoolboy
 * George A. Schiller   Squire Mink of the Tamarack Bar, legal and otherwise
 * Dorothy Donner Maud Mabel Earl, whose papa owns the cigar factory
 * Charles K. French Napoleon Lee
 * Chas. H. Sheffer     Maria Louisa, his wife [drag]?
 * Ferdinand Gottschalk Lord Dunsmore
 * Albert Hart	      Jack Randolph
 * Charles H. Bowers    Edward Brandon
 * Rose Hart	      Imogenia
 * Bella Desmond        Malvina Carrol
 * W. L. Hobart	      Jim Small /ensemble
 * Vernon H. Lee	      Bob Marshall / ensemble
 * D.M. Lunsden	      Bill Douglas / ensemble
 * Albert J. Marshall   Jefferson Payne / ensemble
 * Olga May	      Edith / ensemble
 * Esther Lyons	      Sally Sumpter
 * Evelyn Nesbit    Bess Jackson
 * Lorraine Osborne     Helen
 * Ada Verne	      Alice / ensemble
 * Mabel Verne	      Dora
 * Amy Muller           ensemble
 * Edward Pooley        ensemble (not in NYT cast).

Cast and brief plot summary - [Regenbogen not in IBDb] The New York Times December 13, 1903, p. 25f https://www.nytimes.com/1903/12/13/archives/offerings-at-the-theatres-new-musical-comedy-a-girl-from-dixie-to.html


 * Song writers & composers
 * Dudley Buck vars. on "Star-Spangled Banner"?
 * Will Marion Cook - studied with Dvorak 10-17-2017 Will Marion Cook (1869-1944): Songs list and Songs and Instrumental Numbers pdf, by Peter M. Lefferts, p. 23 - Girl from Dixie "Sunflower & the Sun" etc.
 * Ludwig Engländer
 * H. J. Green - did nothing else at all except this song - probably a pseudonym...?
 * Ben Jerome - not much info
 * J. Rosamond Johnson - also wrote "Lift Every Voice and Sing"
 * Gustave Kerker - music for Winsome Winnie and ''Belle of New York, both revivals lit by Joe Menchen
 * Kerry Mills - wrote "Meet Me in St. Louis, Louis" - Judy Garland and founded F. A. Mills publishing, inc. Wicked.
 * George A. Norton - complete pdf of "Mary from Maryland" - Downloads/G. from D., ++ lots of songs inc. My Melancholy Baby, B. Goodman
 * E. D. Prussian -IBdB only atm
 * George Rosey  -also arr. Red Feather
 * Alfred Baldwin Sloane (living at the time).
 * Theodore Moses Tobani - wrote Hearts and Flowers, taken from intro to a waltz buy *Alphons Czibulka
 * Max S. Witt

IBDB: Internet Broadway Database https://www.ibdb.com/broadway-production/the-girl-from-dixie-5803#songs
 * Songs


 * ACT 1
 * Love in an Orchard (music by Ben Jerome [Matt C. Woodward] lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * The Lovers' A.B.C. (music by Max S. Witt; lyrics by M. E. Rourke)The Lovers' A.B.C.
 * Mary from Maryland (music by George A. Norton; lyrics by George A. Norton)"Mary from Maryland"
 * Angels Without Wings (music by Gustave Kerker; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * The Dissipated Kitten (music by A. Baldwin Sloane; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * ACT 2
 * The Sunflower and the Sun (music by Will Marion Cook; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * When the Moon Comes (Peeping) O'er the Hill (music by J. Rosamond Johnson; lyrics by Robert Cole)
 * Waltz (music by Ludwig Englander; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * Minuet and March (music by George Rosey; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * Bubbles (music by Max S. Witt; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * An American Heiress (music by Theo M. Tobani; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * Johnny Strong (music by E. D. Prussian; lyrics by Harry Raymond)
 * Happy Days in Dixie (music by Kerry Mills; lyrics by Harry B. Smith) Recording - Minstrels - 1910 - Victor 35183
 * There's Nothing Like a Friend (music by Max S. Witt; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)
 * Huzza (music by Dudley Buck; lyrics by Harry B. Smith) Huzzah! Schirmer, 1883 - 10 separate images
 * Honey (music by H. J. Green; lyrics by Harry B. Smith)

Songs

Amusements. COLUMBIA [theatre] NEXT WEEK SEATS SELLING Nixon Zimmerman and Present Their Latest MuSical GiRL FROM DIXIE By HARRY B SMITIH The Cast includes such Local Favorites as Ferdinand Gottschalk - Albert Hart George Schiller     - D L Don Sam Marion          - Wilmer Bentley Lou Middleton       - Adelaide Sharp Rose Hart           - Esther Lyons And IRENE BENTLEY
 * Notices from before the show reached NYC

The Washington times., October 22, 1903, Page 9, Image 9 https://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn84026749/1903-10-22/ed-1/seq-9/

THE LEGITIMATE MUSICAL SUCCESS. Messrs. Nlxoif A Zimmerman and Sam S. Shubert Present Their Newest Musical Offering, A GIRL FROM DIXIE (By Harry B. Smith. Author of ” Robin Hood”), with MISS IRENE BENTLEY And a Cast of Favorites. Matinee Tomorrow. 25c. Regular Matinee liars. Mon., Thu. and Sat.


 * Baltimore Sun, Baltimore, Maryland. November 4, 1903

See also New York Clipper, December 1904

Other related stuff
The Baring crisis or panic 1890, followed by the Panic of 1893, precipitated the repeal of the Sherman Silver Purchase Act. Free Silver. The 1893 crisis began 10? days before Grover Cleveland took office.

UUUrgh - The Madison was built for Steele Mackaye, whose son James MacKaye worked as a patent lawyer at the US Census Bureau - does that mean he knew or came across Hermann Hollerith, who had the same job at the Patent Office. Percy MacKaye, another son, put on the Turandot-alike somewhere. Hazel MacKaye toured with Winthrop Ames's troupe: one of his Broadway productions (1923) was Will Shakespeare by Clemence Dane: Frederic Austin wrote the incidental music for the original London production in 1921. List of compositions by Frederic Austin. Will Shakespeare on IBDB

Yet more Alice
Alice Nielsen (manager, George Crager) sang at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden, in Don Giovanni and The Marriage of Figaro in the spring season in May, and with Enrico Caruso in Carmen and La bohème in October 1904. This was the touring San Carlo Opera Company (NB useless WP article), directed/managed by Landon Ronald, who was the brother of Henry Russell, Alice Nielsen's singing teacher.
 * May 1904

Crager's third? daughter, Winifred Crager, died with over 1,000 other passengers in the great fire and sinking disaster of the SS General Slocum on New York’s East River on 15 June 1904.
 * 15 June 1904

'Paying Alimony Never Incurred.' All hail F. Ray Comstock, manager of "The Runaways," as the hero of the champion hard-luck story of the year. Comstock is as unmarried as the most unsophisticated of blushing debutantes, and yet regularly each week he is called upon by officers of the law to pay $9 alimony to a wife whom he has never seen. Compared to his predicament, the spectacle or a New York reporter rundown by a Philadelphia hearse is a golden sunlight of good fortune. We all vividly recall when George Crager, of Charles Frohman's business staff, was ruthlessly dragged away to jail because of his negligence in a matter of alimony. When the first shock of Crager's arrest had worn away we forgot the incident and forgot Crager. After many months Comstock has related the sequel in a Broadway restaurant, where the lights were turned low and the orchestra hushed by special request. To this young man, generally referred to as the Boy Impresario, Crager turned in his dilemma. At 4.30 in the morning Comstock was summoned from bed and hastened to the Fifty-seventh street prison. When he gazed upon Crager behind the bars, tears rolled down his cheeks. He sought the magistrate and placed $468 in the city treasury as a guarantee of alimony for the ensuing year. For his security he accepted from a friend of Crager's several diamond rings. When Crager was released he paid the alimony regularly for a few weeks. Comstock was happy in the thought of his good deed. He returned the rings. Then Crager disappeared. He is still absent. "And now," said the manager, "once each week, $9 of my money goes toward the support of Mrs. Crager. I have never seen her, and I can't locate Crager. Patriotic as I am, sometimes I think that the framers of the Declaration of Independence omitted important clauses."
 * 12 September 1904

'Elisabeth Carey to blossom'. From London yesterday came a letter bringing news that Elizabeth Carey was about to undergo a course of training preparatory to her professional debut in light opera. Miss Carey is not so well known in New York and in Philadelphia, where she attracted attention in amateur performances of "Princess Bonnie" and "Miss Bob White". She is the wife of George C. Crager, who went to London to act as business manager for Mrs. James Brown Potter. Henry Russell, director of the Conservatory of Music at Rome, heard Miss Carey sing, and persuaded her to devote a year to voice culture. Alice Nielsen was under Mr. Russell' s tutelage for several years.
 * Marries again
 * 13 January 1905

Crager had in been in Europe, presumably managing Alice Nielsen on tour. He planned a concert tour beginning next October (this October, 1905?) when she (should) appear in forty concerts in the principal cities of the country. Arrangements for the tour are now being made by Miss Nielsen's manager George C. Crager who is expected to reach New York shortly to (from?) Cologne.
 * 24 January 1905

The final BBWW tour of 1906 began in France on March 4, and then quickly moved on to Italy for two months. (Crager was possibly not on the tour...) The Wild West then travelled east performing in Austria, the Balkans, Hungary, Romania, and the Ukraine before coming back west to visit Poland (Krakov), Bohemia (later Czech Republic), Germany, and Belgium (last venue Ghent, 20-21 September 1906).
 * 1906

In December, however, Crager was in Berlin (not visted on the BBWW tour) with a troupe of Moki (Hopi) Native Americans. They performed in the Circus Schumann, and some wax cylinder recordings were made in the building of the Ethnological Society by Otto Abraham and by Favorit-Gesellschaft, including flute music and war songs.
 * 17 December 1906

Berliner Tageblatt, 17 December 12 1906:
 * "The Moki Indians. who have been appearing up until now in the Circus Schumann were invited to a meeting of the Ethnological Society, and presented themselves with their impresario Major Crager under the leadership of Baron von Hagen in the Society's building in Dorotheenstraße." [NB Baron v. Hagen was involved with the Berlin Phonographic Archive with Carl Stumpf]. "Some 300 scholars etc. had assembled there to see the redskins with their own eyes. At the close of the presentation the Indians' war songs were phonographically recorded, so that they could be brought to the Kaiser. Kaiser Wilhelm had expressed a desire to have the songs for his private collection. In gratitude for the kindness of the Indians, the Emperor submitted to each of them a small purse/wallet bearing the imperial signature in which there were five brand-new twenty-mark pieces. The joy of the Redskins was great. It increased even more when the Ethnological Society presented each one with a box of cigars and over a hundred cigarettes."

These 'Hopi' songs are discussed in Carl Stumpf The Origins of Music, originally published in Germany in 1911. The caption to Example 4.22. reads: "Old 'death song' of a troop of Pueblo Indians who came to Berlin a few years ago". These 'Pueblo Indians' may have been Hopi, but Crager was the allotting Agent in 1883-4 for the Rosebud Indian Reservation, and may have used some Brulé Sioux from the reservation in 1896 in The Great Northwest. Or he may have travelled to Arizona to recruit them, or have come to manage them otherwise. Well, he was George Crook's orderly at some point, and he may well have gone with him to Arizona.

Stumpf continues: "The [Pueblo performers] were labelled Hopi Indians, but it is not certain that they really belonged to this tribe. Example 4.22 was transcribed by Fischer from one of the Favorit-Gesellschaft recordings; the notation was reviewed by von Hornbostel and me, since it caused great difficulties. The song sounds so vivaciously and atmospherically from the recording that we wanted to try to bring it as close as possible to the imagination and appreciation. The image is as faithful as it ever can be when reproduced with our signs."

Nothing, yet. However, according to (see below), Crager was associated with Frank Bostock's zoo for a number of years. Bostock was a director of European Amusement Parks Ltd. (EAPL), which set up Luna Parks in Britain and Europe from 1908-1911. This would tend to mean that Crager may well also have been with EAPL, perhaps doing some sort of publicity, or even (gods forbid) acting as treasurer.
 * 1907-09

Editorial - July 2016
Much has come to light since I began my quest (almost exactly four years) ago to sort out the unholy mess of The Miracle films, The Miracle (1912 film) and Das Mirakel (1912 film), occasioned by random research of a side-issue during some highly enjoyable work on Busoni's Piano Concerto, Turandot Suite and subsequent opera Turandot, and on Turandot (Gozzi). During the process of untangling one 'Miracle' from another, a single mention of "Major G. C. Crager" led me to investigate this somewhat shadowy and dissimulating man: hence this article.

After working on a number of other film-related articles, and following thousands of lines of research - many of which I have forgotten or lost - I feel that I have almost answered my initial question: "How on earth did Joseph L. Menchen, and George C. Crager get to show The Miracle at Covent Garden?"

I'm fairly sure that the ultimate answer lies buried in the web of relationships that existed in the very fluid workplace of International Show Business™ around the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. Essentially, it's not what you knew, but who. A part of these relationships was exhibited publicly, in the newspaper and trade journal reports of the time, which form a large part of this and other related articles. Many of these articles were written (in the third person) by the individuals themselves and printed, without that much care, by paper/magazine publishers seeking profits. Crager himself appears to have been one of those yellow journalists who seek to distort the truth through personal disguise and the printed word. The rest is what happens when two people make a deal in the Entertainment World™ behind closed doors. Usually one of them is seeking to profit from the efforts of the other, who is often a much more individually talented person: and you can be almost absolutely sure that at least one of those involved in the deal is more or less unscrupulous. There are, obviously, a very few honourable exceptions. >MinorProphet (talk) 18:17, 13 July 2016 (UTC)

However, see above in 1900, where Loie Fuller performed at Terry's Theatre, owned by Edward Laudrillard: this, I think, is the missing piece in the jigsaw.



Aldgate White City Ltd.
From around 1910 one G. C. Crager was the manager of the Aldgate White City arcade/cinema with capacity of 600, at 31 High Street, Whitechapel, Stepney E1, managed/leased/owned by Aldgate White City Ltd. This last was a UK registered company begun in c1909. Crager may not be directly connected with the company, he is just listed as manager of the arcade/film premises in the 1910-11 annual.

The very name 'Aldgate White City' leads directly to Frank Bostock (see below) and Joe Menchen and who were heavily involved with the fun fair at White City, London through European Amusement Parks Ltd. Modeled on the original White City on the Midway at the 1893 Chicago World's Columbian Exposition, the London version was built by Bolossy Kiralfy for the 1908 Summer Olympics; Kiralfy's gigantic spectacular shows like Venice etc. ran at Olympia from c1896. The trio of American impresarios Abbey, Schoeffel and Grau (Maurice Grau was Robert's older brother) also booked the Kiralfy's Columbus which originally played during the 1893 Columbian Expo. Crager had been at Earl's Court (literally next door to Olympia) with BBWW in 1896-ish as well. To my mind, the link between Crager's Aldgate White City company and Joe Menchen and the rest of the US Entertainment World™ is pretty clear; there are sources for all these assertions. By April 1913 (and probably for some time before) George Crager was Menchen's business manager.

But here the mystery begins afresh: the address of "31 Whitechapel High Street" simply didn't exist in 1910.

In fact, there were no numbers 31-43 Whitechapel High Street from about 1875, when the junction with Leman Street was widened to accommodate the north end of the newly-built Commercial Road east. This meeting of five main thoroughfares is still known as Gardiner's Corner, after the clothing/department store Gardiner & Company (The Scotch House Limited), 1-5 Commercial Road East. This store with its distinctive clock tower occupied the triangular plot at the junction with the south side of Whitechapel High Street. The next building on both streets was Neville's Turkish Baths, which formed the end of the triangle runing through from 44 Whitechapel High Street, to 7 Commercial Road East along Plough Court. The junction formed a focus for huge crowds during the Cable Street Riot.

——
 * Refs
 * Whitechapel High Street connects Aldgate to Whitechapel Road. According to the Post Office London Directory, 1910. [Vol. I. Part 2: Street Directory, p. 678 [p. 537]), the house numbers are sequential on both sides, starting at the Aldgate (western) end: south side 1-71/3, north side 74-146. Number 30 is the Red Lion pub: then ... Here are Leman Street and Commercial road east ..., and W/chapel HS continues with no. 44, Nevill's Turkish Baths Ltd.
 * The last map to have No. 31 WC HS is in about 1865, before Commercial Road E./Street existed
 * By 1875, Commercial Road East was built, and with Leman Street it formed a triple junction with Whitechapel HS, see OS County Series: Surrey (partial) at old-maps.co.uk.
 * In maps after 1875, the large triangular space on the east side of the junction is 1-5 Commercial Road E.; the single building before Plough Court is Neville's Turkish Baths, 44 Whitechapel High Street; and then Nos. 45-49 WCHS before Drum Court.
 * In 1910 (as now), the junction of Leman Street is by No. 30, Whitechapel HS (the Red Lion pub);(PO Dir. ibid p. 441) the junction accommodates the north end of Commercial rd. East (E) (p. 268a, [127a]) The latter was renamed Commercial Street, and in the late? 20C the junction was re-routed a little way further east. See Google maps for current map.
 * External pix
 * Gardiners Corner, Whitechapel, 1900 Gardiners is in the centre with Whitechapel High Street to the left, Commmercial Street E. to the right, with Leman Street (unseen) at right angles to No. 30, the last building in the row of shops on the right.
 * Photo of south side of Whitechapel High Street. (Wiki: Jack the Ripper), looking west. Number 30, at the junction with Leman Street, is on the far left of the photo; no. 28 is Salomon & Co., boot & shoe manufacturers. Salomon v A Salomon & Co Ltd (1896) is a landmark UK company law case. Interestingly, the respondent company was variously described (by Lopes LJ and Kay LJ) as "a myth" and "a fiction": Salomon's establishment was only three doors away from "31 Whitechapel High Street", where much the same sort of thing appears to have happened.
 * 1920 photo of where no. 31 used to be, showing the (Old) Red Lion at no. 30, looking west towards Aldgate: Yup, cobblestones and tramlines.
 * Just to check the obvious: in 1910, 31 Whitechapel Road (the eastwards extension of the High Street) was occupied by T. Layman Ltd, Pawnbrokers. (PO Directory, p. 678)
 * Aldgate Tower (as of 2016) occupies 10-29 Whitechapel High Street (skyscrapernews.com), up to the junction with Leman Street, opposite Aldgate East Tube Station. There is currently a tower block development at 31 Whitechapel High Street, but 1910 it would have been literally in the middle of a road junction.

Thus I conclude that in 1910 at "31 Whitechapel High Street" there was nothing but cobblestones and tramlines. The only thing that could possibly pass for this address around this time is shown on the 1916 OS map of Gardiners Corner at the north end of Leman Street: here the carriageways divide around a central island, where there is... a public urinal. This spot could possibly be construed as No. 31, a cottage rather than a house... Or personal callers might have enquired at the next actual address in the High Street, which was a Turkish Baths. Hmm. George C. Crager strikes again, and unless the information in The Bioscope Annual is just plain incorrect, it seems that Aldgate White City Ltd is possibly a sham or front company with an arcade/cinema premises whose address appears to be most definitely fake. Furthermore, if it had been a genuine address, it would have turned up during a cursory search of the interwebs, like 165 Oxford Street or 20 Frith Street. This information has not been easy to come by.>MinorProphet (talk) 13:08, 21 July 2016 (UTC)

So, if profitable accounts were returned for this company, and if there were in reality no film-showing premises (if I have read and understood everything correctly), then where did its income come from? Compare the activities of § G. Amsinck and Co. (see below) from 1915 to 1917, and it's but a short hop for a suspicious mind in the direction of some very striking similarities.

So: either the address as given is somehow wrong, or it's a fake. (NB: Simples!) The company of Aldgate White City Ltd. certainly existed as a legal entity, having been wound up in September 1912 (NB The Miracle was filmed in Vienna in October), but on the face of it the supposed premises of the venue/cinema/nickelodeon advertised in The Bioscope Annual seem to have been a somewhat intangible asset.

The Miracle
NB Editorial: Some early thoughts about the Miracle have been superseded by Hahahahalol (above) and main (draft) articles linked above. It seems more and more obvious that Geo. C. Crager - the senior by 20 years of Jos. Menchen - had been learning the trade of the international exhibitor since he joined BBWW in 1886. Both were intimately connected with the Entertainment World™. Crager had travelled all around Europe with BBWW and on his own, and had constructed an entirely persuasive manner as an artiste business manager. Joe Menchen had constructed a technical career with (apparently) his own native talent, ending up with EAP Ltd, who built all the European Luna Parks. Robert Grau, the brother of Maurice Grau (manager of both the 'old' Met and ROH Covent Garden), was almost certainly involved with both of them, although I haven't yet determined the exact nature of their relationship. It can probably only be prised from between the interstices of the yellowing printed lines cited at the end of this page.

European Amusement Parks Ltd. (EAPL - directors, Harry McGarvie, John H. Iles, Frank Bostock and Joe Menchen) was at Crystal Palace for the Festival of Empire in 1911, part of the 1911 Coronation celebrations. To whit: Joe's sideshows like the Johnstown Flood or 'Creation', and Iles' Scenic Railway, for which Crager was apparently representative (ie probably advance agent). Which means - mysteriously and utterly coincidentally - that Crager and Menchen are have likely to have heard the music of my ggf Frederic Austin as part of the 3-day masque of the open-air The Pageant of London.
 * 1911

From the beginning of 1912 Menchen (possibly with Crager) was preparing for the production of the film of The Miracle. See ref for post-Titanic letter re filming at The Crystal Palace.
 * 1912

6 month's advance notice to dissolve Aldgate White City Ltd. was given in the The London Gazette, possibly because he knew he was going to be busy from October with The Miracle.
 * 21 May 1912

Crager stated, according to an FBI report on him in 1917, that during 1915 he was employed by the Daily Mail to take charge of their aviation tours, these tours extending throughout England. However, these tours seem to have taken place in 1912 and 1913. In 1911 The Daily Mail had hired Henri Salmet to give flying exhibitions at holiday resorts to promote interest in aviation. This idea was extended the following year (1912) with Claude Grahame-White and the ‘Wake Up England’ tour, aimed at raising the profile of the aeroplane and convincing the public of its value. Claude and his pilots visited 121 towns, gave over 500 exhibition flights and took up approximately 1,200 passengers. A repeat of the campaign in 1913 met with less success. Furthermore, the idea of a flying tour in 1915 during the war seems a little far-fetched.
 * August 1912
 * It's possible that Crager did "take charge" of the Aviation Tour(s), although he may have been more like a press or advance agent, perhaps writing publicity pieces for the places where the displays took place.
 * From Henri Salmet: In July and August 1912, Salmet took part in the "Wake Up England" aviation tour organised by Claude Graham-White, and sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper. The purpose was to promote public interest in aviation, and it visited 121 towns, many of which were holiday resorts. Salmet flew a Blériot XI-2, a two-seater that enabled him to carry a paying passenger. A follow-up tour in 1913 used the same land-based aircraft type plus a 'waterplane' version fitted with floats.[1]
 * Pic of Salmet next to a 50 horse power Blériot monoplane, with story about flying in Devon. 'Daily Mail' painted on the wings.
 * Also a Mr (Herr?) Fischler flew to Bournemouth in 1912 in his Farman floatplane.
 * The Mail was a big sponsor of early flight: See pic of the Daily Mail airship shed at Wormwood Scrubs. Plus the Transatlantic Race, which began again after the war, won by Alcock and Brown in 1919.
 * The Daily Mail organised a 'Seaplane Circuit of Britain' contest in 1913, with which Geo. C Crager may or may not have been connected.

Aldgate White City Ltd. was dissolved by notice in ''The London Gazette".
 * 27 September 1912

Shooting of The Miracle began in October 1912, but GCC and/or JLM may have gone to Berlin/Austria many months before.
 * They certainly did, as I have found out. Both men had travelled separately all over the Continent, Crager with BBWW in ?1895 and 1900 (The Ghost Shirt), and Menchen with EAPL from 1908; Max Reinhardt opened The Miracle (play) at Olympia in December 1911, and hence the The Miracle (1912 film).

By March (Easter time) 1913 The Miracle had done very well, thank you very much indeed. Here is the article in Cinema News published the day after Menchen's birthday (and probably written by Crager):
 * April 1913


 * "Mr. Joseph Menchen, who produced "The Miracle," which is conceded to be the finest motion picture ever made, and is one of the youngest yet most daring recruits to the new world of cinematography, has just purchased a vast estate situated at Epinay-sur-Seine, France, covering over 230 acres of land, where are located cathedrals, convents, jungles, &c. He has also purchased the Coliseum of Nero situated at Nîmes, France, and has the exclusive right for the use of all armour, &c., which was used over 2,000 years ago. He has also added to his stall the services of M. Carré, France's foremost producer, as well as a staff of experienced English, American, French, and German operators to assist in producing some of the wonderful effects for which he is so well known in the United States. Mr. Menchen is the inventor of the renowned Johnstown Flood and other kindred effects.
 * He intends to produce exclusives only, on such a gigantic scale that they will no doubt revolutionise and bring about a new art in cinematography. He is ably seconded in his efforts in having the indefatigable Major G. C. Crager to take charge of his business affairs, as the Major is conversant with nearly all the languages of the countries wherein Mr. Menchen is working. It is a great advantage to Mr. Jos. Menchen to have associated with him such an able co-worker."

How long was Crager was business manager for Joseph Menchen? He managed the Aldgate White City (not necessarily the UK registered company of the same name) from 1909 - the name alone is "suspiciously coincidental" - but he was apparently covering the Daily Mail Aviation Tour in 1912-13. Lots more to fill in from the FBI files.

Finally, Reinhardt and Menchen cross paths as the stage and screen versions of The Miracle consecutively play Berlin.
 * The Miracle in Berlin, April 1914

Joe Godsoll (or Goldsoll, Godsol, etc.) with Edward B. Kinsila and later with A. H. Woods built the absolutely stunning Nollendorf-Theater, Berlin (later Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz) designed by Oskar Kaufmann in 1911-1912. Godsoll was a high-class swindler and crook (ref "Include me out" on JSTOR) and Woods (a New York vaudeville impresario born in Hungary) was his brother-in-law. They were the directors of Cines-Theater AG, a partly-owned German subsidiary of the Rome-based film production company Società Italiana Cines. Woods (and/or Godsoll) acquired the leases of over 30 theatres all around Europe, including fourteen in Germany and six in Berlin alone. One of these was the Groß-Berlin theatre (later Ufa-Palast am Zoo), which they converted into a cinema with Oskar Kauffman again as architect. Woods bought the US rights for The Miracle from Joseph Menchen after April 1912.

The Banco di Roma, one of the backers of Cines in Rome and also of Cines-Theater AG in Berlin, was in severe financial difficulties by early 1914 as a result of the Italian-Turkish War in Libya. It seems possible or even likely that Cines-Theater AG collapsed as Banco di Roma's losses mounted. Godsoll bought out the interests of both A. H. Woods (who went straight back to the US) and the parent company of Cinès in Rome, but kept control of three Berlin theatres - the Apollo-Theater, the Friedrich-Wilhelm-Städtisches Theater (now the Deutsches Theater) and the Palast am Zoo (later Ufa-Palast am Zoo). The Miracle showed at the Palast am Zoo from Monday, 15 May 1914, followed the next day by a wildly enthusiastic review in Lichtbild-Bühne which ends with a resounding "Bravo, Godsoll!" from Jos. Menchen and - probably - Geo. Crager.

After haemorrhaging cash for two years, the Banco di Roma failed spectacularly in 1916 as the full extent of its losses and unwise investments became clear.

More info: see and 20 Frith Street, Ufa-Pavillon am Nollendorfplatz and this v. rough draft.

Travels in South America
Unconfirmed reports say that Crager was apparently Inspector for the American Red Cross during WW1. Joseph Menchen said he was going to put his Sunbeam seven-seater Tourer at the disposal of the French Red Cross at the start of the war. However, when the Germans starting bombing central Paris and bombs fell just a few streets away from his own offices, Menchen with his wife Madge decamped to England with the Sunbeam full of films on the USS Tennessee (ACR-10). Menchen started designing flame-throwers in late 1914, patents filed Feb-March 1915, with his address as 20 Frith Street.

From December 1914 George Crager was employed by Perrier Ltd., who appointed him 'Inspector General' in January 1915. On the company's behalf Crager visited Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Panama. Crager may have accepted railroad passes through South America upon representations made that he was associated with the Daily News. When asked, he replied that "this was untrue, but that the Argentinian Central Railroad had given a pass from Buenos Aires to Valparaiso by reason of the fact that he was then engaged on a book on South America, not yet published." On 7 January 1916 he left Buenos Aires on the SS Crimea for Liverpool en route to London. There he was appointed Perrier's US Sales Manager, and after for or five weeks returned to New York and Canada. However, there was an "office disturbance" (a familiar feature of Crager's business dealings), Crager was recalled to London in September 1916 and seems to have lost his position soon after, settling for a nominal sum which was less than the commissions he had earned.

In October 1916 he and his wife gave a dinner for Mrs. Jessica Lozier Payne [a writer and giver of talks who had been in Europe for six weeks] at the Carlton Hotel, London.

Apart from Perrier, Crager claimed to have been associated with other drinks companies, such as Schweppes, McConnell Distilleries Ltd., (who made 'Old Orkney' or 'OO' Scotch whisky) and Davis & Hammond, (Wine & Spirit merchants). It may have been with a similar sales position with one of the companies that he left London on 9 November 1916 for Rio de Janeiro, thence to Buenos Aires, and later to Valparaiso, Chile, and back to Buenos Aires. He again embarked for Liverpool 25 January 1917 and from there travelled to London. Interviewed by the FBI in 1917 about the trip, Crager said that when he went to South America in 1916 he had "a few sheets of Daily Mail paper, and wrote one or perhaps two letters upon same, but denied emphatically that he at any time made any representations to anyone of being at that time directly or indirectly connected with said paper. While Crager was in South America, Jim ‘Kid’ Willoughby (the rider from Buffalo Bill's Wild West) died in Los Angeles on December 9 1916 and received a Hollywood Star’s Funeral.

Return to the United States
He returned with his wife (along with Loie Fuller) to New York on April 6 1917. On 18 April he wrote to Josephus Daniels, now Secretary of the Navy who had apparently been instrumental in his appointment as Special Indian allotting Agent:
 * "I have just returned to the US from South America and have much valuable information as to conditions as they REALLY exist there. Can I be of service?
 * You will no doubt remember my work as US Special Agent, whom you appointed, to "Allot Lands in Severality to the Sioux Nation" October 11th 1893.
 * Your obedient servant, Maj. G. C. Crager."

Daniels replied on April 26th 1917:


 * "My dear Sir,
 * I take pleasure in acknowledging receipt of your letter of the 19th in which you state that you have valuable information concerning conditions as they exist in South America. Such matters do not come within the scope of this department, but I am sure the Secretary of State would be glad to know of any new facts you have in your possession.
 * Your reference to your work as Special Agent in 1893 recalls friendships of other days. Time can not obliterate the associations so pleasantly formed.
 * Sincerely yours, Josephus Daniels."

Crager made a trip to Washington on 20 May until 2 June 1917, staying in the Hotel Sterling.

Crager was "hauled into the Domestic Relations Court last Friday" (8 June 1917), charged by his wife, Mrs. Julia Crager,with non-support. Mrs. Crager did not recognize her husband, whom she had not seen in fourteen years, but he admitted his identity and expressed a willingness to support her. He said his means were strained at present and Magistrate Cornell directed him to pay bis wife $3 a week. Crager produced a cash bond of $156 to insure payments for one year. "WHY WORK? George Crager has been ordered to pay his divorced wife a small amount of alimony weekly, the amount to be increased as soon as his financial condition warrants. It would pay him to loaf.
 * 8 June 1917
 * 20 June 1917

The FBI files

 * p. 1 • p. 2 • p. 3 • p. 4 • p. 5 • p. 6 • p. 7. • p. 8.

Not yet accessed:
 * George C. Crager (#8000-23729) › Page 25 - Fold3.com
 * George C. Crager (#8000-23729) › Page 33 - Fold3.com
 * George C. Crager (#8000-23729) › Page 34 - Fold3.com

These are just lists of transatlantic steamer crossings, nothing to do with Crager - they're just tacked on to his file. MinorProphet (talk) 01:45, 25 April 2022 (UTC)

I imagine we'll find out how guilty he was... On the surface, not very. But the file shows that Josephus Daniels was definitely involved in Crager's appointment as Indian Agent: "Your reference to your work as Special Agent in 1893 recalls friendships of other days. Time can not obliterate the associations so pleasantly formed." Good explanation of his movements from 1914-17, otherwise: "An examination of his effects failed to show anything in this man's possession, or upon his person, of a suspicious nature or character." That's good, then.

William B. Matthews. Report stamped as Received 8 June 1917. He was following up the Chief's letter of May 18, 1917 initialed REH, forwarded to him by Asst. Div. Supt. Baker.
 * June 1917
 * 2279382 p. 1 follows:
 * "Pursuant thereto I called upon Thomas J. L. Crane, Office Manager of Perrier Limited Offices, 1476 Broadway. From Crane I ascertained that George C. Crager during the summer of 1916 and up to September, 1916 of the same year, was Sales Manager in the United States of the Perrier Company and that during September, 1916 owing to some office disturbance, Crager went to Europe and shortly after his arrival there was reported to have lost his position with said company. No one connected with the present office of Perrier Limited here can give any information concerning Crager."

Matthews next interviewed Thomas J. L. Perkins, clerk of the Marlborough Hotel. Crager and wife had been guests several times over the last three or four years. Crager returned on 17 April from Europe with his wife and registered at the hotel, where he had been ever since. Perkins to advise when he returns.

Report by William B. Matthews, NTC, report dated 8 June 1917 for surveillance period starting 1 June 1917.
 * 2279386 p.2 follows:
 * In RE George C. Crager
 * Gorman Suspect
 * "I today got in touch with Mr. Perkins, clerk at the Marlboro Hotel, who informed me that Crager and wife were still out of the city and they were believed to be at Long Branch, New Jersey."

Letter to Offley:
 * 2279597 p. 3 follows:
 * W. M Offley was a Superintendent at the Justice Dept. who led raids on Socialist organisations in 1917. See Nationwide Raids On IWW; Two Socialist Offices Searched.


 * 2279602 p. 4 follows:
 * Receipt of above letter


 * 2279412 p. 5 follows:
 * An examination of Crager and his rooms at the hotel revealed the following:
 * "He stated that he was 58 years old [born in Sept 1859]; that he was born in New York City and that during the past five years he had been connected with the following concerns: (ie since 1912)
 * Perriers Limited, 		45-47 Wigmore St., London [NB real name Perrier Ltd.]
 * Schweppes Limited,		Vauxhall Walk, London [Tonic Water]
 * McConnell Distilleries Ltd.,	Arundel St, Strand, London [Scotch whisky - 'Old Orkney', or 'OO']
 * Davis & Hammond,		44 Leadenhall St, London [Wine & Spirit merchants]
 * all of whom are represented in South America.


 * Perrier: The original spring, bought by Dr. Louis Perrier in ?1889 was sold to St. John Harmsworth in 1903, a younger brother of the newspaper magnates Lord Northcliffe and Lord Rothermere. Perrier advertised in the Daily Mail. Crager claimed to be connected with Claude Grahame-White's aero tours of Britain, sponsored by the Daily Mail, but he seems to be a few years out, unless they really continued into 1915.
 * Schweppes Mineral Water manufacturers, 49 Vauxhall Walk. Factory built in 1912. By 1912 Schweppes were a major company with many outlets. Originating with a Swiss inventor in the 1790s they had moved in the 1890s to larger premises in Hendon and subsequently opened other manufacturing bases, including this one. "In February 1914, Sir Ivor Philipps had been appointed a director of Schweppes, the mineral water company, which was in poor condition because of a lack of capital and of dissension between the directors. During the war, Philipps left the board while the company continued to languish."
 * McConnell owned the Stromness Distillery, Orkney, which made 'Old Orkney' whisky.
 * "Aka Man O'Hoy. Founded 1817 by John Crookshanks who was replaced as owner six times during forty years. It went into a silent period from the mid 1860's to 1878 when it was bought and restored by the MacPherson brothers who renamed the distillery to Man O'Hoy and its whisky to Old Orkney. Circa 1905 is was acquired by J & J McConnell Ltd. who operated it through the bad years of the 20's but had to give it up 1928. It was located on Orkney near the city of Kirkvall. Stood in the village of Stromness, from which it took its name, and near the dark waters of Scapa Flow. The distillery became completely demolished in 1940 without traces. The site is now occupied by housing. With its very small 2 Pot stills and 4/2.200 gallons washbacks it had an annual production of 7.000 gallons. Water for process was drawn from May Burn. Visited by Alfred Barnard, 1887 (he is not correct regarding the starting year and owner)." Lost Distilleries.
 * NOTICE is hereby given, that the Partnership heretofore subsisting between us, the under-signed, George Frederick Sexton, Frank Stanley Hayman and Frederick William Harvey, carrying on business as Wine and Spirit Merchants and Agents, at Africa House, Numbers 44, 45 and 46, Leadenhall-street, in the city of London, under the style or firm of D. J. DAVIS & HAMMOND, has been dissolved by mutual consent as and from the thirty-first day of October , 1927, etc... London Gazette, issue 33325, p. 6924

Report continues:
 * "Crager showed me a letter dated April 18, 1917, addressed to Hon. Josephus Daniels, Secretary of the Navy:


 * Marlborough Hotel
 * "I have just returned to the US from South America and have much valuable information as to conditions as they REALLY exist there. Can I be of service?
 * You will no doubt remember my work as US Special Agent, whom you appointed, to "Allot Lands in Severality to the Sioux Nation" October 11th 1893.
 * Your obedient servant, Maj. G. C. Crager.


 * "Allot lands in severality..." see Evening Star (Washington, DC), October 11, 1893 p. 6f

Reply from Daniels, April 26th 1917:
 * My dear Sir, • 2279414 p. 6 follows:
 * I take pleasure in acknowledging receipt of your letter of the 19th in which you state that you have valuable information concerning conditions as they exist in South America. Such matters do not come within the scope of this department, but I am sure the Secretary of State would be glad to know of any new facts you have in your possession.
 * Your reference to your work as Special Agent in 1893 recalls friendships of other days. Time can not obliterate the associations so pleasantly formed.
 * Sincerely yours, Josephus Daniels.


 * Soooo, here is the political appointer, who was...let's see... aha! Chief clerk of the Federal Department of the Interior under Grover Cleveland in 1893-95. No surprises there. Daniels was appointed Secretary of the Navy by Woodrow Wilson in 1912.

Report continues:
 * Crager claimed to know 14 or 15 dialects of the Sioux or Indian language, and European languages as well. Crager's reported movements since January 1916:
 * "On 7 January 1916 he left Buenos Aires, SA, on SS Crimea for Liverpool enroute to London on business for the Perriers, Ltd. He was in London for 4 or 5 weeks from which place he came to New York and Canada until September, 1916.
 * Hmm, according to Matthews' interview (above) with Thomas J. L. Crane, Manager of Perrier US, Crager had apparently lost his position in September 1916 as US Sales Manager, soon after his return to England (ie he had been fired, yet again).
 * He then went back to London, again leaving London 9 November 1916 for Rio Janeiro, thence to Buenos Aires, and later to Valparaiso, Chile. From the latter place he went to Buenos Aires, and on 25 January 1917 again embarked for Liverpool and from there to London.
 * He may have then represented one or more of the other above-named companies, like Schweppes.
 * He remained in London until he departed for the US on 7 April. Has been living at Marlborough Hotel and but for one trip to Washington, he hasn't been out of New York." The trip to Washington was on 20 May 1917 until 2 June, staying in the Hotel Sterling.


 * 2279421 p. 7 follows:
 * Crager stated that during 1915 he was employed by the Daily Mail to take charge of their aviation tours, these tours extending throughout England.
 * Hmm, this was actually I fink in 1912. In 1911 The Mail hired Louis? Henri Salmet to give flying exhibitions at holiday resorts to promote interest in aviation. This idea was extended the following year with Claude Grahame-White and the ‘Wake Up England’ tour, aimed at raising the profile of the aeroplane and convincing the public of its value. Claude and his pilots visited 121 towns, gave over 500 exhibition flights and took up approximately 1,200 passengers. A repeat of the campaign in 1913 met with less success.
 * It's possible that Crager did "take charge" of the Aviation Tour(s), although he may have been more like a press or advance agent, perhaps writing publicity pieces for the places where the displays took place.
 * From Henri Salmet: In July and August 1912, Salmet took part in the "Wake Up England" aviation tour organised by Claude Graham-White, and sponsored by the Daily Mail newspaper. The purpose was to promote public interest in aviation, and it visited 121 towns, many of which were holiday resorts. Salmet flew a Blériot XI-2, a two-seater that enabled him to carry a paying passenger. A follow-up tour in 1913 used the same land-based aircraft type plus a 'waterplane' version fitted with floats.[1]
 * Pic of Salmet next to a 50 horse power Blériot monoplane, with story about flying in Devon. 'Daily Mail' painted on the wings.
 * Also a Mr (Herr?) Fischler flew to Bournemouth in 1912 in his Farman floatplane.

Report continues:
 * "When he went to South America in 1916 he had a few sheets of Daily Mail paper, and wrote one or perhaps two letters upon same, but denies emphatically that he at any time made any representations to anyone of being at that time directly or indirectly connected with said paper.
 * He said that Lord Northcliffe was the owner of the Daily Mail, and he had a brother who owned the Perrier Springs. Crager claimed that Northcliffe disliked him and other American citizens because at the time the Americans hadn't entered the war.
 * Crager said that he severed his connections with Perrier because they couldn't afford to pay him, and letters from Perriers were expressions of regret that they had to part with his services. He settled for a nominal sum which was less than the commsissions earned. Crager informed me that he had never been associated with Hagenbach [apparently the Hagenbeck-Wallace Circus] but that it was true that he was with Bostock's off and on for about 10 years. Crager said he was with Buffalo Bill for many years off and on from 1891 to 1895." He also showed friendly letters from Cody.
 * NB Frank Bostock, an English lion-tamer and circus and menagerie owner, was a partner with Joe Menchen in EAPL which set up Luna Parks in Europe from late 1907.
 * How much of the truth is Crager telling? He said he was with Bostock's over a period of 10 years. Bostock died in October 1912 while The Miracle was being filmed in Austria. So Crager could had been associated with Bostock "off and on" any time between c1894 and 1912. In what way? Find out about Bostock's tours in the US. "Acts under Bostock's Jungle Arena management presented animals doing tricks to audiences across Europe and North America in a range of venues that, by 1900, included circuses." What about Hagenbeck - was he under investigation?


 * From Bostock bio: "Frank C Bostock arrived in the United States in the summer of 1893 at twenty seven years of age. He set up near 5th and Flatbush Avenues in Brooklyn ... From 1894 to 1903 Carl Hagenbeck and Frank Bostock competed at Coney Island' and for winter zoo locations. In 1903 Hagenbeck was averaging 8,000 visitors a day at Coney Island, this was only half as many as Bostock.
 * On returning to the UK Bostock brought back his idea of the 'Jungle', a massive touring exhibition that moved from city to city. [NB Probably partly in conjunction with EAP Ltd.] Bostock had taken elements of British showmanship and design to America, and now reversed the procedure by bringing back the American idea of 'the big show' into the UK. 'Bostock's Arena and Jungle' is recorded at Earls Court in 1908 and then visited principal cities in the UK over the following years. Its first Sheffield appearance was in 1910, with a return visit in 1912, a few days after Bostock's death. It is recorded that Frank Bostock also had economic and property interests connected to the roller-skating craze 'rinking' in the early 1900s and the Sheffield Jungle took over the redundant skating rink in 1910, when the craze had subsided."


 * Apart from his Jungle animals, Bostock also had his 'The Midget City' which was at Dreamland on Coney Island in 1904. Somehow this seems much more like a reason for Crager's association with Bostock. Crager may have been managing Alice Nielsen in Europe, although someone called George Crager was with the Irene Jeavon's Big Stock Co. of Philadelphia, which put on vaudeville/theatre in a tent. :"Notes from the Irene Jeavon's Big Stock Co. : We are now in our eighth week under canvas, and are doing an excellent business. The following people are with the co. : Thos. Hoffmann, manager; John Negrotte, stage director ; Louis Auker, G. Nugent and wife, Miss Egan, Lillie Rena, Miss Thorn, Silvers and Baxter, moving pictures; Harry Walters and George Crager.


 * Edward H. Bostock, Frank Bostock's brother, had a Zoo in Glasgow from c1894.

Report continues:
 * "Crager first accepted employment with Perrier Ltd. in December 1914 and that • p. 8 2279435 follows: in c. January 1915 he was given the position of Inspector General for that company, and in consequence of this position he on their behalf visited Brasil, Chile, Argentine Republic and Panama. Arrived in London January 1916. I asked if Crager accepted railroad passes through SA upon representations made that he was associated with the Daily News'. He replied that this was untrue, but that the Argentinian Central R[ail]R[oad] had given a pass from BA to Valparaiso by reason of the fact that he was then engaged on a book on SA, not yet published.
 * He said that he had never contemplated or considered any business arrangements or associations with any person, Jews or otherwise, in any gambling business.
 * He was in the US 3rd Cavalry from 20 May 1876 to 1 March 1878; and 19 March 1880 to 7 October 1881. [Proper dates at last]
 * Hmmm, why no mention of "Lieutenant George C. Crager"? 1. Because he wasn't really in the Army in 1899. 2. To cover up that he was in Cuba, or something else.

"An examination of his effects failed to show anything in this man's possession, or upon his person, of a suspicious nature or character." Hmmmz.

Summary of FBI investigations
He was in the US 3rd Cavalry from
 * 20 May 1876 to 1 March 1878
 * 19 March 1880 to 7 October 1881 (NB he was both times discharged the Army on medical grounds)

Josephus Daniels was definitely involved in Crager's appointment as Indian Agent: "Your reference to your work as Special Agent in 1893 recalls friendships of other days. Time can not obliterate the associations so pleasantly formed."

Crager claims to have been connected with Frank C. Bostock off and on for about ten years. Bostock was in the US from 1893 and at Coney Island 1894-1903, and back with the UK with EAPL from 1908-1912 when he died: thus the connection to Joe Menchen and EAP Ltd. Menchen was also at Coney Island in 1903 with his electrical effects for Thompson and Dundy's Luna Park and then (more random refs) at 'The 'Pike' at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair with many cycloramas and his very own Johnstown Flood at (e.g.) the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition

In possibly 1912-3 (he actually said in 1915...), Crager was connected with Graham-White's 'Wake Up England' aero tours, through the Daily Mail which sponsored them. The Miracle was filmed in October 1912 in Vienna. By April 1913 Crager was with Menchen in the Épernay studios. Miracle in Berlin in May 1914. August 1914 - war. Crager did indeed come back to Britain (maybe it was him who took the photo on the cross-channel battleship?), and then there is little to connect him after this date to Menchen, who was furiously inventing flame-throwers for the WD.

Crager started with Perrier in the UK in December 1914, and was made "Inspector General" c. January 1915. He spent a year in South America with his wife (plus some free rail travel in South America thrown in by an Argentinian railway company), returning to England in January 1916. Crager may well have written letters using Daily Mail headed paper in South America, implying that he was actually connected with or representing the paper. Or maybe unfounded accusations. He became US Sales Manager for Perrier in summer 1916, but in September that year there was an "office disturbance"; Crager was recalled to London and was reported to have lost his position with the company soon after his arrival in England September 1916.

He left London on 9 November 1916 (possibly employed by other drinks firm(s) on the list) for South America. On 25 January 1917 in Buenos Aires he again embarked for Liverpool-London, remaining in London until he left for the US on 7 April. He lived at the Marlborough Hotel until the FBI interview in June 1917, except for 20 May - 2 June 1917, when he was in Washington. (Doing what? Seeing Daniels or the Interior Secretary?)

US Consular service
Crager seems to have joined the US Consular service at some point, possibly c1920.

"25 congressmen and wives (and Crager) return from a trip to the Panama Canal [completed in 1915] on board the SS Panama (1902) [previously Havana, later Aleutian] from Cristóbal. Also on board was Julio Zamora, Bolivian financial agent to the United States, accompanied by Major George Crager, of the United States army. This last item from the Washington Times correctly omits the slyly-inserted rank which the El Paso Herald (TX) prints, probably not knowing much about him: "Julio Zamora, Bolivian financial agent to the United States, accompanied by Maj. Gen. George Crager, of the United States army, also was aboard." At last, Major-General George C. Crager!
 * March 30, 1919

Among the prominent passengers who sailed on the steamship Santa Luisa of the United States and Pacific line on June 31 were: For Cristóbal — Major George Crager and wife.
 * 31 June 1919

Crager arrived at Ellis Island from Colon on the RMS Ebro (orig. sailed from Talcahuano, 16 April 1920). The passenger manifest says he was born in New York 19 September 1859, aged 60y 7mo, address as G. Aimsinck (sic) & Co., 90/6 Wall Street, NY. His wife was... wait for it... yet another woman! Louise Kathleen Crager, born London(-ish?), October 16 1887, aged 32y 7mo, staying at Marlbor[ough?] Hotel, NY.
 * 11 May 1920

So, married once more, lol: and G. Aimsinck turns out to be the banking house of G. Amsinck & Co., and thereby hangs a tale.

G. Amsinck & Co.
I'm not sure how far George Crager is involved in any of the following, but it certainly looks right up his street. Gustav Amsinck (1828-1909) founded the export/import firm of G. Amsinck & Co. in 1874; the firm was later acquired by American International Corporation. Biography of Gustav Amsinck, died 1909.
 * The German spy connection

G. Amsinck & Co. acted as an intermediary for the financing of German espionage and sabotage in the United States during the First World War. Count von Bernstorff, the German ambassador in Washington masterminded the operation, assisted by Capt. Franz von Papen, who organized German sabotage in the U.S. and purchased an established New York firm, G. Amsinck & Co., to launder the financial transactions. (NB That must have cost quite a lot in itself.) Von Papen was expelled from the US in December 1915 after various sabotage incidents and explosions. Von Bernstorff and Bolo Pasha came up with a scheme in 1915 to destabilise France by corrupting the French press in order to force an early armistice with Germany. The banking firm Muller, Schall and Company acted for the pair and used G. Amsinck & Co. as a front to facilitate the transfer of $1,700,000 to fund the subterfuge.

G. Amsinck were agents for the Bank of Venezuela in 1910, making payment for the Orinoco Steamship Co. case at the Hague. In c1915 Preston B. McGoodwin was appointed as ambassador [US title: 'Minister'] to Venezuela: but he was apparently in the pay of General Juan Vicente Gómez, and frustrated counter-espionage efforts against German interests. McGoodwin's shady dealings involved suspicious lunches in Caracas with Conrad de Waal (no info) of "the well-known house of G. Amsinck & Co.".

G. Amsinck's involvement was finally exposed when war was declared on 6 April 1917 and the US severed diplomatic relations with Germany. This led to raids on various business premises including Deutsche Bank, and the Bolo Pasha connection was discovered. Amsinck was mostly purged of its German connections and staff, and re-organised as G. Amsinck & Co., Inc. Also FBI raids on various Socialist organisations in the USA (see FBI files above).

As part of a US intelligence-gathering scheme after the declaration of war, representatives of G. Amsinck & Co. and other international companies with extensive interests in Central and South America, met in May 1917 and agreed to keep tabs on suspicious German financial transactions.

(AIC) acquired control of G. Amsinck & Co., Inc. in November 1917. "The American International Corporation (AIC) was organized in New York on November 22, 1915, by the J.P. Morgan interests, with major participation by Stillman's National City Bank and the Rockefeller interests. The general office of AIC was at 120 Broadway. The company's charter authorized it to engage in any kind of business, in any country in the world. The stated purpose of the corporation was to extend American activities abroad, and to promote the interests of American and foreign bankers, business and engineering.

"Some might see AIC as a precursor to CIA. The CIA was set up as a result of the 1947 National Security Act, so that these activites now had officially granted secrecy, on the justification they were in the national interest. In 1945, two years before the 1947 National Security Act, AIC was merged with The Adams Express Co."

In 1918 Bolo Pasha was executed in France for treason, and Muller Schall, heavily involved with the financial side of the German covert operations in the US, was liquidated and reorganised to divest itself of the connection.

The high-class swindler and con-man Joe Godsol, (later chairman of Metro-Goldwyn, with one Al. Woods on the board of directors) who showed Joe Menchen's The Miracle (1912 film) in one of his cinemas in Berlin in 1912, was arrested in the US on extradition charges in 1917 on behalf of the French Military Government, which wanted to try him in France for fraud in connection with his $1,000,000 commission on trucks imported for the French military. I am still unsure whether Godsol's alleged fraud came to light after the US's declaration of war on Germany in 1917, which uncovered the Bolo Pasha scandal. The stories of Godsol and Bolo Pasha occupied the same pages in French newspapers in 1918. Refs needed!
 * Joe Godsol (or Frank Joseph Goldsoll, or any variation thereof etc., etc.)

Personal lives
'Major' Geo. C. Crager appears to have been married at least seven (possibly eight) times, and had at least five children (four daughters & one son) by three of his wives.


 * Married Mollie Willoughby in Cheyenne, WT, on 18 or 19 January 1881
 * Children: Bessie Crager
 * Bigamously married Mary Cheseboro (or Chesebro etc), the daughter of William Allen Cheseborough, in Palermo, N. Y., on 12 January 1882 when he was in Vermilion, Saratoga County, NY. She was born 28 October 1854 in Volney, Oswego County, NY, and died 23 October 1887 in Volney, Oswego County, NY. Their children:
 * George Charlton Crager, Jr., b. September 19, 1884, Pulaski, Oswego County, NY; d. unknown.
 * Minna Luddington Crager, b. 24 or 25 January 1886, Vermilion, Oswego County, NY; d. 1 July 1950, Valencia, Butler County, PA. Minna Crager was a graduate nurse. Married Bertice Ward (b. in Gilbert Mills, NY), manager of a stock farm near Pittsburgh. Lived at R.F.D., Gibsonia, Pa.
 * Minna's children: Winifred M. Crager, Helen Crager, Bernard William Crager.
 * Cuno Parker Crager, Sr., b. 13 December 1886, Philadelphia, Philadelphia County, PA; d. 9 May 1945, San Juan, Puerto Rico.
 * Possibly married Kate Halthusen before his incarceration in September 1882, according to a newspaper report of a seduction case: 'Crager's Three Wives'. This may be some sort of legal device, like being named as a co-respondent in a pre-agreed divorce case. In fact, see Seduction for a case with (on the face it) exactly the same situation.
 * A year after the death of his second wife Mary Chesebro in 1887, "Mr. and Mrs. G. C. Crager" were at a reception in 1888. This Mrs. Crager may have been the following:
 * He was married to the former Mrs. August Seligmen by 27 September 1890. He failed to pay the lawyers in a divorce case brought against her previous husband on the grounds he was insane. See also Divorce in the United States
 * Married Julia Frankeristein before c.1892; she returned from Glasgow during the BBWW British tour in February 1892. He didn't see her after c.1903 until she summonsed him for abandonment in 1917, when he referred to her as "his divorced wife".
 * Children: Winnifred, b. around November 1891 (aged 3 months on 11 February 1892.), died on June 15, 1904 on the PS General Slocum)
 * Married Elizabeth Carey before January 1905: the announcement came from London.
 * Married before 11 May 1920 to Louise Kathleen Hale, born London, October 16 1887.

Connections to Joseph Menchen
"I was discussing this matter [The Miracle] with Major Cragen sic (Mr. Joseph Menchen's able commander-in-chief), and he told me that the film was still going remarkably strong, and looked like being booked up for many months to come. It certainly is a picture which as an Easter item cannot be equalled, and those cinema theatre proprietors wise enough to secure it will undoubtedly have a busy time during the holidays.

In a 1913 interview about his success with The Miracle, Menchen described Crager as the business manager of the Studios Menchen in Epernay-s/-Seine. NB These are the only direct mentions I have found of the two men in business together. Everything else is derived from various other sources quoted in this and other drafts/articles.

Crager was born in 1859, Joseph Menchen was born in 1878, some nineteen years later. Menchen started working in theatres in 1894-5, and was showing early cinema films in vaudeville shows in New York by August 1896; Crager had moved into artiste management by at least May that year, and possibly several months before that with Mrs. Potter. It seems possible that Menchen and Crager met in the course of their work in theatres, especially since their New York debuts occurred on exactly the same day in 1896.


 * Menchen was talent-spotted by Robert Grau in Kansas City, where (coincidentally, probs.) Alice Nielsen sang in The Mikado with Jules Grau's theatre company. Jules Grau was Robert's first cousin.
 * Menchen had moved to NY City in 1897 after being talent-spotted by Robert Grau (hmm, or possibly some other grauen Stunden?), and was doing Loie Fuller-type dances with "Mlle Winifred" and his Stereopticon.
 * Crager (with Frances Drake) and Menchen (with the Kineopticon) had their New York debuts on the same day, both were connected with Robert Grau.
 * Like George Crager, Robert Grau managed both Loie Fuller and Alice Nielsen.
 * Unconfirmed reports say that Crager was representative for Iles' Scenic Railway (leased from LaMarcus Adna Thompson) in 1906.
 * Crager claimed (in the FBI files)to have been connected with Frank C. Bostock off and on for about ten years. Bostock (who died in October 1912) was a partner in European Amusement Parks Ltd, with J. Henry Iles, H. F. McGarvie and Joe Menchen. Menchen and Bostock were at Coney Island in 1903, so that would make around 10 years' acquaintance with Bostock, from c1903 to 1912.
 * Bostock was in the US from 1893 and at Coney Island 1894-1903, and back with the UK with EAPL from 1908-1912: thus the connection to Joe Menchen and EAP Ltd. Menchen was also at Coney Island in 1903 with his electrical effects for Thompson and Dundy's Luna Park and then (more random refs) at 'The 'Pike' at the 1904 St. Louis World's Fair with many cycloramas and his very own Johnstown Flood at (e.g.) the Lewis and Clark Centennial Exposition
 * Joe Menchen used a knight in armour mounted on a white horse in the London streets for advertising The Miracle. This snippet astonished me when I read it, because it was a most un-Menchen-like thing to do, knowing a fair amount about him. And knowing a fair amount about the not-quite-what-he-seems 'Major', it seems almost entirely certain that it was Major "General" George C. Crager in the saddle.