View source for Herbert Thomas

Place of Birth: South Wales

Date of enlistment: 5 May 1873

Age given at enlistment: 32

Rank: Private

Company: I

Location on 25 June 1876: Fort Abraham Lincoln

Herbert Thomas had blue eyes, light hair, a fair complexion, and was 5′ 6 1/4″ tall.

He was left behind at Fort Lincoln on 17 May 1876 while still on extra duty with the Quarter Master Department.

Thomas enlisted in the 4th U.S. Infantry at Fort Omaha, Nebraska on 25 September 1884 but deserted on 25 May 1885. Was apprehended on 20 August and dishonourably discharged on 6 November 1885.

His fate is not known to this writer.

Wild Geese of the Greasy Grass [Norman] says “Thomas and the rest of the company (I) were killed in the Battle of the Little Bighorn,”  One of a countless number of factual and typographical errors that are a feature of this poorly researched and carelessly edited little volume.

A letter from Rockville, Maryland

In a letter to the late Norman Walker, Crosskeys, Newport, Gwent, dated 1 September 1986, George Kulstad, Rockville, Maryland, wrote: “Family legend has it that one of the members of my maternal great-grandmother Thomas’s family survived the Little Big Horn. However, based on the above and circumstantial ‘evidence,’ the man in question is thought to be Private Henry P. Thomas who was on detached duty at the time of the battle.

Sarah, daughter of John Stringer and Susan Howe, born 6 February 1828, emigrated to America in either 1868 or 1870, presumably with her husband, Benjamin Walter Thomas. Federal Census records of 1900 show Sarah Thomas as having had three children, one of whom was Benjamin Walter Thomas, Jr, who was born 4 November 1859.  Herbert Thomas’s given birth year of 1851 fits in with BWT, Jr’s, claim that his elder brother was a “survivor of the battle.” 

Further investigation is needed before this family oral history can be confirmed as fact!