Agent Spencer continues Dick Miller, a descendent of Spencerport's founding family, won't rest until he has unearthed all there is to be discovered about his deceased great-great uncle Libbeus Foster Spencer. Spencer is the son of Spencerport's founding father, Daniel Spencer. "I've spent the past 22 months working fulltime on researching my great great uncle," Miller, who was in Spencerport for a visit recently, said. "I've been to Washington, D.C. in the bowels of the National Archives, the Smithsonian and researched the data of the South Dakota Historical Society." Miller, who retired as a marketing consultant and decided to pursue his genealogy full time, had no experience in that type of research, he said. His introduction to his relative came about 40 years ago when he happened on some photos of Spencer that were in a collection his grandfather had. Miller assumed they must have been passed down by his great-grandmother who moved into Spencer's Spencerport home at 127 West Avenue. Spencer was born in 1833 in Spencerport and died there in 1904. He is buried in Fairfield Cemetery on Union Street in the village. A resident of Massachusetts, Miller has not let the distance from Spencerport deter him from continuing to find answers to the life and times of his great-great uncle and his family. From what Miller has pieced together thus far, L. F. Spencer was appointed in 1885 by President Grover Cleveland to be an Indian agent on the Sioux Rosebud Reservation in Dakota Territory. "To get there, Spencer and his family had to travel by stagecoach, train and then a steamboat up the Mississippi River, from there they would have spent two days on horse back with an Indian Guide to reach their destination," Miller said. "There was a lot of contrast to the Spencers' new lifestyle compared to how it was in Spencerport, but in a lot of ways this desolate place - the reservation - had more amenities than Spencerport did at that time." Utilities like running water and telephones were already in place in Rosebud in 1889, Miller said. Agent Spencer served at Rosebud during a time when the other Sioux reservations were gaining notoriety from Indian attacks, full-scale wars, problems with Sitting Bull and religious events that led up to the massacre at Wounded Knee in 1890. In his quest for materials on his descendents, Miller is looking for newspaper copies of the Spencerport Star published in the late 1880s. "I'm hoping that people will go through their grandfather's attics and see if they can find copies of the newspaper," Miller said. Once his research is wrapped up, an event that is unlikely to happen, Miller said, he plans to publish four books related to his work. He is working on a book entitled "Searching for Agent Spencer - A Tale and a Guide for Do-It-Yourself Researchers;" "The Rosebud Delegation - An Indian Agent's Album;" "The Rosebud Agency - An Indian Agent's Journey" and "The Rosebud Hotel - The Indian Agent's Daughter." Miller said that Spencer's daughter, Hattie, also has a tale that should be told. Anyone with information regarding the life of L.F. Spencer or copies of the Spencerport Star can contact Ogden Historian Carol Coburn and Ogden's Farmers' Library Director Patty Uttaro, either of whom will share information with Miller. |
