This Date in History: July 1

Hugh Early, a member of the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition, later served as a packer in the Seventh Cavalry.  He was married in 1886 to a woman named Annie Hogan from Ireland; they had two sons (Emmet and Henry) and a daughter (Winfred).  Early attended a reunion of survivors of the expedition on August 12, 1914 in Bozeman, at which point his residence was listed as Anaconda, Montana.   Alive in 1917 in Anaconda, he ran into Walter Mason Camp and George Herendeen, while they were revisiting the route of the expedition.  During that encounter, Herendeen did not recall that Early had been on the journey in 1874.  Early was listed on the census of 1920 at Anaconda in Deer Lodge County, Montana; he died there on July 1, 1924.  (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gold and Guns: The 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition and the Battle of Lodge Grass Creek)

**********

Kurt Student, Luftwaffe Colonel General, born May 12, 1890 in Birkholz, “father” of the German airborne forces, commander of the 7th Parachute Division, commander of the 1st Parachute Army, commander of Army Group H, winner of the Knight’s Cross of the Iron Cross with Oak Leaves, died on July 1, 1978 in Lemgo, on the German airborne invasion of Crete: “I find it very difficult to write about the battle for Crete.  For me, the commander of the airborne forces, the very name Crete conjures up bitter memories.  I miscalculated when I proposed the operation, and my mistakes caused me not only the loss of very many paratroops – whom I looked upon as my sons – but in the long run led to the demise of the German airborne arm which I had created.”  (2,000 Quotes From Hitler’s 1,000-Year Reich)