Home on the Range

Home on the Range. . , Higher-ranking officers lived in the row of houses you see in front of you. Each home features four rooms: bedroom, parlor, dining room and kitchen/servant's quarters. Walk around each one and look in the windows to see the furnishings., Fashionable Ladies , After arriving at Fort McKavett, officers' wives tried to maintain their lifestyles as ladies of privilege from the East, continuing to decorate their military quarters and themselves in the Victorian style popular at the time. Officers' wives socialized only with each other, organizing field trips and outings to play games, picnic and stroll in the country., A Privileged Lifestyle , Captains got their own small homes and were allowed to bring a lot of possessions with them as they traveled with the Army. You can see this higher standard of living by looking in the windows of the home closest to you, which is furnished to show the home of a married Captain with a 1,000 pound weight limit for furniture., Let the Music Play , Music played from the fort bandstand, formerly located near where you are standing, offered officers and their wives a welcome source of entertainment. Becoming a musician was an opportunity for both black and white enlisted men to move up in pay, potentially earning 50% more per month., Captions , This 1873 officers' party features Lt. Colonel George Armstrong Custer and his wife on the piano. Only senior officers with a high weight limit could have brought such a heavy piece of furniture onto the frontier., Officers were often assigned an enlisted man as a striker" or servant. or This striker is serving tea to a group of officers' wives in a highly decorated frontier fort dining room., Due to constant movement of troops on the frontier, bands were assembled based on skill and availability, not regiment or race. This 1886 band consists of soldiers from the 21st infantry and the 9th cavalry.