OCT 24: GAC II is Born

George Armstrong Custer II is born on October 24, 1864, in New Rumley, Ohio. He is son of Custer’s younger brother, Nevin, and his wife Ann.

From the Topeka Daily Capital, May 29, 1910.

Nevin Johnson Custer.

Nevin Johnson Custer was born July 29, 1842, in New Rumley. In an article published in the Topeka (Kansas) Daily Capital prior to the June 4, 1910 dedication of a statue honoring George, Nevin, age 68, recounted experiences the two shared as boys. “…When you think of him and me a-hoein’ corn together and how pap used to put us fifty yards apart so we couldn’t loaf and talk, why it don’t seem as though he had grown up to be a general, and had died, and was being honored by the President of the United States.”

Nevin recalled how the schoolmaster, Mr. Foster, would “be layin’ for us up in the front with the birch.”

“Lawsey, how that man could whip! 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. Foster’d come along an’ pat George on the head, and then yank up the rest of us, and make us stand with our toes on one crack and out fingers touching another while he lashed us over the backs.”

Nevin died in 1915 in Monroe, Michigan. Like his father, George II became a farmer and lived in Frenchtown Township, Monroe, Michigan. He died at the age of 65 in 1929, also in Monroe.