Frank Finkel

Frank Finkel (January 29, 1854 – August 28, 1930) was an American who rose to prominence late in his life and after his death for his claims to being the only survivor of George Armstrong Custer's famed "Last Stand" at the Battle of the Little Bighorn on June 25, 1876.

[1] He and others claimed that he enlisted in the United States Army in the early 1870s and served under George Custer during the Great Sioux War of 1876.

John Koster, author of the book Custer Survivor and a supporter of the Finkel claim, argues that he enlisted under the name "August Finckle" in Chicago in January 1872.

August Finckle's reported place of birth was Berlin, Prussia, which Koster argues was Finkel's attempt to use his actual German heritage to capitalize on the Prussian military's popularity in the United States at the time.

[3] Koster also uncovered a document revealing that Finkel's widow believed he enlisted in September 1874 in Iowa, under the alias "Frank Hall".

[2] He married his first wife, Delia (also spelled "Delila") Rainwater, in 1886; soon after their marriage, Finkel began acquiring farmland and by 1911 he owned a significant amount of real estate in Dayton.

[3] In 2013, a photograph described as "August Finckle" was published first in the Battlefield Dispatch, a membership-circulation publication for Custer enthusiasts, and then in the December 2013 issue of Wild West, a professionally edited general-circulation magazine of the Weider History Group.

The hair color and hairline differed due to age, but every facial feature was identical, as were several mannerisms, including the shirt collar flipped up on the right side inside the coat collar, according to Mike Roncallo, a portrait photographer with NJ Press credentials, Sylvia Groen, a portrait painter, Police Chief Benjamin Fox of Wyckoff, NJ, and Jacques Harlow, a professional engineer with a degree from Dartmouth and a Fulbright Scholar with ID training from NYU.

"I tried to find the body of my German friend, Trooper Finkle, the tallest man in the regiment, But I could not identify him," Windolph, a Medal of Honor recipient and the last living soldier survivor of the battle, said in I Fought With Custer.

Windolph's daughter told Dr. Arthur Kannenberg "After the battle Daddy says he looked everywhere for him as he was like a brother to him -- but the bodies were so disfigured that he was unable to find him."

Author Koster said that this was because Frank Finkel grew up in Ohio, had never lived in Germany, and had learned the Alemannic Bavarian dialect from his immigrant parents.