ABSTRACT
William H. Larrabee would have been killed at Custer's Last Stand on Little Big Horn if he had not been in jail for desertion at the time. As his wife's first letter states, he traded a two-year prison sentence for ten years of life on the prairie. William and Mary Larrabee were the first white settlers in Foster County, Dakota Territory. They farmed and maintained a relay station. In her letters to an unidentified “Patty,” sometimes called “Patience,” Mary mentions the isolation of her life only in passing as she describes the beauty and plenty of her new surroundings. Her letters furnish a condensed history of progress in the Dakota Territory.
