Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing was one of only two men ever to be named “general of the Armies of the United States” — Gen. George Washington was the other — and fell in love with a girl from Wyoming.
Pershing married Cheyenne native Helen Frances “Frankie” Warren as then-President Theodore Roosevelt sat in the front row of the Washington, D.C., church they took their vows in. Ten years later he lost his life’s love and three of his children in a tragic fire.
In the stress of a World War I battle, the general was witnessed calling out her name.
Despite never really living in the state or being assigned to Wyoming, “Black Jack” Pershing was considered an honorary Wyomingite by many in the Cowboy State while he lived.
“General Pershing still claims Cheyenne as his place of residence although duties have taken him far afield,” the Wyoming State Tribune and Cheyenne State Leader reported July 1, 1927.
Whether Pershing ever actually said that is not known, but his life shows an affinity for the state that undoubtably came about because of the marriage to his wife, who was 20 years younger than he and the daughter of Wyoming’s powerful senator and Civil War hero, Sen. Francis E. Warren.
Pershing was born in Missouri in 1860 just before the Civil War, and his father served as a sutler for the Union Army. He graduated from what is now Truman State University in 1880 and obtained an appointment to the U.S. Military Academy West Point in 1882.
Long Career
Pershing’s career stretched from the end of the American Indian wars in 1891, as part of troops dealing with a Lakota attack on U.S. Army supply wagons, to fighting in Cuba during the Spanish American War, serving in the Filipino-American War between 1899 and 1901 and commanding the U.S. military forces in World War I.
He received his nickname “Black Jack” from West Point cadets who hated him because of his strictness as an instructor at the academy in 1897. The name came from Pershing’s earlier command of a black cavalry unit.
Historian and author Richard S. Faulkner, an instructor at the U.S. Army Command and General Staff College in Leavenworth, Kansas, has written two books related to Pershing’s leadership. He said it was Pershing’s assignment to the Philippines that vaulted his opportunities.
“When he goes to Mindanao during the Philippine insurrection, he makes a good reputation for achieving military results in the pacification of the Moro Philippine tribes,” Faulkner said. “He seems to be able to do that with as minimal of force as necessary. He does what we today, would be calling nation building.”
A headline in the Washington Post on Aug. 18, 1903, calls Pershing the “Hero of the Moro War.”
“The record that Capt. Pershing has made in Mindanao will live in American history,” the Post reported. “So also will the remembrance of him be handed down by the Moros to their children and children’s children, until it may come about that ‘Datto Pershing’ will become one of their traditionary gods.”
Her Hero
“Frankie” Warren considered the ramrod-straight 43-year-old not as a “god,” but as a “catch” and hero.
A Ladies Home Journal article reprinted in the July 23, 1919, Cheyenne State Leader headlined “Romance of General Pershing” included an interview with Senator Warren about how his daughter came to know the then Army captain.
Warren told the reporter that he had picked up his 23-year-old daughter from Wellesley College and they were on the train headed to Washington in late 1903 when she picked up a newspaper that had an article about Pershing in the Philippines. She read it all and asked him questions about the man.
As it happened, they were invited to a society dance that night and Pershing, who was on leave, was there.
“I recall, as if it were yesterday, how she asked him to go to the dance with her that night and how he replied, ‘I am an old Army officer not much used to dancing,’” Warren was quoted. “He made some excuse lost to my memory now. But he went. And he and Frances danced almost every dance together.”
That night Pershing went home and told his roommate and best friend Charles E. Magoon about Frances Warren and asked for his thoughts on “if it were right for an ‘old man’ like him, an ‘old Army officer’ especially, to marry a girl like Frances,” the article reported.
The next day Pershing decided to court the senator’s daughter.
After an assignment to Oklahoma and then Colorado Springs in summer 1904, he looked for opportunities to visit her. A Cheyenne Daily Leader story on Aug. 17, 1904, was headlined “Philippine Hero to Visit City.”
“Captain John J. Pershing arrived in Cheyenne last evening and will be the guest of Senator Warren for a few days. Captain Pershing is on the General staff and at present on detail at Oklahoma City, under General Summer. He has been visiting Colorado Springs and Denver with the general,” the newspaper reported.
Left, John “Black Jack” Pershing with “Frankie” and their children. He was devastated at their loss. Right, Frances Helen “Frankie” Warren was a graduate of Wellesley College and became intrigued with Pershing reading about him in a newspaper article on a train with her father. (Courtesy Find A Grave) 
Gen. John J. Pershing, center, leads mourners into the funeral for his father-in-law Sen. Frances Warren in Washington, D.C., in 1929. (Courtesy Library of Congress) 
The Washington Times emphasized the importance of the social guests at the wedding of John J. Pershing and Frances Helen Warren — President Teddy Roosevelt was in the front row. (Newspapers.com) 
The Washington Herald announced the death of Sen. Frances E. Warren and emphasized Pershing was at his bedside. (Newspapers.com) 
The San Francisco Chronicle published a photo of the Pershing’s Presidio home following the fire in its Aug. 28, 1915 edition. (Newspapers.com) 
Gen. John “Black Jack” Pershing received the hero treatment following his return from commanding the troops in World War I. (Newspapers.com)
A Wedding
Following the visit, Pershing returned to Oklahoma City until October of that year, when he was assigned to the Army War College in the Washington, D.C. area as a student. Frances Warren had returned there to be with her father. Pershing asked the senator for permission to marry his daughter which he granted. When he proposed, Frances Warren accepted. They scheduled the wedding for June 1905, but then the U.S. Army derailed their plans.
Following his completion of classes at the war college, Pershing was ordered to Japan to serve as a military attaché in the Tokyo embassy. He was to set sail in January 1905. The wedding was moved up to Thursday, Jan. 26, and the U.S. Senate delayed its start for Senator Warren’s friends to attend.
“The marriage of Miss Frances Helen Warren, only daughter of Senator Warren of Wyoming, to Capt. John J. Pershing, U.S.A., at the Church of the Epiphany yesterday at noon filled that edifice with a most distinguished company, including the President and Mrs. Roosevelt the chief of staff of the Army, Lt. Gen. Chaffee and nearly the entire membership of the Senate which in compliment to the bride’s father did not convent until 1 o’clock.”
Faulkner characterizes Pershing as the “consummate solider” who spent his honeymoon on a ship to Japan before being sent to observe the fighting in the Russo-Japanese War. The couple’s first child, Helen Elizabeth, was born in Japan on Sept. 8, 1906.
A Promotion
Days later, newspapers across the country carried articles and editorials on President Teddy Roosevelt’s order to promote Pershing from captain to brigadier general. The Washington, D.C., Evening Star published a letter from Chief of Staff of the U.S. Army James Franklin Bell to the Secretary of War William Taft that the case of Pershing “almost without precedent.” He was promoted over 257 captains, 364 majors, 131 lieutenant colonels, and 110 colonels - 862 officers.
“His promotion is based on his gallant and efficient services in the Philippines during the insurrection,” the letter stated.
Editorials spoke of Pershing’s connection with Wyoming’s powerful senator who was chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs. Other editorials, including in the Washington Post, defended the move based on Pershing’s service and the fact promoting him to general was the only way to reward him, since the Army only recognized years of service in its promotion system.
Faulkner agreed the question of nepotism surrounded the appointment. And Warren was a key senator in Roosevelt’s and Secretary of War Taft’s efforts to modernize and reform the U.S. Army.
“He is the son-in-law of a guy on the Armed Forces Committee, Senator Warren, and Theodore Roosevelt basically cuts that discussion short by saying, ‘Hey, look, the guy is talented, and you can't escape the fact that he's talented, whoever he's married to, is a secondary concern,” Faulkner said. “And I think that's generally true, but you also can't escape the fact that it sure doesn't hurt when you have a senator on that committee pushing things forward. So, if I were to say if this is between who you know versus what you did, I'd say it's definitely 90% Pershing, but that other 10% sure doesn't hurt.”
With his new insignia, Pershing is reassigned to be commanding general of the Department of California with his base at the Presidio in San Francisco. But then by the end of 1906 he is reassigned back to the Philippines where the family would grow with the birth of another daughter, Ann Orr, in March 1908. In July of that year his family was sent to Paris, and in January 1909 sent back to Washington, D.C.
After arrival in Washington, Pershing became sick and was sent to a hospital in Hot Springs, Arkansas. Frances Warren and her children went to her father’s home in Cheyenne. The couple’s son was born there in June 24, 1909. A few weeks later a recovered Pershing had orders to return to the Philippines where he was to be the commanding general of the Department of Mindanao and governor of the Moro Province. While there until 1913, they had their last daughter, Mary Margaret, born May 19, 1912.
Tragedy Strikes
When Pershing was ordered back to the states in December 1913 to command the Eighth Brigade in California, his family returned to the Presidio. On April 13, 1914, Frances Pershing was almost killed when a horse-drawn carriage she was riding in was struck by a vehicle. Frances Pershing was thrown from the carriage, but her clothing became entangled on the carriage step. The horses bolted and dragged her along the ground until the horses broke away from the carriage.
“It is the most remarkable thing that Mrs. Pershing did not meet death in the carriage,” the general was quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle on April 14.
But a year later while he was in El Paso, Texas, involved in Army efforts during the Mexican Border War, Pershing received a telegram that his wife and three daughters died in a fire at his home in the Presidio. Only 5-year-old Warren Pershing survived. The family had been scheduled to travel to Texas to join him the same week.
“General Pershing is today rushing here as fast as rail and steam can take him to claim the bodies of his wife and girls he loved better than all life and to hold close his baby boy, who (is) saved from the fire and uninjured,” the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Aug. 28, 1915.
A coal from a fireplace was believed to have been the source of the fire.
Shortly after arriving in San Francisco, Pershing, his young son, along with Sen. Warren and his wife escorted the bodies of his loved ones for burial in Cheyenne.
“At Lakeview Cemetery late this afternoon the bodies of a mother and her three small daughters are being lowered into one large grave while throughout all Cheyenne business is at a standstill,” an Aug. 28 datelined story from Cheyenne reported as published in the Sept. 2, 1915, News Letter Journal. “Flags are drooping at half-mast over scores of buildings and thousands are grieving. Cheyenne is paying a final tribute to Mrs. Frances Warren Pershing … and her three daughters.”
(Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
(Cowboy State Daily Staff) 
Gen. John Joseph Black Jack Pershing arriving in Boulogne, First World War, June 1917. Pershing (1860-1948) led the American Expeditionary Force in Europe (1914-1918). (Photo by The Print Collector, Print Collector via Getty Images) 
Lying in state in the chapel of the Army Medical Center, is the casket containing the mortal remains of U.S. Army General, John J. Pershing. Here, relatives, close friends and long-time patients of the medical center came to pay their last respects to "Black Jack." (Getty Images)
Turn To Work
Faulkner said Pershing’s response to the tragedy was to pour himself into his work. He returned to Texas to continue his role as commanding officer at Fort Bliss and took his son, Warren, and Pershing’s sister, May, with him as a help.
“From all indications, he seeks to escape his sorrow basically by throwing himself completely and totally into into his military profession,” Faulkner said. He was involved in chasing Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa in 1916 and when President Woodrow Wilson needed a commander for the American Expeditionary Forces as he considered helping France and Britain, Pershing is chosen for the job.
Elevated to a full four-star general on Oct. 6, 1917, Pershing took on responsibility for training and mobilizing an army that was not ready for the realities of modern warfare.
After U.S. troops entered the war and experienced the reality of trench warfare, Faulkner said the loss of Frances Wagner is shown in Pershing’s actions toward the end of the war during the Meuse-Argonne campaign that lasted from Sept. 26, 1918, to the Armistice of Nov. 11, 1918, now recognized as Veteran’s Day.
“It's the biggest and bloodiest battle in American history. People surely don't realize that this dwarfs the Battle the Bulge, Okinawa, and some of our other big ones,” Faulkner said. Pershing was under great strain. U.S. troops were bogged down and more men were killed in those two months than all the soldiers who died in the past 20 years of fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan.
“And in the midst of this, he is reported to have basically been found by one of his staff officers with his his head in his hands, calling out to his dead wife. And that's just sort of a sad thing,” Faulkner said.
Pershing was responsible for running the American army in the field, but also all the support logistics and everything else involved in the operations overseas. Following that moment, he decided to split his army into two, put them under subordinates and allow himself to concentrate on the big picture.
“That frankly is a very courageous act to admit that you know you are out of your depth,” Faulkner said.
Top General
Following the war, Pershing was lauded and Congress gave him a new rank “general of the armies.” He chose to continue wearing four silver stars. In 1976, Congress elevated George Washington posthumously to the same position.
Pershing would go on to be chief of staff of the U.S. Army in the early 1920s. But his Wyoming connection was not forgotten.
He was in Cheyenne to address the Wyoming Woolgrowers’ Association on Jan. 17, 1920, but had to cancel an appearance in Casper at the American Legion Stampede in September 1920 due to a call back to Washington, D.C., the Casper Daily Tribune reported on Sept. 4, 1920.
When his father-in-law died on Nov. 24, 1929, at his Washington-area home, Pershing was at his side. He traveled back to Cheyenne with other family members for the burial at Lakeview Cemetery in Cheyenne.
In the 1930s, Pershing retired to more a private existence but wrote a Pulitzer Prize-winning memoir “My Experiences in the World War.”
He died in 1948 and is buried in Arlington National Cemetery.
Faulkner said he would rank Pershing as among the nation’s top 10 military leaders in its history.
“On one hand, I do believe that he is a man out of his depth when it comes to the challenges of modern war. At the same time, he builds the American Expeditionary Force in France out of the force of his own will,” he said. “In other words, without Pershing, I can't see a lot of other American commanders that sort of had the iron will and ability to sort of stand his own (ground) against some very powerful personalities with the British and the French to create this army.”
Contact Dale Killingbeck at dale@cowboystatedaily.com
Dale Killingbeck can be reached at dale@cowboystatedaily.com.
