Buffalo Bill
When I was growing up, I knew only a couple of things about my family history. One was that my mother’s ancestors, the Workman family, settled in New Amsterdam in the 1640s. The other was that I was somehow related to Buffalo Bill. I have been able to pin this down a little; to be precise, William F. Cody (1846-1917) was my 4th cousin 4x removed. I’m going to call him “Bill” throughout this essay.
I had other ancestors who should have been remembered by my family but were not.
On my father’s side, my paternal 2nd great-grandfather Miles Arnold (1821-1899) fought for the Ohio 76th Infantry in the Civil War, was wounded at the Battle of Atlanta and left for dead on the battlefield. He was found alive the following day when both sides went out to collect their dead, and he lived until 1899. My grandfather knew him but I never heard of him.
On my mother’s side, my paternal 2nd great-grandfather Oliver Kyle (1829-1863) fought for the 28th Illinois Infantry in the Civil War, was captured after the 1862 Battle of Shiloh, paroled when he contracted malaria in a prison camp in Montgomery, Alabama, rejoined his unit for the 1863 Siege of Vicksburg, and died of malaria in the hospital in Natchez, Mississippi, a few months after the siege ended.
I never heard of either of these men until I started doing genealogy research 10 years ago. Both of these men lived in the middle of the 19th century, just like Bill. Miles Arnold was 23 when Bill was born, and Oliver Kyle was 15. Bill’s generational peer in my family tree – my 2nd great-grandmother Lydia Deuel (1845-1881) – was born just one year after Bill.
Let me tell you a little about Bill (this is taken from what I wrote in my self-published 2016 book The Ellefritz Family in America). I am related to Bill through my paternal grandmother, Orpha Lydia Ellefritz Arnold.
Bill’s 3rd great-grandparents (Philippe Lescaude and Martha Le Broque) were my 7th great-grandparents. They were born on the Channel Islands between France and England. Philippe was born on the Isle of Jersey and Martha was born on the Isle of Guernsey; they married on the Isle of Jersey in 1695 and emigrated to Beverley, Massachusetts in 1698. They were part of a late surge of migration to Massachusetts. Some sources suggest that they were Huguenots but I haven’t been able to verify that.
Bill and I are descended from two sons of Philippe and Martha. My 6th great-grandfather was their son Isaac (1703-1737), and Bill’s 2nd great-grandfather was Isaac’s older brother Joseph (1700-1756). Sounds a little biblical. Anyway, both sons, along with three other children, lived out their days in Massachusetts. Same with the next generation, as Joseph and his wife Mary (again with the biblical names) had several children, including Bill’s great-grandfather, Philip, Sr., while Isaac and his wife Hannah had two sons, including another Joseph, my 5th great-grandfather. Hang on.
The next generation gets a little hinkier. Bill’s great-grandfather, Philip Sr., had 11 children, more or less, including Bill’s grandfather, Philip Jr., who was born in Massachusetts in 1770 but died in Ohio. Meanwhile, my 5th great-grandfather Joseph and his wife Mary (really? again?) had five children, including my ancestor, Daniel, who was born in 1777 in Massachusetts but died in Ohio. The records are a little confusing – there are lots of Josephs, Philips, and Isaacs, along with a fair number of Lydias and Marys.
Daniel’s life was pretty straightforward. He lived in Massachusetts until he married Hannah Manley, in Syracuse, New York, in 1798. (Daniel and Hannah were my 4th great-grandparents.) He and Hannah had 13 children, including two sets of twins who all lived to adulthood, and lived most of the rest of their lives in western New York, moving only late in life to Ohio.
The story of Philip Jr. (on Bill’s line, second cousin of the Daniel I wrote about above) looks similar at first. Born in Massachusetts, died in Ohio. But when you look closer, you see an unusual pattern. Born in Massachusetts, married in … Canada? Several children born in … Canada? (including Bill’s father, Isaac, in 1811). How is it that the showman of the iconic American West comes from a family with Canadian roots?
I began to research this question and immediately found myself in muddy waters. Why would people move from the United States to Canada between the American Revolution and the War of 1812?
After a little bit of thought and research, I thought I had the answer – maybe the Cody family was made up of Loyalists, many of whom left the United States because their cause had been unsuccessful during the Revolution and because they saw no future in the United States of the 1790s. This was borne out, I thought, by information that I was able to dig up about the founding of what would ultimately become Toronto by Loyalists from Massachusetts. But I knew that my 5th great-grandfather Joseph Cody fought for Massachusetts in the American Revolution, so I wasn’t sure about this.
I soon discovered information that suggested another possible explanation that fit better with the later evolution of the Cody family later. This explanation had to do with the family’s anti-slavery sentiments. Philip Cody, Bill’s grandfather who moved to Canada, had married a Quaker woman, Lydia Martin, whose views likely reflected and had an influence on Philip’s views, although there is no evidence that Bill was raised as a Quaker.
I was able to find out some interesting things about Philip’s life in Canada. According to an article published in the April 2011 International Cody Family’s Genealogical and Historical Review, in 1803 he had received a 200-acre land grant in the County of York, Ontario, Canada. Philip Cody was Toronto township’s second settler, in 1806. (Another record shows that he was the first settler in Toronto in 1796, and the first Justice of the Peace.) In 1806 he purchased 200 acres of land on the condition that he clear five acres, build a 16x20 foot log cabin, clear the roadway in front of his homestead, and show proof that he had done this.
By 1807, he had built an Inn on his property and was making a comfortable living. In 1810, he donated an acre of land for the building of the Union Chapel, which became the first Union Church in Upper Canada and the first community hall. Isaac Cody, Bill’s father, was baptized in this church in 1811, and Bill was brought back to this church to be baptized in 1847.
Back to my part of this story. After Bill’s family’s story, mine looks a little mundane. One of Daniel’s children was my 3rd great-grandmother Melinda Cody (1803-1888), who married Joseph Putney Deuel in 1821 in Syracuse, NY.
Now back to Bill’s story. Bill’s line had only one generation to go until you got to Bill. Bill’s father Isaac, now firmly back in the United States, married his first wife, Martha Miranda O’Connor, in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1832. She lived for only a few years after their marriage, and he married again in 1844. His second wife, Mary Ann Bosnell Laycock, had their first child, William Frederick Cody (aka Bill), in Iowa in 1846. By the time Bill was 10 years old, the family was on the move again, from Iowa to Kansas Territory, where two of his siblings were born and where his mother died when he was 18 years old.
This is the point at which the Cody family’s anti-slavery sentiments become clear. The mid-1850s featured a period of violence between pro- and anti-slavery forces in Kansas, a time called “Bleeding Kansas.” The Cody family was caught up in this violence to the point that Bill’s father Isaac was wounded by pro-slavery “ruffians” who objected to his anti-slavery views. This led the family to leave Kansas during Bill’s childhood. In 1867, Cody hunted buffalo for the Kansas Pacific Railroad work crews, earning his moniker “Buffalo Bill” and his reputation as an expert shot.
The next year, he was employed by the U.S. Army as a civilian scout and guide for the Fifth Cavalry. His experience and skills as a plainsman made him an invaluable tracker and fighter. On April 26, 1872, Cody became one of only four civilian scouts to be awarded the U.S. Congressional Medal of Honor during the Indian Wars for valor in action. (He was later declared ineligible for the medal and stricken from the roll in 1917, but his name was reinstated in 1989 by the Army Board for Correction of Military Records.) During his life Bill moved on to Nebraska and to Wyoming, where he became an army scout, buffalo hunter, pony express rider, land speculator, water entrepreneur, and, most famously, a showman.
So what can we make of all this? First, Bill was famous in the years following the American Civil War (1861-1865). I’m sure that my family (Bill’s cousins) had heard his name and attached it to his Wild West Show. Bill had been born in Scott County, Iowa, about 100 miles up the Mississippi River from Hancock County, Illinois, where my father’s family lived. Lydia Deuel’s mother was Melinda Cody; the family must have been aware of the familial connection.
The International Cody Family Association, also known as the Cody Family Association, was first organized in 1925 in Chicago, Illinois. Their headquarters is in Kissimmee, Florida. Some of my family members have been active in the Cody Family Association; my cousin Dorothy was editor of the Association’s newsletter, the Cody Review, for years before her death in 2016. Here’s how the International Cody Family Association acknowledged the work that Dorothy and her husband Bill did for the Association: “Dorothy and Bill have been Active Members for years, working on the 2010 ICFA Reunion in Tucson, serving on the Executive Board, and editing the Cody Review.”
In 2014, I attended the Cody Family Reunion in Jamestown, NY. It happened to be scheduled at the same time that I was already planning to be at Chautauqua, NY, for a week. So I drove on over and caught up with distant family. I missed the festivities – the parade, the dinner, and the concert – but it was fun to connect with this part of my family.
This association publishes a lot of information about the Cody family, including a number of directories and membership lists, including a two-volume set updated in 2013.
I have visited the Buffalo Bill Center of the West, in Cody, Wyoming. The clerk in the gift shop got very excited when I showed her my family’s entry in the book – although she didn’t give me the book for free even when I asked. We ate dinner at the Irma Hotel while we were in Cody. This hotel and restaurant was built by Bill in 1902 and named for his daughter Irma.
My last name is cody and my dad has always told me that i’m related to Buffalo Bill but i’ve never had a good way to prove it, I could use your help