Yosemite Associ a tio n , fa ll 2008 13

Finding George by Shelton Johnson

On May 18, 1903, at the Presidio of San Francisco, 

after three years of continuous service with 

Troop K, Ninth Cavalry, Private George 

Metcalf of Frankfort, Kentucky, was discharged from 

the U.S. Army. 

What kind of day was it that shone on Pvt. Metcalf 

on his last official hours as a soldier? Did a fog roll in, 

obscuring not only Fort Point but also the thoughts of 

a man who found himself illuminated by a final sunrise? No more bugles sounding duty. He was now free to 

decide for himself all that he would do on the following 

day. There must have been a sense of release, but also a 

little giddiness, and fear, accompanying that freedom. 

There were probably no parades in his honor, no confetti was flung from the rooftops, throngs of admirers did 

not speak his name, for he was just another soldier, his 

duty done, about to move on in life to a new adventure. 

History would soon forget him, and he would become 

just another name on a government ledger.

On the muster rolls written for his troop, the following 

notation was made:

Discharged at Presidio of S. F. Cal., May 18, 1903 per 

expiration of term of service. Discharge and Final 

Statements given. Due soldier for clothing not drawn in 

kind Three dollars and Sixteen cents ($3.16) For deposits 

Ninety Dollars ($90.00). Character “Excellent”.

Those few words do little to encompass the range 

of feelings that must have been like heavy seas rolling 

through George Metcalf on that day. How would you 

have felt after three years in the Ninth Cavalry? For those 

years your life would have been under the control of 

superiors. They would have determined when you awakened in the morning, where you slept at night, what you 

did during the day and how you might die tomorrow. 

You were in the Army. You were a soldier. You followed 

orders. God was a first sergeant who didn’t particularly 

like you. Heaven was a place you went to when you could 

manage to sleep. Your family was Troop K. These men 

were your brothers. You would die for them, and they 

would die for you. This was not out of love, but out of 

necessity. It was the nature of survival.

Now after three years of taking orders, in a moment as 

thin as the paper you signed, you were on your own, no 

longer part of that unit, that family. You were abruptly an 

ex-soldier, you were alone with only a few choices. 

Which did you make, George Metcalf? Did you imagine yourself working a ranch in Montana, riding horses, 

or mules, when you wanted to? Were you hoping to get 

back home, back to Frankfort, Kentucky? Was there 

someone there waiting for you? What was her name? Or 

did you just want to be home, to not move elsewhere, but 

be there fully again? 

Were these the thoughts that swept through you on 

May 18, 1903? There was no way you could ever imagine 

that just about the only thing that would remain of you 

on that day would be a brief list of final dispensation. 

“Character, Excellent.”

Certainly there is more written somewhere in the universe about Pvt. Metcalf, but until the summer of 2001, 

it was about all that I knew of him. He was simply one of 

hundreds of buffalo soldiers who served in Yosemite and 

Sequoia National Parks in 1899, 1903 and 1904. For each 

of these men perhaps a similar day would dawn, or perhaps they would die, still a soldier, somewhere alone or 

with a comrade close by. 

Whatever their final moments may have been, and 

wherever they breathed their last, they all passed away 

slowly into this forgotten story. However scattered they 

may be now, this history binds them together in death 

as surely as that hard military discipline bound them 

together in life.

People whose history has been forgotten suffer a different kind of death. Not only are they physically absent, 

their legacy is also elsewhere. In another essay I referred 

to this place as the “one hundred year hole.” The hole is 

that void where lives collect in documents and reports. 

Nothing organic remains; no bones, no tissue; you’re just 

a shadow cast onto faded correspondence stored in boxes 

and vaults. A hole by any other name.

Most of these soldiers are in that hole. Their destiny 

was to fall, or be lowered, without much ceremony into 

that hole. It’s dark in that hole, and crowded, so dark that 

there’s not even a memory of light. 

Down there in all of that is, or rather was, George 

Metcalf. He probably would have remained there forever, 

at least for me, had it not been for Larry Montgomery, a 

seasonal ranger here in Yosemite Valley. 

Last year, as I was sitting in my office going over Ninth 

Cavalry muster rolls, which are lists of soldiers in particular troops and commentary about their status, Larry 

happened to stop by. Larry’s from Kentucky. You can hear 

Kentucky when he speaks. It’s not just in his words; it’s 

how they’re packaged, his sentences move in a way that’s 

Kentucky. George Metcalf was from Frankfort, Kentucky, 

so I wondered if his speech sang in a similar way: “Hey, 
14 Yosemite Associ a tio n , fa ll 2008

Larry.” I said. “There’s a soldier here from Kentucky. Why 

don’t you take a look?”

I handed over the muster rolls and Larry read what 

was written and exclaimed, “George Metcalf! The 

Metcalfs? I know the Metcalfs from Frankfort. They’ve 

lived there for over 100 years!”

I thought he was joking. He wasn’t.

All of last summer I walked around Yosemite Valley 

presenting my living history program, aware that I had 

found the relatives of one of Yosemite’s buffalo soldiers, 

or perhaps closer to the truth, one of those relatives, 

through the agency of Larry Montgomery, had found me. 

Do we discover history, or does history discover us? 

Sure, Private Metcalf never served here in the Sierra 

Nevada, but he was a soldier with Troop K which ventured to Yosemite barely one month before he was discharged from the Ninth Cavalry. Because in those days 

it took the U.S. Army nearly two weeks to travel from 

San Francisco to Yosemite, and it was logical for George 

Metcalf to finish his time in the military at the Presidio. 

George Metcalf remains part of that story. Like the rest 

of Troop K, he was a veteran of the Philippine-American 

War garrisoned at the Presidio of San Francisco. Like 

many of his peers, he was from the South. They had 

served together, sharing hardships and the deaths of fellow soldiers. The memory of George Metcalf certainly 

journeyed through the high country of Yosemite though 

the man did not.

I had found George, or had been found by George. 

George Metcalf has claimed me just as surely as I have 

claimed him. My research turned into a lifeline tossed 

into a dark hole, someone tugged at the other end, and 

now he’s slowly being pulled free. What must that feel like 

to be forgotten for nearly a hundred years, and then to 

suddenly have people saying your name, wondering about 

you again, as if you’d never been forgotten? 

Of course, for the Metcalfs, George was always a part 

of family history. A few days ago I spoke to Derrick 

Graham, the great-grandnephew of George Metcalf. Mr. 

Graham is a schoolteacher in Frankfort, Kentucky. He 

told me that George never married, and that he was the 

only brother of four sisters, but all I could think of in that 

moment was that I was on the telephone with a relative of 

Pvt. George Metcalf.

In those few minutes, this history was no longer superintendent reports, patrol reports, muster rolls, letters, 

or miscellaneous correspondence. It had become a conversation about someone real, someone who had sisters, 

someone who was remembered by people who were alive. 

Somewhere there was a heart beating, and a breath taken. 

There was blood flowing. There were tears.

George was alive for me while I was talking to Derrick 

Graham, alive in a way that he had not been in over three 

years of research. At what point does something far away 

awaken inside you? When does the temperature of a story 

shift from zero to hot? Now it was personal. Now it was 

the way he walked, the way he spoke, how he held a cigar. 

Did he smoke? Now it was the dreams he had, those forgotten dreams. It was a whole different thing. I had found 

George. George had found me.

For years I had been reaching my hands out into darkness, and when I least expected it, someone had clasped 

them, held them. I was no longer solely in this time, and 

George was no longer a creature of that time. A bridge 

had been built beneath us, and we had crossed somehow, 

and met amazed in the middle of that span.

What do you say? What do you ask? You feel close, 

but you’re a stranger. You ask simple questions; you wait, 

listen and hope to hear something you hadn’t thought of 

before. A phone call. Time slows. A voice. Talking about 

the dead. The living. What’s in between? You are. 

Now the history no longer sleeps in yellowed documents, but shines in the eyes of George Metcalf. They 

look out into this world through his living cousins, 

nephews and nieces. He was never forgotten in those 

households. What is it all made from, those nails, the glue 

and bolts that keep a story together? It can all fall apart 

elsewhere, but in every family memories can be kept like 

heirlooms, without shelf or cabinet, there behind the eyes.

Yet, I have only found a part of George. The totality of a life can’t be captured in a photograph. He stares 

out from a fragment of a time and a place. He can’t be 

courtesy of the family of Derrick Graham

A portrait of Private George Metcalf sent to the author 

by his descendant, Derrick Graham.
Yosemite Associ a tio n , fa ll 2008 15

restored completely without the restoration of the world 

that he knew. But before the arrival of this gift, this portrait that has bound us both in something living, there 

was little to hold. 

One day soon, perhaps, I shall look up from my desk, 

and there before me will be Derrick Graham, a stranger 

who is not a stranger, a man from Kentucky with a story 

to tell. He may not use words, because not all stories 

are put down on paper. There is a language in the way 

he stands on that day, in the manner of his speech. The 

contours of his face speak about a history he has never 

lived. He will extend his hand, and I will take it, and then, 

finally, I will have come as close as I can in this world to 

finding George.

It won’t be the end, though, because history never has 

an ending; it just goes on like a river. What nourishes you 

can also sweep you away. A blessing can fall silently as 

prayer. 

Who now prays for George Metcalf, or the thousands 

who left the Old South to find something, or run from 

something that had no name? In what places today still 

dwell those ambitious, yet fearful shadows that eventually 

found refuge in the Old Army? One by one they drifted 

into that system like leaves to a stormy sky and were 

reborn as privates, corporals and sergeants. They became 

cavalrymen or infantrymen. They were given a new purpose. New goals and objectives were laid before them and 

their opinion was not asked. They rode, they marched, 

they drilled, they fought, they slept and they died.

Each of those men has a story to tell. Some of those 

stories weave together Yosemite, Sequoia and the Presidio 

of San Francisco into one narrative. The Buffalo Soldiers 

of the Sierra Nevada are just a few of those stories. All 

through the South, countless other George Metcalfs wait 

to speak. All they need is someone willing to listen.

When I peer into the muster rolls that house all the 

names, all the lives in this story of wilderness protectors and national parks, I glimpse in that black and 

white space at least 400 other shadows that once were 

living men. They still wait to be found. Most are like 

George Metcalf in that they were from the South, but 

some hail from other places, northern cities like Boston, 

Philadelphia and Chicago; or western cities like Kansas 

City, Denver and San Francisco. What are their stories? 

Who prayed for them? Who prays for them now? Are 

flowers still strewn over their graves, or do they lie forgotten in the shade of trees?

Once upon a time the Ninth Cavalry rode in Yosemite 

and Sequoia. These mountains heard their laughter, their 

cries. The shadows remember them. The shadows speak.

This is the beginning. 

Shelton Johnson has worked as a ranger for the 

National Park Service since 1987 and in Yosemite 

for the last 15 years. During the summer months he 

performs as Sgt. Elizy Boman of the Ninth Cavalry 

as part of Yosemite Theatre. He has written a novel 

about a Yosemite buffalo soldier which will be 

published by Sierra Club Books in 2009.

African-American cavalrymen, called “buffalo soldiers” by Native Americans for the texture of their hair, patrolled Yosemite during the 

turn of the century.

celia Crocker thompson