Charles Goodnight

Charles Goodnight

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."^[1]

Early years

Goodnight was born in Macoupin County, Illinois, east of St. Louis, Missouri, the fourth child of Charles Goodnight and the former Charlotte Collier. (Goodnight's father's grave is located in a pasture located south of Bunker Hill, Illinois.)

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.^[2] He also later made 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.

Cattle

The 2,000-mile Goodnight-Loving Trail extended from the Texas Panhandle and into Colorado as it headed north into Wyoming.

Charles Goodnight statue outside of the Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum at the West Texas A&M University campus

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. 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 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^[3] 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.^[4]

In addition to raising cattle, Goodnight preserved a herd of native bison, which survives to this day. 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, calleld beefalo as well, on a ranch near Grand Canyon National Park in northern Arizona.^[5]

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.

Personal life

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.

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 Two by Twos church and was baptized a few months before his death in Goodnight, Texas.^[6] Evetts Haley had described Goodnight as "deeply religious and reverential by nature."^[7]

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.^[7]

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.^[8]

The western-themed sculptor Grant Speed's sculpture of Goodnight is housed in the Square House Museum in Panhandle, Texas. In 2010, another of Speed's sculptures of Goodnight sold at auction for $5,400.^[9]

In literature

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 in 1935, six years after his death.

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.

All four "Lonesome Dove" novels include brief appearances by Goodnight. He plays his largest role in the final volume, Streets of Laredo. His appearance in the prequel Dead Man's Walk is historically inaccurate. The story takes place during the Santa Fe Expedition of 1841, when Goodnight would have been only five years old. 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.

The West Texas songwriter Andy Wilkinson wrote "Charlie Goodnight: His Life in Poetry and Song". The CD was produced by Lloyd Maines of Lubbock, Texas.

Mari Sandoz [Old Jules Country] in the part "Some dedicated Men" relates the difficulties of Goodnight's cattle drives to Colorado [pages 171–175].

In James A. Michener's book Centennial, the Skimmerhorn Trail is based on the actual Goodnight-Loving Trail. In addition his name is mentioned in the novel and the character R.J. Poteet appears to be based on him.

Ralph Compton's novel The Goodnight Trail, is heavily based on the first use of Goodnight's Trail.

Restoration of the Goodnight House

External images
	Charles Goodnight House, 1888

The Goodnight home, located twelve miles east of Claude off U.S. Highway 287, is undergoing renovation through auspices of the Armstrong County Museum. The structure has been painted to resemble its appearance in 1887. Montie Goodin, a member of the museum board who was born in the Goodnight house in 1931, two years after Goodnight's death, said that Goodnight had no concept of his own importance: "It didn't matter who you were, he invited all in."^[10]

The house, included in the National Register of Historic Places, had electricity, natural gas, water and two bathrooms and sheltered hundreds of ranch workers and cowboys over the years. Since 2006, the Armstrong County Museum in Claude has been raising money to restore the structure and make it the centerpiece of the planned Charles Goodnight Historical Center. Nearly $1.8 million has been raised, but another $600,000 is needed. The funds have been contributed by several Amarillo-area philanthropies as well as fundraisers from the Texas Historical Foundation. The first phase of the restoration, which included work on the foudation, porches, roof, and exterior paint, has been completed. Goodin said that the next step will include interior painting and wallpapering. A small rope bed built by Adam Shiek, Goodnight's second stepfather, a minister and a furniture maker, will be placed in the house upon renovation. Ruth Robinson of Clarendon, the seat of Donley County, who is a great-great-niece of Goodnight's, donated the bed as well as her mother's Victorian bedroom set.^[10]

Namesake

The following are named after Goodnight:

• Charles Goodnight Memorial Trail
• Former town of Goodnight (now a ghost town) in Armstrong County, site of the former Goodnight Baptist College, and birthplace in 1920 of the scientist Cullen M. Crain
• Several streets in the Texas Panhandle
• The highway to Palo Duro Canyon State Park
• 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^[11]
• 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

See also

• Fort Sumner, New Mexico

Notes

1. ^ Deborah Hedstrom-Page (2007). From Ranch to Railhead with Charles Goodnight. B&H Publishing Group. ISBN 0805432728. http://books.google.com/books?id=2IKDvgxIEVsC&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=charles+goodnight+%2B+greatness#PPA41,M1. 
2. ^ S.C. Gwynne, Empire of the Summer Moon. New York: Scribner, 2010, pp. 173-175.
3. ^ Texas State, Historical Commission. "Charles Goodnight Historical Marker, Armstrong County, Tx". http://www.stoppingpoints.com/texas/sights.cgi?marker=Charles+Goodnight&cnty=armstrong. Retrieved 2008-10-10. 
4. ^ "Oral History Collection". Texas Tech University, Southwest Collection/Special Collections Library. http://swco.ttu.edu/abstracts/2614.htm. Retrieved May 3, 2011. 
5. ^ "Buffalo Jones". h-net.msu.edu. http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-shgape&month=0008&week=c&msg=4ZaC2nPza053qdx7jtInAg&user=&pw=. Retrieved September 4, 2010. 
6. ^ Kropp, Cherie (6 January 2009). "Col. Charles Goodnight". Telling The Truth. Archived from the original on 18 March 2010. http://www.webcitation.org/5oKWCo3xT. Retrieved 18 March 2010. 
7. ^ ^{a b} Charles Goodnight exhibit, Panhandle-Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas
8. ^ Charles Goodnight – Blazing the Cattle Trails
9. ^ "2010 March Auction". altermann.com. http://www.altermann.com/gallery/pages/c103u10337.htm. Retrieved June 25, 2011. 
10. ^ ^{a b} Cheryl Berzanskis, "Museum works to restore Goodnight's home", Amarillo Globe-News, July 17, 2009
11. ^ Waggoners Win Charles Goodnight Award

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

External links

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

Persondata
Name	Goodnight, Charles
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	March 5, 1836
Place of birth
Date of death	December 12, 1929
Place of death