After the death of her beloved husband, John, Emma died by suicide. John was ultimately killed in an ambush by the family's enemies. As an adult, he worked with his uncle, Jacob Dutton, on the family land and had a family of his own his wife Emma and son Jack. The son of James and Margaret Dutton, John was only a child when his family founded their homestead in Montana-the land that would ultimately become the Yellowstone Dutton ranch. Feeling he belonged to the land and could not leave it, Sam remained behind as Elsa traveled on with her family, with the promise that she would return to him. He later began a romance with Elsa Dutton, and the two married without official ceremony. SamĪ Comanche warrior who the Duttons met along the wagon trail in 1883, Sam professed to have taken his name from the man who killed his wife. In her honor, James settled their remaining family on the spot in Montana where Elsa took her last breath.

However, not long after, Elsa was shot by an arrow during a retaliatory attack on the wagon train and ultimately died of her wounds. Though she and Sam acknowledged that she was his wife, he felt he could not leave his lands and people, and Elsa agreed to return to him after her family had completed their journey and found a homestead. Later, Elsa becomes entangled with Sam, a Comanche warrior who saves her life on the trail. Along the trail, she fell in love with a cowboy, Ennis, and the two planned to marry before Ennis was shot by a group of bandits. At the age of seventeen, she set out on a wagon train with her family in search of a new start in the west. Passionate and willful, Elsa was a skilled horseback rider and cowgirl, much to her mother’s chagrin.

Spirited Elsa ( Isabel May) was the eldest child of James and Margaret Dutton and served as the narrator of 1883. A strong leader and fiercely protective of her family, she set out with James and their family on the trail westward, only to settle on a homestead in Montana after the death of their daughter Elsa. The confident and uncompromising wife of James, Margaret (Faith Hill) was the Dutton family matriarch in 1883. Following the death of Elsa on the trail, John and his remaining family decided to settle in Montana, on what would one day become the famous Yellowstone Dutton Ranch.

Along with his wife, Margaret, their children, Elsa and John, James’s sister Claire, and Claire’s daughter Mary Abel, James set out with a wagon train from Fort Worth, Texas, but the journey was dogged by tragedy.

Haunted by his experiences in the Civil War, where he served in the Confederate army during the Battle of Antietam and was later held as a prisoner of war, James chose to strike out for a new life out west with his family in 1883. The patriarch of 1883, James (Tim McGraw) was a farmer from Tennessee.

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