My Army Life: A Soldier's Wife at Fort Phil Kearny: With an Account of the Celebration of "Wyoming Opened" (The Pruett Series)

No army post on the nineteenth-century Trans-Mississippi frontier has been the focus of as much attention as Fort Phil Kearny Wyoming. Built in 1866 as one of three outposts along the Bozeman Trail Fort Phil Kearnys brief two-year existence was marred by tragedy and controversy arising from two of the most famous and debated Indian fights in western the Fetterman disaster and the Wagon Box Fight. The short-lived fort is also noteworthy for the wealth of lore left by its residents concerning life at an army post. One of those to write of her experience was a young woman Frances Grummond Carrington whose first husband Lieutenant George W. Grummond lost his life in the Fetterman fight. Four years later Frances married Colonel Henry B. Carrington Fort Phil Kearnys founder and commanding officer whose first wife Margaret had died in 1870. She too had written about life at Fort Kearny. In My Army Life (originally published as Army Life On The Plains) Frances Grummond Carrington shares with us the experience of traveling north along the Bozeman Trail; the building of Fort Phil Kearny and what life was like for a young bride at this remote military station in the West. The last third of the book describes the Carringtons life after leaving Fort Phil how Frances and Henry renewed their acquaintance with one another following Margarets death; their subsequent marriage and their return to the Sheridan Wyoming area to help dedicate a Fetterman memorial.