Father of the Texas Panhandle (Charles Goodnight; George Tyng)

Entry in progress—B.P.
 
Wikipedia: Charles Goodnight
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.”
 
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 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, he founded in 1876 what was to become the first Texas Panhandle ranch, the JA Ranch, in the Palo Duro Canyon[2] 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.
 
Handbook of Texas Online
TYNG, GEORGE (ca. 1839-1906). George Tyng, called the “father” of the Panhandle, was born about 1839 in Newburyport, Massachusetts. He was of Scottish ancestry. After his education at Dummer Academy and in Hanover, Germany, he spent several years in various business ventures in Cuba and South America. He then settled at Santa Barbara, California, where he married Elena Carillo Thompson in 1869. They had three sons. Tyng moved his family to Yuma, Arizona, in the early 1870s, and in 1874 he was appointed United States marshal in Arizona Territory. He served in that position until 1877, when he purchased the Arizona Sentinel in Yuma. Three years later he sold the paper and moved to Mexico City, where he became managing director of the Tehuantepec Inter-Ocean railroad, which he had helped organize. While on a business trip to Florida, Tyng passed through Victoria, Texas, and around 1885 the family established a home, cattle ranch, and pecan orchard there. Through his friendship with Frederic de P. Foster, Tyng became manager of the newly reorganized White Deer Lands Trust (see FRANCKLYN LAND AND CATTLE COMPANY) in the Panhandle in 1886. The next year he moved the Diamond F Ranch headquarters to the vicinity of what is now White Deer. He encouraged the use of wells, windmills, and fences, and promoted farm settlement. Under Tyng’s management the Diamond F shipped large numbers of high-grade cattle between 1888 and 1903. Tyng suggested the name Pampa, after the pampas of Argentina, for the new company-headquarters town in 1902 and constructed the first frame building there. Soon afterward he resigned. Tyng held mining interests in Mexico, Honduras, Arizona, and Canada. With his sons Francis and Charles, he established a lead and silver mining operation in American Fork Canyon near Alta, Utah, in 1902. Their efforts paid off in 1904, when new veins of silver and lead carbonate were discovered. On January 19, 1906, Tyng was killed when an avalanche of snow crushed his office building near the mine shaft. He was buried on Kalamazoo Flat near the mine.
 
29 June 1907, Dallas (TX) Morning News, pg. 8:
In 1879 Col. Charles Goodnight, known as the “Father of the Panhandle,” roped two buffalo calves near his Texas ranch and gave them to his wife. From this beginning grew the Goodnight herd, one of the most important in the United States.
   
26 March 1926, Big Spring (TX) Herald, pg. 10, col. 4:
Colonel Goodnight is known throughout Texas as the Father of the Panhandle.
     
Time magazine
Milestones: Mar. 14, 1927
Monday, Mar. 14, 1927
Married. Col. Charles Goodnight, “Father of the Texas Panhandle,” to Corinne Goodnight, 26, (no relative) on his 91st birthday; at Clarendon, Tex.
 
Google Books
Charles Goodnight: Father of the Texas Panhandle
By William Thomas Hagan
Published by University of Oklahoma Press
2007
   
Late Show with David Letterman
Wednesday, February 11, 2009
Show #3064
” . . . and now, father of the Texas panhandle . . . . . David Letterman!”