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Title: On this day -- Dec. 12, 1929....
Source:
Wiki
URL Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Goodnight
Published: Dec 12, 2012
Author: numerous
Post Date: 2012-12-12 03:18:19 by X-15
Keywords: None
Views: 242
Comments: 5
Charles Goodnight, also known as Charlie Goodnight (March 5, 1836 – December 12, 1929), was a cattle rancher in the American West, perhaps the best known rancher in Texas. He is sometimes known as the "father of the Texas Panhandle." Essayist and historian J. Frank Dobie said that Goodnight "approached greatness more nearly than any other cowman of history." Goodnight moved to Texas in 1846 with his mother and stepfather, Hiram Daugherty. In 1856, he became a cowboy and served with the local militia, fighting against Comanche raiders. A year later, in 1857, Goodnight joined the Texas Rangers. Goodnight is also known for rousing and leading a posse against the Comanche in 1860 that located the Indian camp where Cynthia Ann Parker was living with her husband, Peta Nocona, then guiding Texas Rangers to the camp, leading to Cynthia Ann's recapture. He later made a treaty with her son, Quanah Parker. At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate States Army. Most of his time was spent as part of a frontier regiment guarding against raids by Indians. Following the war, he became involved in the herding of feral Texas Longhorn cattle northward from West Texas to railroads. This "making the gather" was a near state-wide round-up of cattle that had roamed free during the four long years of war. In 1866, he and Oliver Loving drove their first herd of cattle northward along what would become known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. Early in the partnership with Loving, they pastured cattle at such sites as Capulin Mountain in northeastern New Mexico. Goodnight invented the chuckwagon, which was first used on the initial cattle drive. Upon arriving in New Mexico, they formed a partnership with New Mexico cattleman John Chisum for future contracts to supply the United States Army with cattle. After Loving's death, Goodnight and Chisum extended the trail from New Mexico to Colorado, and eventually to Wyoming. The Goodnight-Loving trail extended from Belknap, Texas, to Fort Sumner, New Mexico Goodnight and Loving were close friends. Goodnight sat by Loving's bed during the two weeks it took the latter to die, and reportedly kept a photograph of Loving in his pocket long after his death, and later put a photograph on his desk. As requested by the dying Loving, Goodnight carried the body from New Mexico to Weatherford, the seat of Parker County, Texas, for burial. In order to take advantage of available grass, timber, water, and game, he founded in 1876 what was to become the first Texas Panhandle ranch, the JA Ranch, in the Palo Duro Canyon of the south Texas Panhandle. He partnered with the Irish businessman John George Adair to create the JA, which stands for "John Adair". In 1880, Goodnight was a founder of the Panhandle Stockman's Association. The organization sought to improve cattle-breeding methods and to reduce the threat of rustlers and outlaws. After Adair's death in 1885, Goodnight worked in partnership for a time with Adair's widow Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair. He also developed an acquaintanceship with W. D. Twichell, who lived in Amarillo from 1890 to 1918 and surveyed 165 of the 254 Texas counties. After Goodnight had already left the JA, Tom Blasingame came to the ranch in 1918. Blasingame worked there most of the next seventy-three years, having, at the time of his death in 1989, become the oldest cowboy in the history of the American West. In addition to raising cattle in 1876, the Goodnights preserved a herd of native plains bison that year, which survives to this day in Caprock Canyons State Park. Bison of this herd were introduced into the Yellowstone National Park in 1902 and into the larger zoos and ranches throughout the nation. He also crossbred buffalo with domestic cattle, which he called cattalo. Charles "Buffalo" Jones, a co-founder of Garden City, Kansas, after meeting with Goodnight in Texas, also bred cattalo, or beefalo, on a ranch near Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona. In his younger years, Goodnight smoked some fifty cigars per day but switched to a pipe in his mature years. He never learned to read or write but had his wives write letters for him to various individuals, including Quanah Parker. During his last illness, he gave his gold Hampton pocket watch to his pastor, Ralph Blackburn. After he mastered ranching, Goodnight was involved in other activities, including the establishment of his Goodnight College in Armstrong County and working as a newspaperman and a banker. He lost his life's savings when the Mexican silver mine he invested in was nationalized by the Mexican government. He was forced to sell his ranch in 1919 to an oilman friend, W. J. McAlister, with the provision that Goodnight and his then first wife could stay in the home until they both died. He is buried next to his first wife, Mary Ann Goodnight, in Goodnight Cemetery near Amarillo, Texas. In 1935, six years after Goodnight's death, Laura Vernon Hamner, who knew Charles and Molly Goodnight, from her time in Claude, the seat of Armstrong County, Texas, published a novelized biography of the cattleman, The No-Gun Man of Texas. Larry McMurtry's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove is a fictionalized account of Goodnight and Loving's third cattle drive. Woodrow F. Call represents Goodnight, Augustus McCrae is Loving. Though the characters have personalities rather different from their real-life counterparts, the novel borrows heavily from actual events, in particular Loving's ambush by Indians, and Goodnight's attentive care as Loving died from an arrow-induced infection. Call returns McCrae's body to Texas, just as Goodnight returned Loving's body for burial in Weatherford, Texas. The grave marker that Call carves for McCrae is based on the gravestone Charles Goodnight created for Loving. 
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#1. To: X-15 (#0)
bump this
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken Some neat history here. It's incredible what ambitious men can do when unencumbered by government. The mini series, Lonesome Dove, was well worth watching.
McMurtry is one of the finest novelists Texas has ever produced; I've enjoyed every one of his books.
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken You're a well read man, Sir Lod.
I was blessed to have parents who taught me to read long before first grade, and today, the information of all time is right here on algore's internet!
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” ~ H. L. Mencken
#2. To: X-15, Lod, 4 (#0)
#3. To: Jethro Tull, X-14, 4 (#2)
#4. To: Lod (#3)
#5. To: Jethro Tull (#4)
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