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The Last Boy in Blue tells the story of the beginning of Minnesota’s Dakota War from the perspective of twelve year-old drummer boy Charley Culver of Chatfield. When Minnesota’s Dakota people, hungry, humiliated and ill-treated beyond enduring, went to war with the United States on August 18, 1862, the first soldiers they encountered were the men of Company B, 5th Minnesota Infantry, posted at Fort Ridgely. The 85 men and boys of Company B were from Fillmore and Olmsted Counties, most enlisting from Chatfield and Preston. When Captain John Marsh of Preston led out an expedition to investigate the first reports of the uprising, command of Fort Ridgely passed to 19 year-old Lieutenant Tom Gere of Chatfield. Under Gere’s command were less than 30 men in a fort without fortifications. In the next 24 hours they would face Chief Little Crow and a Dakota nation resolved to recapture its hereditary Minnesota homeland.
