Editing Buffalo Bill (section)

== Marriage and children==
Cody married [[Louisa Frederici]] on March 6, 1866, just a few days after his twentieth birthday.<ref name= Kasson>{{Cite book|title=Buffalo Bill's Wild West: Celebrity, Memory, and Popular History|url=https://archive.org/details/buffalobillswild0000kass|url-access=registration|last=Kasson|first=Joy|publisher=Hill and Wang|year=2000|isbn=0809032449|location=New York}}</ref>{{rp|139}} The couple met when Cody had traveled to [[St. Louis]] under his command during the [[American Civil War|Civil War]]. Cody's autobiography barely mentioned the courtship to Frederici but declared, "I now adored her above any other young lady I had ever seen."<ref name= Kasson /> Cody suggested in letters and his autobiography that Frederici had pestered him into marriage, but he was aware that it was "very smart to be engaged."<ref name= Kasson /> This rhetoric became pushed more and more in his explanations for marriage as the relationship between him and his wife began to decline.

Frederici stayed home with their children. Two of their children died young while the family was living in [[Rochester, New York]]. These two and a third child were buried in [[Mount Hope Cemetery, Rochester|Mount Hope Cemetery]], in Rochester.<ref>{{cite web| url= http://www.rochesterhistoryalive.com/Mt.%20Hope%20Notables.htm |title= Some notable people who are buried in Mt. Hope Cemetery| website= rochesterhistoryalive.com| publisher= | date= | access-date= November 11, 2012}}</ref> While his wife and children remained in North Platte, Bill stayed outside the home, hunting, scouting, and building up his acting career in the ''Wild West'' show.<ref name= Kasson /> As Cody began to travel more frequently and to places farther from home, problems over infidelity, real or imagined, began to arise. These concerns grew so great that in 1893, Frederici showed up at his hotel room in [[Chicago]] unannounced and was led to "Mr. and Mrs. Cody's suite."<ref name= Kasson /> Cody mentions in his autobiography that he was "embarrassed by the throng of beautiful ladies" who surrounded him both in the cast and the audiences, and this trend continued as he became involved with more and more actresses who were not afraid to show their attraction to him in front of an audience.<ref name="Cody1" /><ref name= Kasson />
[[File:Buffalo Bill's Divorce Announcement.jpg|thumb|Excerpt from a newspaper in Erie, Colorado, reporting Cody's filing for divorce]]

Cody filed for [[divorce]] in 1904, after 38 years of marriage.<ref name= Kasson /> His decision was made after years of jealous arguments, bad blood between his wife and his sisters, and friction between the children and their father. By 1891, Cody had instructed his brother-in-law to handle Frederici's affairs and property, saying "I often feel sorry for her. She is a strange woman but I don't mind her{{snd}}remember she is my wife{{snd}}and let it go at that. If she gets cranky, just laugh at it, she can't help it."<ref>{{cite news| first= W. F.|last= Cody |title= Letter to Al Goodman| date= August 25, 1891| editor= Foote| work= Letters from Buffalo Bill| page= 69}}</ref> Cody hoped to keep the divorce quiet, to not disrupt his show or his stage persona, but Frederici had other ideas. Filing for divorce was scandalous in the early 20th century when marital unions were seen as binding for life. This furthered Cody's determination to get Frederici to agree to a "quiet legal separation," to avoid "war and publicity."<ref name= Kasson /> The court records and depositions that were kept with the court case threatened to ruin Cody's respectability and credibility. His private life had not been open to the public before, and the application for divorce brought unwanted attention to the matter. Not only did townspeople feel the need to take sides in the divorce, but headlines rang out with information about Cody's alleged infidelities or Frederici's excesses.<ref name= Kasson />

Cody's two main allegations against his wife were that she attempted to poison him on multiple occasions (this allegation was later proved false) and that she made living in North Platte "unbearable and intolerable" for Cody and his guests.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title=Buffalo Bill's America: William Cody and the Wild West Show |last= Warren| first= Louis| publisher= Vintage Books|year=2005|isbn=0375726586|location=New York|pages=[https://archive.org/details/buffalobillsamer00warr/page/490 490–515]| url= https://archive.org/details/buffalobillsamer00warr/page/490}}</ref> The press picked up on the story immediately, creating a battle between Cody and Frederici's teams of lawyers, both of which seemed to be the better authority on Nebraska divorce law.<ref name=":1" /> Divorce laws varied from state to state in the early 1900s. Desertion was the main grounds for divorce, but in some jurisdictions, such as Kansas, divorce could be granted if a spouse was "intolerable."<ref>{{cite journal |url= http://montanawomenshistory.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/Petrik-Paula-Not-a-Love-Story-Bordeaux-v-Bordeaux.pdf |title=Not a Love Story: Bordeaux v. Bordeaux |last=Petrik |first=Paula| journal= Montana: The Magazine of Western History | year= 1991| volume= 41| number= 2| pages= 32–46}}</ref><ref name= Haywood>{{cite journal |url=http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1736&context=greatplainsquarterly| title= Unplighted Troths: Causes for Divorce in a Frontier Town Toward the End of the Nineteenth Century |last= Haywood |first= C. Robert| year= 1993| via= digitalcommons.unl.edu| publisher=University of Nebraska, Lincoln |journal= Great Plains Quarterly| volume= 1| number= 1}}</ref> The Victorian ideal of marriage did not allow for divorce in any case, but the move westward forced a change in the expectations of husbands and wives and the ability to remain married.<ref name= Haywood /> In Lewis and Clark County, Montana, 1867 records show that there were more divorces in that year than marriages.<ref name=":3">{{Cite book|title=Great Expectations: Marriage and Divorce in Post-Victorian America |url= https://archive.org/details/greatexpectation00maye|url-access=registration| last=May |first=Elaine Tyler| publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=1980 |location=Chicago| isbn=978-0226511665}}</ref> Part of the appeal of the frontier was that "a man cannot keep his wife here."<ref name=":3" />
[[File:Cody and Louisa.jpg|thumb|upright|Buffalo Bill and his wife, Louisa]]
After Cody's announcement that he was suing for divorce, Frederici began to fight back. She claimed that she had never attempted to poison him and that she wished to remain married.<ref name=":4">{{Cite news|url=https://www.coloradohistoricnewspapers.org/cgi-bin/colorado?a=d&d=ERN19050224-01.2.31&srpos=4&e=-------en-20-ERN-1--txt-txIN-Buffalo+Bill+Divorce-------0- |title=Cody Divorce Case|date=February 24, 1905|work=Erie News, vol. 2, no. 38}}</ref> The trial then moved to court in February 1905.<ref name=":4" /> One of the witnesses who spoke to a newspaper was Mrs. John Boyer, a housekeeper in the Cody home who was married to a man who worked for the ''Wild West'' show. She claimed that Frederici acted inhospitably towards Cody's guests and that, when Cody was not at the ranch, she would "feed the men too much and talk violently about Cody and his alleged sweethearts{{spaces}}... and that she was seen putting something into his coffee."<ref name=":4" /> Other witnesses mentioned Cody's comment that to handle his wife he had to "get drunk and stay drunk."<ref name=":4" /> The battle in court continued, with testimony from three witnesses, Mary Hoover, George Hoover, and M.{{spaces}}E. Vroman.<ref>{{Cite web| url= https://library.centerofthewest.org/digital/collection/p17097coll2/id/59|title=MS166.02.07.001|website=library.centerofthewest.org|access-date=February 21, 2021|archive-date=March 5, 2021| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210305001553/http://library.centerofthewest.org/digital/collection/p17097coll2/id/59|url-status=dead}}</ref> After the witnesses had testified, Cody changed his mind about the divorce.

Cody's change of mind was not due to any improvement in his relationship with Frederici but rather was due to the death of their daughter, Arta Louise, in 1904 from "organic trouble."<ref name=":1" /> With this weighing heavily on him, Cody sent a telegram to Frederici hoping to put aside "personal differences" for the funeral. Frederici was furious and refused any temporary reconciliation.<ref name=":1" /> Cody decided to continue pursuing the divorce, adding to his complaint that Frederici would not sign mortgages and that she had subjected him to "extreme cruelty" in blaming him for the death of Arta. When the trial proceeded a year later, in 1905, both their tempers were still hot. The final ruling was that "incompatibility was not grounds for divorce," so that the couple was to stay legally married.<ref name=":1" /> The judge and the public sided with Frederici, the judge deciding that her husband's alleged affairs and his sisters' meddling in his marriage had caused his unhappiness, not his wife. Cody returned to Paris to continue with the ''Wild West'' show and attempted to maintain a hospitable, but distant, relationship with his wife.<ref name=":1" /> The two reconciled in 1910, after which Frederici often traveled with her husband until he died in 1917.<ref name=":1" />

Bill's daughter, Irma Cody, died in Cody in 1918.{{citation needed|date= November 2023}} She is buried at Riverside Cemetery in Cody, Wyoming.