His critics often called Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer an impetuous man, a trait he exhibited as a youngster growing up 63 miles west of Pittsburgh.
Custer rode into history in Montana, at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but his roots are in the tiny, Eastern Ohio community of New Rumley, which hasn't changed much since the day he was born, Dec. 5, 1839.
"New Rumley is little more than a name -- a hamlet set on a hill -- a single street with a single store and a few scattered dwellings," Ohio historian Henry Howe wrote in his book, "The Historical Collections of Ohio, Vol. 1," which was published in 1888.
"You don't get to New Rumley by accident," admits Custer's oldest living relative, Brice Calhoun Custer, 79, of Georgetown, Texas. "It's not on the beaten path."
Dr. George Lyle, a country doctor educated in Cincinnati, was a schoolmate of young Custer in the town 27 miles west of Steubenville.
"One evening, at some lecture where the audience were on the ground floor, a ragamuffin of a boy unable to get in flatted his nose against the window pane and made wry faces at George (Custer), whereupon the latter drove his fist through the glass into his face," Lyle told Howe.
"The next day, three boys accosted (Custer), saying they were going to thrash him. He replied by drawing a pocketknife, saying, 'I will fight all three of you at a time, but if you come all at once, you shall have this,' at the same time opening the blade. The boys pursued the topic no further," Lyle told Howe.
Brice Custer, a retired Air Force major who believes his first visit to New Rumley was in 1999, isn't sure "impetuous" is the word he would use to describe George Custer.
"There is a fine line between bold and daring and rash and reckless. I believe he was bold and daring. I honestly believe he was an extremely competent battlefield commander," said Brice Custer whose great-grandfather, Nevin Custer, was a younger brother of George Custer.
The Custer Memorial Association had its annual birthday celebration for Custer this weekend. There also are Custer days in early June.
A statue of Custer is along Route 646, where the family's home was. There also is a small roadside park and picnic area at the site, which is open every day, free of charge.
New Rumley was founded by Jacob Custer, a great-uncle of George Custer's father.
"George Armstrong Custer was the offspring of a union between a widower and a widow, both of whom brought children into the marriage. Family and friends called him 'Armstrong,' or 'Autie,' his own childish rendition of 'Armstrong,'" wrote historian Robert M. Utley in the biography "Cavalier in Buckskins."
Custer's father, Emanuel Custer, a blacksmith, was born in Maryland in 1806 and moved his family to Ohio about 16 years later, said John Hurless, an amateur historian and writer from New Philadelphia, Ohio, who writes under the nom de plume "Tippecanoe Jack."
His mother, Maria Ward, was born in 1807 in Southwestern Pennsylvania, although there is some discrepancy whether her home was in Burgettstown or nearby Smith Township.
It is not clear when Maria Ward's family moved to New Rumley, but by 1820, her father, James G. Ward, owned a tavern in a log cabin in the middle of town along the main stage route between Steubenville and New Philadelphia, Hurless said. Maria Ward's first husband, Israel Kirkpatrick, later acquired the tavern.
Emanuel Custer and his first wife, Matilda Viers, had three children; Maria Ward Kirkpatrick and her husband had two, Hurless said. Viers died in 1834, and Israel Kirkpatrick died in 1835, possibly from a flu epidemic that swept through the region, Hurless said.
The widow and widower married in 1836. Their first two children, James and Samuel, died in infancy.
George Armstrong Custer, who was named after a minister in town, was born in the log cabin.
"It was a cold, blustery, snowy night. Jane Lyle, who lived across the street, was the midwife. Mrs. Custer was in bad health and a minister was called in to pray. His name was George Armstrong, and that's who the general was named after," said Leroy Van Horne, recording secretary of the Custer Memorial Association.
Other children soon followed: Nevin Johnson Custer was born in 1842; Thomas Ward Custer in 1845; Boston Custer in 1848; and Margaret Emma Custer in 1852.
The townsfolk, mostly farmers, organized a military company known as the "cornstalk militia," John Giles, of Scio, Ohio, told Howe.
"(Young Custer) followed us about all day. From that moment his passion to become a soldier originated," Giles said.
"Even when he was a little kid, George used to go down and drill with the Rumley Invincible with a little wooden gun they made him. They thought he was a pretty good mascot I guess," Nevin Custer recalled in a story published in June 1910 in a Topeka newspaper that is part of The George Armstrong Custer Collection of the Monroe County Library System in Monroe, Mich.
According to Utley: "A high-spirited, rough-and-tumble family shaped young Autie's nature. A man of firm convictions firmly expressed, Emanuel Custer espoused a militant brand of Jacksonian Democratic politics and a militant brand of frontier Methodism.
"Though Nevin was sickly, Autie and his other brothers grew up brimming with boyish exuberance. Full of energy, good humor and laughter, they engaged in strenuous athletics and even more strenuous horseplay. They inflicted the most ingenious and harrowing pranks on one another and on their father, who gave as good as he took," Utley wrote.
In 1850, Emanuel Custer bought a farm about three miles northwest of New Rumley.
In the 1910 story, Nevin Custer remembered going to class in a one-room schoolhouse with pine slabs for seats and the teacher he identified only as "old Foster layin' for us up in front with the birch."
"I got it for whispering about a spelling lesson; and Tom, he was always getting licked. Tom chewed tobacco, same as most of the boys did, but of course 'twasn't allowed in school. However, Tom couldn't let it alone, so he bored a hole in the school floor with an auger to give him a place to spit. He tried to keep it covered with his foot but of course after while Foster found it and Tom got licked."
"But George never got licked, somehow. It was always some of the rest of us. Maybe that was because George kept his geography on top of his paper-backed novels. He used to read 'em all the time in school but Foster never caught him for he was bright as a dollar and never missed a recitation," Nevin remembered.
Nevin Custer said Emanuel Custer was strict.
"He made us ride to church a-horseback every Sunday morning and mother and Margaret came in the cart, and we had to sit there and never so much as smile.
"He worked the farm just the same way. Everybody had his work cut out an' he had to do it without whimpering and do it promptly; sort of religious duty, yuh know, only George hated to get his clothes smelly; and he and I made a dicker so that I did all the work at the barns, while he split wood and carried it in," Nevin Custer said.
George Armstrong Custer was a man of many contradictions.
Utley and other Custer biographers say he wasn't a good student, but Nevin Custer said his brother was "always studying."
"I can remember about the days on the farm and how 'fraid George was of the girls and bashful. Why, he'd blush as red as a tablecloth whenever a girl came his way. An yah know he didn't like water much either. We used to go swimmin' and boatin' and all that, but George never would. He always wanted to stay home and read," Nevin Custer said.
Utley sees it differently.
"With comrades of like vigor he loved to ride horseback, lead his hounds in hunts for coons and foxes and get into 'most of the tricks carried out in the slow, old town,'" Utley wrote.
"Armstrong did not allow his country romps to interfere with his amorous interests ... He pursued the opposite sex with an avidity more open than approved by convention. Boldness seemed to bring its reward, however, and the belles of Monroe and Cadiz alike responded with fervor to the handsome, laughing boy with the tawny curls and muscular frame," Utley wrote.
When he was 12 years old, George Custer moved to Monroe, Mich., to live with his half-sister on his mother's side, Lydia Reed, and her husband so that he could attend a boys academy.
He returned home each summer to work on the farm and stayed in New Rumley in 1855 to continue his education at McNeely Normal School in Hopedale, Ohio, near Cadiz.
The next spring, he qualified to teach grammar school in preparation for a possible appointment to West Point.
George Custer entered West Point in July 1857 and graduated 34th in a class of 34 in 1861, just before the Civil War.
He was fearless in battle and quickly rose through the ranks. He was appointed brigadier general in 1863, gaining the nickname "The Boy General." Like most of those promoted during the war, he reverted in rank when the conflict ended.
Tom Custer, who enlisted when the war broke out and rode with his brother in combat, was just as brave. He won the Medal of Honor in the battle of Namozine Church on April 3, 1865, and a second Medal of Honor three days later at Sayler's Creek.
In 1860, Emanuel Custer moved his family to the Toledo area, where he worked a farm with Nevin. Custer's parents later moved to Monroe, followed some years later by Nevin.
The names of most Civil War heroes have been forgotten, but Custer gained immortality on June 25, 1876, when he and five companies of the 7th Calvary died in a pitched battle against Sioux and Cheyenne warriors, a fight whites called "Custer's Last Stand." He was 36.
Tom and Boston died with their brother on that lonely Montana hillside, as did Lydia Reed's son, Harry Armstrong Reed, also known as "Autie." Margaret's husband, Lt. James Calhoun, died elsewhere on the ridge.
Tom Custer, 31, who idolized his older brother, was a captain in the unit; Boston, 28, was a civilian employee, and Reed, barely 18, was vacationing with his uncles.
Nevin was the only one of the five siblings to raise a family, although Utley says there is evidence that George Custer fathered a child to a young Cheyenne woman captured in battle.
Some historians also believe that Tom Custer, a ladies' man who never married, was the father of Thomas C. Custer, the illegitimate son of an Ohio neighbor of Nevin.
Maria Custer never recovered from losing her three sons and died six years after the battle. Her husband died in 1892; Margaret Custer Calhoun died in 1910, and Nevin Custer died in 1915.
The Ohio General Assembly appropriated $15,000 during the 1929-30 session to acquire the site of Custer's birthplace and a statue of him was dedicated on June 22, 1932, Hurless said.
Custer's widow, Elizabeth, was too frail to attend but spoke by telephone from her New York apartment, a call that those at the dedication heard over the loudspeaker, Hurless said.
Mrs. Custer was not too happy with the statue, Hurless said, saying it made her husband look "too foppish."
A picture pavilion was erected by the Ohio State Historical Society in 1972 in the outline of the old house's foundation, a display Brice Custer hated because he thought there were too many inaccuracies in the narrative.
"It was not fair and balanced. It said history has portrayed the general in a variety of ways and included the descriptions 'lunatic general,' 'cruel,' 'killer of Indian women and children' and 'despised leader,' " said Custer, who wrote his own biography of George Custer titled "The Sacrificial Lion."
The Korean War veteran displayed the family feistiness by waging a spirited campaign to set the record straight and was the honored guest on June 4, 2005, when a revised picture pavilion, with text written by Utley, was dedicated in New Rumley.
