Lilla Bogert Letters, 1876-1877

Lilla Bogert was born on January 6, 1848, in Brooklyn, New York. Her family moved west to Bozeman in the mid-1870s and quickly became a leading family in the new town. Her father, John V. Bogert, became the first mayor of Bozeman in 1883. Along with her two sisters Augusta and Kate, Lilla became a socialite in the community and nearby Fort Ellis. Her sister Kate married Lieutenant Charles Roe from Fort Ellis and Augusta married Arthur Place. Lilla never married. She devoted much of her adult life to making Sunset Hills Cemetery the most beautiful one in the state. She held a charity bazaar with her sister Kate to raise money for the cemetery, planted trees and flowers on the grounds, and served as a member of the cemetery board. An accomplished western artist, Lilla is known for her paintings of Montana topics. She also published a poem in the compilation of poems . The last years of her life Lilla was a patient at Bozeman Deaconess Hospital where she died on September 3, 1951, at the age of 103.

Second Lieutenant Charles Brewster Schofield wrote to Lilla in the months surrounding the Battle of the Little Big Horn. He was born on June 26, 1849, in Illinois and graduated from West Point in 1870. His first field assignment was field duty at Fort Ellis where he was a Second Lieutenant. He fought in the United States Military's campaigns against the Sioux and the Nez Perce from 1872 to 1876, including the Sioux Expedition of 1876. The following year he fought in the Nez Perce War. From 1878 to 1885, he was the Aide-de-camp to his brother, Major General John Schofield. He was promoted to First Lieutenant in 1879. In 1885, he returned to frontier duty at Fort Walla Walla in Washington. In 1895, he was once again promoted, becoming a Lieutenant Colonel. He served in the Spanish-American War in 1898 and the following year was shipped to Cuba. Schofield died on February 1, 1901, of heart disease at the age of 51 in Matanzas, Cuba.