Charles Goodnight

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Charles 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."^[1]

Goodnight was born in Macoupin County, Illinois, east of St. Louis, Missouri, the fourth child of Charles Goodnight and the former Charlotte Collier. Goodnight is particularly known in Canyon and Amarillo. The former community of Goodnight, now a ghost town in Armstrong County, bears his name.

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 guiding Texas Rangers to the Indian camp where Cynthia Ann Parker was recaptured, and for later making a treaty with her son, Quanah Parker.

At the outbreak of the Civil War, he joined the Confederate States of America. Most of his time was spent as part of a frontier regiment guarding against raids by Indians. At the war's end, Goodnight returned to Texas and joined in "making the gather" -- a near state-wide round-up of cattle that had roamed free during the four long years of war.

Following the war, he became involved in the herding of feral Texas Longhorn cattle northward from West Texas to railroads. In 1866, he and Oliver Loving drove their first herd of cattle northward along what would become known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail. 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. Goodnight is reported to have kept a photograph of Oliver Loving in his pocket for a long time after his death. As requested by the dying Loving, Goodnight carried the body from New Mexico to Weatherford, the seat of Parker County, for burial.

On July 26, 1870, Goodnight married Mary Ann "Molly" Dyer, a teacher from Weatherford, located west of Fort Worth. Goodnight developed a practical sidesaddle for Molly. Though he was not of his wife's denomination, Goodnight donated money to build a Methodist Church in Goodnight. He and Molly also established the Goodnight Academy to offer post-elementary education to hundreds of children of ranchers.

In order to take advantage of available grass, timber, water, and game, founded in 1876 what was to become 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 Asssociation. 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.

In addition to raising cattle, Goodnight preserved a herd of native American Bison, which survives to this day. He also crossbred buffalo with domestic cattle, which he called cattalo. 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.

After Molly died in April 1926, Goodnight became ill himself. He was nourished back to health by a 26-year-old nurse and telegraph operator from Butte, Montana, named Corinne Goodnight, with whom Charles had been corresponding because of their shared surname.

On March 5, 1927, Goodnight turned ninety-one and married the younger Corinne Goodnight, who was hence Corinne Goodnight Goodnight. He joined her Apostolic Church, akin to Pentecostal, and was baptized a few months before his death in Goodnight, Texas. Evetts Haley had described Goodnight as "deeply religious and reverential by nature."^[2]

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.^[2]

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. An investment in Mexican silver mines brought financial ruin, and he was forced to sell his ranch. He conveyed the property 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 also became interested in film making. Goodnight died in Tucson, Arizona, just two years after sound track was put into film.^[3]

The following are named after Goodnight:

(1) Charles Goodnight Memorial Trail

(2) Former town of Goodnight, site of the former Goodnight Baptist College and birthplace in 1920 of the scientist Cullen M. Crain)

(3) Several streets in the Texas Panhandle

(4) The highway to Palo Duro Canyon State Park.

(5) The annual Goodnight Award recognizes an individual or business for sharing Goodnight's love of the land and for protecting the Western heritage of Texas.^[4]

(6) The annual Charles Goodnight Chuckwagon Cookoff held in September in Clarendon is the principal fundraiser for the Saints' Roost Museum, which includes a Goodnight exhibit.

[edit] In literature

Laura Vernon Hamner, who knew Charles and Molly Goodnight, from her time in Claude, Texas, published a novelized biography of the cattleman, The No-Gun Man of Texas in 1935, six years after his death.

In his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove and its sequels, Larry McMurtry based the relationship between Gus McCrae and Woodrow Call on the relationship between Goodnight and Loving. The grave marker Call carves for one of the characters late in the novel is based on an actual gravestone Charlie Goodnight had created, and the trek back to Texas at the end of the novel is based on Goodnight's return of Loving's body to Texas.

There are other notable influences from Goodnight's life in the novel as well. All four novels include brief appearances by Goodnight as a character, and he plays his largest role in the final (chronological) volume of the series, Streets of Laredo. Goodnight also appears briefly in the prequel Dead Man's Walk and in a more prominent role in the sequel Streets of Laredo, where he and Call have become good friends. However, Goodnight's appearance as a character in Dead Man's Walk is historically inaccurate. The action of the novel is set during the Santa Fe Expedition of 1841. Goodnight appears as a young man in the novel, but would have been only five years old at the time. Goodnight is played in Dead Man's Walk by Chris Penn, in Comanche Moon by Jeremy Ratchford and in Streets of Laredo by James Gammon.

The Western novelist Matt Braun's novel Texas Empire is based on the life of Goodnight and fictionalizes the founding of the JA Ranch.

The song The Goodnight-Loving Trail by Utah Phillips describes a chuckwagon cook on a cattle drive.

[edit] References

• Charles Goodnight: Cowman and Plainsman, by J. Evetts Haley, with illustrations by Harold Dow Bugbee
• Texas Ranchmen, by Dorothy Abbott McCoy
• The New Handbook of Texas, Texas State Historical Association
• Family History, by Mark Tracy Sheek
• AJ Edward, a former resident of Canyon Texas
• JA Ranch Records, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library, Texas Tech University at Lubbock, Texas

[edit] External links

• PBS-WETA: New Perspectives on the West -- Charles Goodnight
• Charles Goodnight from the Handbook of Texas Online
• Legends of America- Charles Goodnight