Mortimer H. Christian as a cadet at VMI
On Wednesday, November 8, 1944, official executioner Major Mortimer H. Christian hanged U.S. Army Tech 5 Willie Wimberly Jr. and Private Joseph Watson at the Seine Disciplinary Training Center at Paris, France for the crime of rape. (The Fifth Field: The Story of the 96 American Soldiers Sentenced to Death and Executed in Europe and North Africa in World War II)
**********
Benjamin R. Dexter was a member of the 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition. A sleigh ran over Ben Dexter on January 22, 1875 at Fort Benton, but he survived the incident. Dexter went with Major Fellows D. Pease and helped establish Fort Pease in June 1875. Ben Dexter fought Lakota warriors near Fort Pease on January 2, 1876; on January 22, he led seventeen frontiersmen out of Fort Pease and returned to Bozeman, Montana on February 8, interested in moving on to richer mining areas in the Black Hills. By 1880, Benjamin Dexter lived in East Gallatin Valley. He then operated a sawmill in Maiden, before operating a store at the Andersonville mining camp. In 1900, Dexter lived next to the Buchanan brothers in Deerfield, Fergus County, Montana and listed his occupation as millwright. He was at this time divorced. In about 1895, a crazed man named Duncan slashed the throat of Ben Dexter so badly that the miner almost died. However, once again Dexter proved too tough to kill and he resumed his mining efforts. Benjamin R. Dexter finally died while walking on the trail near his last gold prospecting site near Maiden, Montana on November 8, 1907. (Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse, Gold and Guns: The 1874 Yellowstone Wagon Road and Prospecting Expedition)