Wyoming History: Calamity Jane’s Turbulent Visits To Her Sister’s Homestead

At the mouth of Sinks Canyon near Lander, Wyoming, the tiny community of Borner’s Garden had thrived in the late 1800s. 

It consisted of a schoolhouse, post office, and a few homesteading families. One of these families were John and Lena Borner who were raising their six children in this rural community that had been named after John’s fruit trees and large garden.

Their son Frank Edward remembered as a small boy hiding behind his mother’s skirts. His dad was gone and a woman had ridden up to the porch of their cabin. He later learned that she was his Aunt Calamity Jane.

Jan Cerney wrote about the incident in “Calamity Jane and Her Siblings: The Saga of Lena and Elijah Canary.”

“He recalled that his mother Lena asked her what she was doing there and what she wanted,” Cerney wrote. “Lena told Calamity to leave and never come back. Apparently, at that time, Lena had had it with her sister Martha.”

Martha Jane Canary, more widely known as Calamity Jane, was Lena’s big sister and her uncouth ways were not always welcome in Lena’s quiet home.

Another time, Cerney said that Hannah was the child who mimicked Aunt Calamity’s swear words, distressing John Borner to the point that he again told Calamity to never come back.

Future Brother-in-Law

Bill Wilkinson, a great-nephew of Martha Jane said in an interview to author Ellen Crago Mueller that his Aunt Calamity Jane was at the mining camps on South Pass in Wyoming around 1870-71. 

It was while here that she first met freighter John G. Borner, her future brother-in-law.

Borner had been badly hurt and broken his leg according to family accounts. He was taken to the rooming house where Martha Jane Canary was working, and the young woman set his leg.

Jean Mathisen, in a December 1996 True West article, “Calamity’s Sister,” said that Canary asked Borner if she could make the trip to Salt Lake for him to check on her brother and sister, Lena and Elijah, known as “Lige.”

“She supposedly made two trips in the next six weeks and brought Borner’s customary load of goods to South Pass,” Mathisen wrote. “After his leg healed, Borner resumed his trips to Salt Lake and made the acquaintance of Lena and Lige Canary.”

John Borner was born in Saxony, Germany, in 1835 and, after immigrating to America, had been injured in the Civil War. Borner later came and joined the Wyoming gold rush at South Pass in 1869.

In 1872, Borner, Ernest Hornecker and Jake Frey moved to an area known as Chief Washakie’s horse pasture, near the mouth of Sinks Canyon at the base of the Wind River Mountains.

The men squatted on what was then Indian land and took up claims. Chief Washakie knew the men according to Mathisen and had encouraged them to settle in the valley to help provide protection for his Eastern Shoshone band from his enemies, the Sioux and Arapahos.

By the next year Borner was building on his own claim in a rich meadowland near the Popo Agie River.

Building A Home

“It was John Borner that brought Lena, Calamity Jane’s sister, to this country to be a companion of the Indian agent on the reservation,” Jack States of Lander told Cowboy State Daily.

States’ father went to school at Borner’s Garden and had shared with States’ the tall tales that swirled around the family of Calamity Jane. States said that at times it is difficult to separate fact from fiction, but it is well known that Martha Canary spent a lot of time at Borner’s Garden and Lander to be near her sister.

Although Borner had originally brought Lena Canary to the area as a companion at Fort Washakie, romance had blossomed between the by-now eighteen-year-old girl and Borner, who was over twenty years her senior, and the job was short-lived. John Borner and Lena Pauline Canary were married in 1875.

Lander Museum Director Randy Wise said Borner’s Garden where Borner brought his young wife was a beautiful area below the canyon proper.

“According to the historic documents, it was one of the few places in the whole state where you could actually grow apples and plums,” Wise said. “They grew currants and gooseberries and things like that up there.”

The Borners became the parents of seven children over the next nine years: May Rebecca, Tobias (Tobe), Frank Edward, Theresa Theodosa, Hannah, Bertha Pauline and William Frederick.

“At its height, there might have been maybe 40 people living in Borner’s Garden,” Wise said. “It was never a formal town and just one of many little communities that dotted the region.”

Aunt Calamity

Accounts differ as to whether Borner and Lena’s infamous sister got along, although a younger brother of Ernest and Mart’s, Albert Hornecker, remembered that Calamity would travel by in a buggy on her way to visit her sister Lena when she knew Borner would be gone.

Tobe Borner related in the September 1941 Basin Republican Rustler that his father had no use for Calamity and felt she was a poor influence on his growing family. However, Tobe also said that Martha Jane was present at his birth in May of 1877, so she continued to visit despite the misgivings of her brother-in-law.

According to Mathisen, old-timers in Lander, the community that grew up on the site of old Camp Brown, stated that Calamity Jane and her sister Lena ran a laundry together in a small log building that sat on Main Street, between Second and Third, in early-day Lander.

“Calamity spent a fair amount of time in Wyoming and this part of Wyoming in particular,” Wise said. “When Calamity was sober, she would help her sister at the laundry in town.”

John Borner’s dislike to Calamity continued to grow, mostly because of her drinking and swearing. Cerney said that Calamity wasn’t afraid of Borner and visited her sister when John Borner wasn’t around. The Hornecker neighbors saw Calamity pass by in a buggy on her way to the Borner place when John Borner was not home. Tom Bell, a local Lander historian, told Cerney that Calamity often stayed at the Borner School when she came to visit her sister since she was not welcome in the Borner home.

A Ghost Community

Tragedy visited the Borner family in October of 1888. Lena Canary Borner, 31, passed away after suffering ill health for two years from injuries she had sustained from being kicked by a cow.

Her obituary in the October 17, 1888, issue of the Fremont Clipper stated, “She was one of the most industrious women in the valley and one whom all her acquaintances held in the highest respect. Her pride was in her children and her home.”

Heartbroken and tired of fighting with his neighbors and former friends over irrigation pipes, John Borner moved his family to Greybull the following spring. He had built a cabin at what would someday be the site of Greybull, Wyoming, and later added corrals and barns.

In 1888 the Wyoming Territorial Legislature authorized a Poor Farm for the soon-to-be state. The trustees bought Borner’s ranch, and in the spring of 1889, Borner loaded up his wagons along with his children and moved to his new land claim. He had 100 head of cattle, a herd of horses, and a herd of mules he had acquired from the government.

A special June 6, 1974, edition of the Greybull Standard stated that Borner was “a prosperous and very intelligent rancher from the Lander County. He picked Greybull as the site of his new home because of his belief that it was an ideal location. Two rivers flowed into the Big Horn within the space of a mile, the Greybull River and Shell Creek. Between the mouths of these two streams, he felt should be an ideal site for a town.”

He never remarried and his children adored him. Aunt Calamity Jane would occasionally visit but had mostly gone on her way to create myths about her life. She passed away in 1903 when she was 51.

At Borner’s Garden, only memories of Calamity Jane and her sister’s family are left. The schoolhouse that Calamity Jane stayed in was moved to the Lander museum and the old homes have fallen down long ago.

“She had quite a lively career when she left this place,” States said. “We have a number of stories from people who knew her when she was here but that part of the history sort of borders on fantasy.”

Contact Jackie Dorothy at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com

Jackie Dorothy can be reached at jackie@cowboystatedaily.com.