Page 38 - Cornelius Hedges Story

25 The Cornelius Hedges Story

The permission for publication was addressed to W. Chumasero,
C. Hedges and other members of the Helena Bar,68 indicating that
Hedges was quite instrumental in making the request and certainly
that Hedges was opposed to that 1866 session of the so-called
Legislature.

In the fall of 1866, Hedges made his first trip home from
Montana. This was not the return of the vanquished but rather a trip
to escort his family back to his adopted home in Montana. By early
November, he reached his old home town of Independence, Iowa.
The Independence Conservative remarked: “Mr. Hedges looks very
rugged, and we are impressed with the idea that he has succeeded in
accumulating a good amount of ‘this world’s.”69

By mid-month he had left Independence for the east and soon was
reunited with his family, Edna, Willie, and Henry, in Southington,
Connecticut. The winter was spent visiting relatives and friends
both at Southington and at Westfield, Massachusetts.70 Again Will’s
boyhood recollections of his father’s return were quite vivid:

“It is needless to say that Ulysses returning from his wanderings
was no more a hero, than was father to my young imagination. The
gold nuggets be actually produced from a buckskin bag, assured
me that he in very truth had found and “cached” the “golden fleece”
somewhere among these mountains. The genuine Indian bow &
arrows, the former covered with the skin of a bad rattlesnake, and
the latter from a full buffalo skin “quiver and which I had shown
to every boy in town before noon of the next day after receipt,
convinced me of his physical prowess and I felt sure that it could
be no uncommon thing for such an adventurous one to kill a few
bear and buffalo for breakfast most any day; and that without doubt
a few Indian scalps were laid away in the bottom of his “grip” to be
exhibited to the “natives” a little later on.”71

In March, 1867, the Hedges family moved west accompanied by
Mrs. Timothy Wilcox and her daughter Clara, and by April 4, they
were in Independence, Iowa. On April 6, they learned the river was
open and relatively free of ice. Thus the Hedges, the Wilcox’s, and
now Mrs. Henry H. Clark and her two children, James and Jenny,
left Independence by train for Council Bluffs on April 8. They
arrived in Council Bluffs on the following day, traveling via Cedar
Rapids, Boone, and Woodbine.72