Scooptown was notorious for relieving local soldier of their money. And sometimes, it was local soldiers who had a hand in that scooping. Such was the case with Michael Pendergrass.
Mike was born in Ireland in 1851. His family would later immigrate to the United States, settling in the New Jersey area.
In 1873, Mike and his younger brother, Thomas, would enlist with the United States Army. For much of their military careers, the brothers would serve alongside the famed Buffalo Soldiers, first at Fort Duncan, Texas, and then at Fort Meade, South Dakota.
Their time at Fort Meade would be short lived though. Crime simply paid better. The brothers would be among the first stationed at the fort, having been part of company E of the Seventh Cavalry. It wouldn’t take them long to get noticed.
End of Service
In March of 1880, the brothers would make a splash by getting into a gun fight at the Sheridan House. Rumors would initially circulate that Mike had been shot and killed by John Schollard, the landlord of the Sheridan House.
However, as the dust cleared, the truth began to emerge. Tom and Mike had gone to Sturgis in search of indulging in some of their vices, as well as check on their own business. The brothers were known to “keep women,” and as such, were seen as “bad men” in general.
Mike would spend most of the night gambling, and not very well. After playing a losing night, Tom had noticed that his brother appeared to be sick, and asked if he was drunk. Mike said he was not, leading Tom to claim that Mike must have been poisoned.
The accusation was enough to start the brawl. Schollard declared that anyone who said they were drugged in his house was a liar, to which Tom responded with his fists. Schollard answered back with a bottle, knocking down Tom, and then Mike entered the brawl.
Charging at Schollard, Mike would yell out a 7th Cavalry call, to which Schollard seized his revolver. Using it as a club, Schollard struck Mike in the head, hard enough to take Mike out of the fight. During the commotion, Schollard’s gun would also go off, leading to rumors he shot and possibly killed Mike.
Schollard quickly turned his attention to Tom, and Lou Maple, who was described as “Mike’s woman,” and drove them from the Sheridan House. Tom would end up pressing charges against Schollard. It didn’t take long for Justice Coleman to find Schollard justified in his actions. And it would later become apparent that a good number of soldiers also found Schollard justified, and wished he had done more.
The soldiers at Fort Meade wouldn’t have to wait long though to be rid of Mike. Just the next year, in March of 1881, he would be tried for leaving his post on multiple occasions. The very next month, on June 12, he became a deserter.
A few days later, Mike would be apprehended, as he was committing a separate crime. Along with his brother Tom, and a fellow deserter named Conway, Mike would be arrested in a horse stealing case. This would signal the end of the Pendergrass brother’s service. For Tom, he would later be found guilty of perjury, and sentenced to 2 years in a house of corrections. In the meantime, he was discharged, and then largely vanish.
For Mike, it would be a different story. The reason for him leaving his post, and later desertion were quite clear; he was running a dance-house in Sturgis. It paid much more than what the army was, with him making the claim he was bringing in $1,000 per night. So when Mike was discharged in October of 1881, he simply stayed in town.
End of an Era
Throughout the next few years, Mike Pendergrass would continue to be busy with his dance hall, and the standard legal troubles that came with such a place. However, Mike had a tendency of escaping any real turmoil.
Such was the case in February of 1866. Mike would be arrested on grounds of selling liquor without obtaining a license. Unable to find enough evidence to convict Mike, Justice Worth would have to let him go.
Even murder couldn’t seem to stop Mike. In June of 1892, Mike, along with Henry Steinmich would enter the saloon of Nels Anderson. Being refused drinks, the two men attacked Anderson, Mike brandishing a revolver in doing so.
Mike would fire off a few shots, which went wide, while Steinmich went in close with a knife and slit Anderson’s throat. In turn, locals had wanted to lynch the two, but the Deputy Sherrif would intervene in time to haul them off to jail instead.
The incident seems to have straightened Mike out a little bit, at least for a time. And it wouldn’t be long until Mike was finally finished with Sturgis. But he needed one additional push.
That push came in November of 1895, when Leo Burton, one of the women who worked for Mike, died in a building fire. The building she had been in was attached to Mike’s dance hall, and by the time anyone could reach her, she was already badly burned.
While Mike would help rescue Burton from the fire, it would prove to be too little too late. Burton died a few hours later. The writing was on the wall. Tragedy had struck close to home, and at the same time, Sturgis was making it more difficult to run houses of ill repute.
End of a Life
Sometime after the fire at his dance hall, Mike would move to Perkins County. When the town of Strool was founded in 1908, he would be one of the early settlers there. Opening up a livery barn, Mike would also work as a veterinarian.
It would seem as if he had escaped his past, and was living a good life. Well, at least in part.
On June 21, 1914, Mike’s history would catch up with him. Reliving the “good ole days,” Mike, along with 6 other individuals, started off the night by loading up on whiskey. After they were quite drunk, the group went to a local gypsy camp, “for the purpose of indulging themselves with the female members of the camp.”
The group of men would be sent out to a nearby shack, where the women had supposedly went to for the night. But when the men reached the shack, and after breaking into it, they found no one was there. In the meantime, the women had been secreted off to a nearby ravine.
With the night not progressing as they had wanted, an altercation arose between Mike and one of the other men, a James O’Hara. O’Hara would eventually beat Mike pretty badly. So bad was the beating that the 6 men would have to load Mike into an automobile, and take him back to Strool.
Once back home, Mike would be beaten to death. His lifeless body was stashed in the back of Mike’s livery barn, and covered with bedding and a mattress, which had kerosene poured over it all. A fire had been started, in order to conceal the murder, but before it could consume Mike’s body, it had fizzled out.
O’Hara would initially be held on charges of murder, and it seemed certain that he would crack under the pressure. But eventually, he would be acquitted, largely because there had been 5 other drunk men who could also have beaten Mike to death.
And so, Michael Pendergrass would largely be lost to history. His final home, the town of Strool, would be short lived, and any mark Mike truly made would end up turning to rubble.