Died with Custer The Story of John Stuart Forbes
For many OMs, there is great joy in thumbing through the pages of the Marlborough College Register. Francis Chamberlain (C2 1973-77) is one of those. Upon a chance seeing of the date of John Stuart Forbes’ (PR 1862-64) death, Francis investigated further and discovered that this OM died on the battlefield of Little Bighorn alongside the famous Colonel Custer.
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or every Old Marlburian who became a general, a writer or a politician, there are hundreds who lie in obscurity. Opening at random the Marlborough College Register, one is suitably impressed that Henry William Pullen (1845-48), admitted to Marlborough in February of 1845, was chaplain to HMS Alert on its 1875 Arctic expedition and subsequently wrote a book called The Fight at Dame Europa’s School. But what became of James Greenwood Deacon (1843-48), of whom it is simply recorded that he was born in October of 1833, admitted in August of 1843 and left in December of 1848? One evening, however, I came across the following: ‘Forbes, John Stuart (Preshute) s of C.H. Forbes, Cheltenham. b 28 May 1849,
l March 1864. Clifton Coll. US Cavalry. Killed in action, 25 June 1876.’ The date seemed vaguely familiar. Swift research disclosed that an Old Marlburian had been killed at the Battle of Little Bighorn. Further internet enquiries led to Peter G Russell, of the English Westerners’ Society, whose fascinating 2016 booklet on Forbes, English by Birth, Scottish by Blood, written with Leslie Hodgson, is the basis for this article. John Forbes’ father was Charles Hay Forbes, the third son of Sir William Forbes of Pitsligo, 7th Baronet. John’s mother Jemima was the daughter of the 25th Chief of the Clan MacDonell, Alexander Ranaldson MacDonell, allegedly the model
for Sir Walter Scott’s Waverley hero, Fergus MacIvor; her uncle, Lt Col James MacDonell of the Coldstream Guards, was the hero of Hougoumont at Waterloo. In 1846, the family and its various children moved to Rugby, where John was born in 1849. The family returned to Scotland, where John’s father died when he was aged 10. It is evident from his will that John’s father had had to bail out two of John’s brothers’ considerable gambling debts. Thereafter, John and his family moved to Cheltenham, where in 1860 he was enrolled in Cheltenham College, but he left after only a year and, in August of 1862, he entered Marlborough College and was placed in Preshute. He lasted only a short time at Marlborough, leaving – for reasons The Marlburian Club Magazine
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