Part One: Louis E. Decker, Youngstown, Ohio 1880's

Writing on the back reads:
"Louis is nicer

looking now

than in this

picture"

Louis E. Decker's rather interesting life began in Youngstown, Ohio in 1864. He was the youngest of Bartholomew Decker and Sophia Billings's seven children. His father was the owner of a feed store, B.S. Decker & Co., where Louis's older brother Charles would work as a store clerk during his teenage years. Charles would follow in his father's footsteps and go on to own a shop of his own, a grocery and confectionary. It's possible Louis may have worked in his father's store at some point as a young man, but he was certainly not destined to become a grocer or clerk.

In February 1882, Bartholomew and Sophia took a trip to Cleveland, Ohio. They were visiting Sophia's cousin, William F. Cody, who is perhaps better known by his nickname: Buffalo Bill. Cody would not form his famous Wild West show until the following year, but he had already gained a reputation as a skilled hunter, rider, and scout during the Indian Wars. Louis's parents must have seen an opportunity to get their youngest son a job with the famous showman.

Louis began working as a ticket seller for Buffalo Bill's Wild West about 1885 when he was 20 years old. That same year, sharpshooters Annie Oakley and Frank Butler joined the show. Louis continued to sell tickets for several years and possibly sold tickets during the show's European tours between 1887 and 1892. Then in 1893, the Wild West came to Chicago and set up in a lot right next door to the fairgrounds of the World's Columbian Exposition (after a committee declined to include the show as part of the fair itself). While researching Louis, I was surprised and very excited to discover a brief mention of him in one of my favorite books, The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson. In order to illustrate the success of the fair, Larson describes how Louis "sold 17,843 tickets during his shift, the most by any one man" and as a result won a box of cigars. Though Larson mistakenly refers to Louis as Buffalo Bill's nephew, there's no doubt to me it's the right man. Why exactly he was selling tickets at the fair instead of at the Wild West show is unclear to me. Maybe he was looking to earn a little extra money while in Chicago, or perhaps he just really wanted to win that box of cigars.

According to an 1896 souvenir book titled "Buffalo Bill's Wild West Route Diary," the traveling show made a stop in Grand Rapids, Michigan on August 9th. Louis, or "Lew" as he is called here, took the opportunity to visit his sister in Elk Rapids. Though she isn't named in the diary, I believe he visited his oldest sister, Carrie, who was living in Michigan around this time. The diary also says that Louis made the visit with his wife, and a "Mrs. Lou Decker" is listed as the Matron of the Camp. This is interesting considering the fact that, as far as I know, Louis wasn't married until 1906. If she's a different woman, I haven't been able to find a record of her.

In the 1899 "Route Book," Louis has moved up to being a secretary for Cody and for Nate Salsbury, Cody's manager, though it appears that he continued to help sell tickets and work as a mail carrier. During his time working for the Wild West show, Louis must have been introduced to William F. Cody's sisters, Julia, Eliza, Nellie, and Mary, who also went by "May." Cody was close with his sisters and wrote to them frequently. Photographs show that the Cody sisters were rather stern, serious looking women. The youngest, Mary, had been married to Edgar Bradford, a locomotive engineer, until his death in 1896. She was left a widow at 44, with two adult children. She and Louis had likely known each other for a while, as Louis was an employee of her brother (not to mention the fact that they were technically cousins.) Though she was 10 years his senior, a relationship formed. Mary and Louis were married in Big Horn, Wyoming on December 30th, 1906.

Before the marriage, Louis experienced big changes in his career as William F. Cody embarked on an ambitious new project- a tourist destination that would serve as the gateway to Yellowstone National Park.

Find out more next week in Part Two! And if you know anything about Louis, let us know in the comments!


A few of the sources I used for this post:

1. 1882 letter from William F. Cody to Al Goodman in which Bartholomew and Sophia's visit to Cleveland is mentioned
2. Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, page 319
3. Buffalo Bill's Wild West Route Diary, 1896
4. Route Book Buffalo Bill's Wild West, 1899