In the Old West, many men who died with their boots on were buried with very little ceremony. Sometimes, though, dead men received fond farewells with well-attended funeral services. And sometimes these services were held in unusual places. Such was the case in the early 1870s when the new town of Great Bend, Kansas, held its first funeral. The deceased was a hard-drinking young lawyer named George N. Godfrey, and the service held for him in one of the town’s watering holes has become a local legend.
Great Bend was incorporated on June 17, 1872, and soon after became the Barton County seat. The Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railroad arrived at Great Bend on July 15, helping make the town both a shipping point for cattle and the buffalo hunters’ headquarters for southwestern Kansas. Godfrey, 25, also arrived in the community that summer. Little is known of his past, although recent research suggests he might have come from Michigan and was born on August 8, 1846. Early Great Bend resident David N. Heizer recalled many years later in memoirs dictated to his daughter that the new lawyer in town was “bright in his profession” and well educated but also spoiled. Heizer explained:
With plenty of money to spend during his school days and with his propensity for being a good fellow, he had acquired habits of dissipation. In fact Godfrey had become a “rounder,” and the class surrounding the Texas cattle trade furnished a field fit to develop these propensities. He was erratic in his dissipations. Yet he would “be good” for a month at a time, and when he was good, he was brilliant. Everybody would go to court when they knew that Godfrey was going to plead a case. When the case was important, he would prepare for it by gradually filling himself up with whiskey. The stimulant nerved him to do his best, and he generally won the case. When the case was over, he would plunge into a whole week of wild debauch and, with cow men, gamblers, demimonde and whatnot, he could out-herod Herod.
No doubt Godfrey did much of his drinking in the Rome Saloon, which occupied a prominent place on the main street directly opposite the courthouse square. It was later described as “a western saloon in every sense of the word, a place known to cowboys, cattlemen and settlers from all over western Kansas and down into Texas.” Godfrey was last seen in that saloon in the winter of 1872-73, and he didn’t come there the last time under his own powers. He was quite dead.
During the third week in December 1872, it is known that Godfrey was involved in a court case in Ellsworth, Kan., about 50 miles to the northeast. The case was being heard there because Great Bend did not yet have a courthouse. Godfrey was defending cattlemen whose loose cattle had destroyed the crops of area farmers. As Heizer would later note, this was a man who believed that law books and whiskey glasses went hand in hand. This time, though, Godrey’s dissipated habits proved to be his undoing. Exactly what happened remains a mystery. The end of Godrey was told with several variations.
Great Bend did not yet have a newspaper, but the weekly Ellsworth Reporter included the following item in its January 9, 1873, edition: “We are sorry to learn that Mr. Godfrey of Great Bend, an intelligent young lawyer, has met with a great misfortune. He was so badly frozen one night about three weeks ago that both of his feet will have to be amputated, his right arm and part of his left hand.” The Reporter never said that Godfrey died; in fact, nothing more was written about the sad event at the time.
Ten years later, a version of Godfrey’s story appeared in the History of the State of Kansas, by A.T. Andreas: “One night, during the winter of 1872-73, while in an intoxicated condition, [he] fell down, and being unable to get up, lay where he fell the greater portion of the night, and when discovered was nearly lifeless.” That 1883 account gave further information:
The Sunday after Godfrey died the people congregated in the post office, as was their wont, where they cracked jokes, told stories, and spun yarns, helping themselves at intervals from some whiskey barrels that stood at the rear of the store in which the post office was located. In a short time they began to feel a little mellow, and while in this state, one fellow, named Kutch, in referring to Godfrey, said, “we have stood this thing long enough, we had better plant him.”
The story was told again in the January 24, 1895, issue of the Barton County Democrat: “During the first night of the blizzard a bibulously inclined attorney, Godfrey by name, being, as was his wont, in an advanced state of intoxication, lay out all night in the snow. Two days later he died from the effects of his freezing.” The weeklong storm, the newspaper reported, delayed Godfrey’s relatives from traveling to Great Bend.
These accounts made no mention of a funeral service, but Heizer remembered one, saying that it was held in the Rome Saloon, since Great Bend had no church. A lawyer named Copeland, a friend of the deceased, insisted on conducting the service.
“Empty beer kegs were rolled into the saloon, upended, and dimension lumber laid across to make seats for about one hundred sorrowful friends,” Heizer recalled. “Poor Godfrey lay in state in front, with the bar, of which he was so fond in life, as a background.”
While eulogizing the late attorney, Copeland broke down and wept. At that point, according to Heizer, “somebody called for the drinks, and with one accord, they all rushed around the bar and braced themselves against their frenzied grief.” More than a few drinks later, the funeral “ended with emotions at an exalted pitch.” Godfrey’s remains were loaded on a lumber wagon, and, with snow falling fast, the funeral procession headed north of town for the burial.
“When about half-way to the burial ground, Hubbard’s collie dog started up a jack rabbit out of its nest in the snow,” Heizer recalled. Some of the men raced after the collie and the frightened rabbit, he added, and when the wagon driver “swung his team into the race,” the coffin fell off the wagon.
The 1895 account in the Democrat also told of a jack rabbit or two and how many in the drunken procession joined the collie in a wild chase. However, in that account, the wagon driver jumped from his seat and followed his companions on foot. The horses soon grew tired of standing out in the storm, so they turned around and pulled the wagon back to town, losing the coffin en route.
No matter when the coffin was lost, it was eventually found and planted in the cemetery…well, maybe.
The concise account in the 1883 History of the State of Kansas says that the eloquent Copeland was at the graveside conducting an “address to the silent, dreamless sleeper.” Heizer’s account also concludes with the burial of Godfrey.
The story in the 1895 Democrat, however, concluded, “Then the relatives arrived and took the body east with them.” Old records of plot ownership at the Great Bend Cemetery indicate one marked “G.N. Godfrey.” The grave itself is unmarked.
Originally published in the December 2006 issue of Wild West.
