It was on August 1, 1908, that folks living in South Dakota first heard about Mrs. Mary Sully, widow of Jack Sully, filing a federal law suit to have land allotted to her and the descendants of Jack under the General Allotment Act of 1887. That matter would not be resolved until March of 1912 when the United States Supreme Court awarded 8,960 acres of land on the Rosebud to Mrs. Sully and Jack’s descendants.
Mrs. Sully and her lawyers, George Jeffers and Joe Kirby of Dallas, faced enormous odds as the case made its way through the legal process. Also during that time, Mrs. Sully had to deal with a most unusual and bogus story which was fabricated by two lowlife from Chicago to steal some land.
On October 25, 1908, the following headline appeared in the Birmingham Herald of Birmingham, Alabama: “LOST DAUGHTER IS DISCOVERED.” The story recounted the discovery and location of the missing daughter of “Jack Sully” in Chicago. She was identified as Trixie Sing, the wife of Louis Sing, a reported millionaire Chinese man.
According to the story with a Chicago dateline:
“Capt. Martin Peterson of the First Regiment, Dakota National Guard was sent to the Rosebud during the land registration in an effort to locate Sully’s missing daughter for a Chicago real estate firm. He returned to Chicago with information that led him to believe positively that Mrs. Sing was the one who as a child was stolen from Rosebud Reservation 22 years ago.”
The Evening Times-Republican of Marshalltown, Iowa on October 26 reported: “Four of Sully’s five children are now living in South Dakota. The third daughter was stolen by a white woman when she was 2 years old. She is Trixie Sing, Captain Peterson is satisfied . . . . Mrs. Sing admitted that the woman who raised her told her before her death three months ago that she was born out on the Dakota reservation and that she was half Indian.”
The Madison Daily Leader of Madison, South Dakota on October 28 printed a long story with a Chicago, Oct. 27 dateline reporting the Trixie Sing fairy tale in detail. It concluded with an outrageous and false explanation of how Jack Sully came to South Dakota. It claimed that “Jack Sully was born on a farm near Princeton, Ill. In 1849 he started with several other Illinoisans for the California gold fields. When the party reached the Missouri River the stream was greatly swollen and they were delayed there for several days. . . . He followed the winding curves of the Missouri River until he came opposite to the lands that are now known as the Rosebud. He crossed the river with his stolen horses and started the ranch that became one of the largest in the Dakotas.”
These whoppers continued to appear in newspapers in Dakota and across the country. Finally, on November 6, 1908, George Jeffers of Dallas who was Mrs. Sully’s lawyer, was interviewed by The Norfolk Weekly-News Journal. The paper reported:
“Mr. Jeffers denounced the recent Chicago story regarding an alleged daughter of Jack Sully who was said to have wedded a Chinaman, as a pure ‘pipe dream.’ I know every one of the Sully heirs,” said Mr. Jeffers. “There was never any of them kidnapped.” With those statements from Jeffers, one would think that would put an end to this blatant lie. Unfortunately, it did not. It just went on and on like the “energizer bunny” of today.
The Washington Times (Washington, D.C.) of November 24, 1908 contained this bold headline: “UNEARTH DAUGHTER OF OUTLAW SULLY.” Below the large headline was a smaller headline which referred to the daughter as a “Missing Member of South Dakota Brigand.” According to the thesaurus, “brigand” is a bandit, highwayman, criminal, outlaw, assassin, or Mafioso.
We can only hope that Mrs. Sully never saw or heard about these lies. Her lawyer, George Jeffers surely saw and read the stories since he spent time in Washington and had an office there as well as in Dallas.
Trixie and Louis Sing both continued to show up in the newspapers through 1915. An Atlanta, Georgia headline of February 4, 1914 reported that Trixie Sing, a vaudeville singer appealed to the police of Chicago to find her two front gold teeth which she lost trying to eat a tough steak. “The teeth cost a lot of money,” she said, “and I can’t do my act without them.” Earlier, The Fargo Forum and Daily Republican of December 23, 1909 report that Louis Sing was a member of one of the Chinese gangs in Chicago which was involved in a gamblers’ war. No one was killed; however, a number were wounded.
In January of 1915, Louis and Trixie were involved in “Morals Court” in Chicago. This was a special court established in Chicago by the Illinois Legislature in 1905 to deal with what they called “problems of social hygiene.” It was established in order to put pressure on the city authorities and the State’s Attorney to compel them to enforce the laws and wipe out the vice district in Chicago.
The Alliance Herald (Alliance, Neb.) on April 22, 1915 reported: “Trixie Sing, the woman dope fiend who came here from Sheridan, Wyoming . . . is now in the asylum for the insane at Norfolk, Nebraska . . . . it is thought her case is hopeless.”
After researching and writing this column, I came to the conclusion that had Louis and Trixie been in one of my classes when I taught at Yankton College, they would have failed if this story had been handed in as their paper. There is nothing original or creative in the story. It is full of holes. You can predict what is going to happen before it happens.
Believe me, I would have loved to have had them sitting in front of me for just sixty minutes! It would have been one-hour which they would have always remembered.
Author Clarence Shoemaker, originally published in the Gregory Times-Advocate on April 19, 2023