Adobe Officers' Quarters

The Mrs. James Biddle on this plaque was Ellen McGowan Biddle, born in 1847 and married in 1864, at seventeen, to a Union officer from a Philadelphia family fifteen years her senior. She bore six children between 1866 and 1885 and lost two in childhood, following him from one frontier post to the next. By 1894 he commanded this one, where she lived contentedly. He retired in 1896 and died in 1910. In 1907 Lippincott published her Reminiscences of a Soldier's Wife, written for her grandchildren. She died in 1922.

What the plaque says

Adobe Officers' Quarters These duplex officers' quarters, of adobe brick construction, were completed in 1887 when Fort Robinson became a cavalry regi- mental headquarters. This structure has been restored by the Nebraska State Historical Society, and furnishings represent those of a typical Fort Robinson officer's home. A Post Commander's wife, Mrs. James Biddle, wrote that the quarters were provided with running water, the first she had seen during her Army life; and the social life was com- parable to any large city such as Boston or Washington. Nebraska State Historical Society

Where it stands

Worth the stop nearby

• Fort Robinson State Park — steps away
  The army post beside the Red Cloud Agency where Crazy Horse was bayoneted in 1877 and Morning Star's Northern Cheyenne broke out into the January cold of 1879.
• Toadstool Geologic Park — 14 mi
  A pocket of badlands in the Oglala National Grassland where sandstone caps balance on clay stems, ancient tracks cross the rock, and a trail leads on to a 10,000-year-old bison bone bed.
• Agate Fossil Beds National Monument — 22 mi
  A fossil quarry on the Niobrara that also keeps the gifts Red Cloud and other Lakota and Cheyenne visitors gave the ranching family who were their friends for thirty-five years.

More markers nearby

• Post Headquarters, 1905 — steps away
• Flagstaff, 1890 — steps away
• 1887 Barracks Row — steps away
• 1909 Brick Barracks — steps away