Genealogy Data Page 350 (Notes Pages)

Note: He was known around Boulder, Colorado as "Rocky Mountain Joe." He was born in Boston, Massachusetts. He has an adventurous career from boyhood until his death. Most of his early days were spent among Indians and those who fought the red men. When he was a young boy, his father moved the family to Wisconsin where he became an Indian trader. Young Joseph adopted many of the Indians' ways and learned to shoot a rifle and became an expert horseman. He later apprenticed as a broom maker and was supposed to apprentice until he was 21, but Dan Costello's circus came through the country and lured Joe away to join the troop.
He remained with the circus until the outbreak of the Civil War. The circus was in Cairo, Illinois when the Wisconsin Calvary arrived. The excitement of army life appealed to Joseph stronger than the circus, so he enlisted in the 4th Wisconsin Calvary and saw action in Mobile, Alabama and Baton Rouge, Louisiana. When Indian trouble broke out on the western frontier, Joseph made his way north and on September 3, 1864 he joined General Sully's command. He participated in the battle of White Stone Hill which dealt a severe blow to the Sioux.
His next big Indian fight took place August 2, 1867 under Major James Powell. Thirty-one men, including Sturdevant, held off nearly three thousand Indians for a short time. Later, Joseph, with one of his companions was captured. They were staked to the ground to be burned by their captors, but both of them escaped during a heavy rain storm and returned to their command.
Sturdevant was given the task of carrying the mail from Fort Stevenson on the Missouri River to Fort Totten in the Dakota Territory. In July 1868, he was captured by a band of Sioux Indians under the leadership of the great chief, Sitting Bull. He remained their prisoner for nearly two years. In 1879, he and another companion escaped by floating down the Missouri River from the site of Fort Berthold to Council Bluffs, Iowa. In 1873, he returned to Dakota Territory where he joined the forces of General Custer as a scout. He was later transferred to Colonel Cook as an Indian scout.
The Rocky Mountains lured Joe and he arrived in Boulder, Colorado about 1874. He immediately liked the region and opened a paper hanging and decorating business. The picturesque garb of a trapper with long hair hanging over his shoulders gave Joe the appearance of a true frontiersman and it was not long before he was known as "Rocky Mountain Joe." In 1874, he met Anna Lyckman and they were married two years later.