Template:Short description Template:Infobox person
Oliver Loving (December 4, 1812 – September 25, 1867) was an American rancher and cattle driver. Together with Charles Goodnight, he developed the Goodnight-Loving Trail. He was mortally wounded by Native Americans while on a cattle drive.
Loving County, Texas, the least-populous county in the United States is named in his honor.
Early lifeEdit
Oliver Loving was born on December 4, 1812, in Hopkins County, Kentucky.<ref name="chron">Richard Dunham, Today in Texas History: Trailblazer Oliver Loving dies, Houston Chronicle, September 25, 2010</ref><ref name="briscoe">A Guide to the Oliver Loving Letters, 1862, The University of Texas at Austin: Briscoe Center for American History</ref><ref name="juliacauble">Julia Cauble Smith, "LOVING, OLIVER," Handbook of Texas Online (http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/flo38), accessed August 12, 2014. Uploaded on June 15, 2010. Published by the Texas State Historical Association.</ref><ref name="richardmelzer">Richard Melzer, Buried Treasures: Famous and Unusual Gravesites in New Mexico History, Santa Fe, New Mexico: Sunstone Press, 2007, p. 105 [1]</ref> His father was Joseph Loving and his mother, Susannah Mary Bourland.<ref name="briscoe"/>
CareerEdit
In 1833, he became a farmer in Muhlenberg County, Kentucky.<ref name="briscoe"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> Ten years later, with his brother and his brother-in-law, he moved to the Republic of Texas with their families.<ref name="briscoe"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> In Texas, Loving received 639.3 acres (2.59 km2) of land in three patents spread through three counties Collin, Dallas, and Parker.<ref name="briscoe"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> He farmed and, to feed his growing family, hauled freight in his early years as a Texan.<ref name="juliacauble"/>
By 1855, he moved with his family to the future Palo Pinto County, Texas, where he ran a country store and ranched on Keechi Creek.<ref name="chron"/><ref name="briscoe"/> By 1857, he owned a thousand acres (4 km2) of land.<ref name="juliacauble"/> To market his large herd, Loving drove them out of Texas and in that same year he entrusted his nineteen-year-old son, Joseph, to drive his and his neighbors' cattle to Illinois up the Shawnee Trail.<ref name="juliacauble"/> The drive made a profit of $36 head and encouraged Loving to repeat the trek successfully the next year with John Noble Durkee.<ref name="juliacauble"/>
On August 29, 1860, together with John Dawson, he started a herd of 1,500 toward Denver, Colorado to feed miners in the area.<ref name="juliacauble"/> They crossed the Red River, traveled to the Arkansas River, and followed it to Pueblo, Colorado, where the cattle wintered.<ref name="juliacauble"/> In the spring, Loving sold his cattle for gold and tried to leave for Texas.<ref name="juliacauble"/> However, the American Civil War had broken out and the Union authorities prevented him from returning to the South until Kit Carson and others interceded for him.<ref name="juliacauble"/> During the war, he was commissioned to provide beef to the Confederate States Army and drive cattle along the Mississippi River.<ref name="chron"/><ref name="briscoe"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> When the war ended, the Confederate government reportedly owed him between $100,000 and $250,000.<ref name="chron"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> To make matters worse, the usual cattle markets were inadequate for the available supply.<ref name="chron"/>
In 1866, having heard about the probable need for cattle at Fort Sumner, New Mexico, where some eight thousand Native American Indians had been settled on a reservation, he gathered a herd, combined it with that of Charles Goodnight, and began a long drive to the fort.<ref name="chron"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> Their route later became known as the Goodnight-Loving Trail.<ref name="chron"/><ref name="briscoe"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> The two cattlemen sold beef to the army for $12,000 in gold, and then Loving drove the stock cattle on to Colorado and sold them near Denver, while Goodnight returned to Weatherford, the seat of Parker County, Texas, with the gold and also for a second herd. The two men were reunited in southern New Mexico, where they went into partnership with John Chisum at his ranch in the Bosque Grande, about forty miles south of Fort Sumner. (Chisum's sister Nancy was married to Loving's cousin, B.F. Bourland and had known Chisum for many years.) They spent the winter of 1866-67 there and supplied cattle from the ranch to Fort Sumner and Santa Fe.<ref name="juliacauble"/>
Personal lifeEdit
He married Susan Doggett Morgan in 1833.<ref name="briscoe"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> They had nine children.<ref name="briscoe"/><ref name="juliacauble"/>
DeathEdit
In the spring of 1867, Loving and Goodnight returned to Texas, ready to start a new drive.<ref name="chron"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> This third drive was slowed by heavy rains and Native American threats. Loving went ahead of the herd for contract bidding, taking only Bill Wilson, a trusted scout, with him.<ref name="juliacauble"/> Although Wilson told Loving that he should travel at night through Native American Indian country, Loving pushed ahead during the day.<ref name="juliacauble"/> In a Comanche attack, he was seriously wounded at Loving Bend on the Pecos River.<ref name="juliacauble"/><ref name="richardmelzer"/> The weakened Loving sent Wilson back to the herd, eluded the Indians, and, with the aid of Mexican traders, reached Fort Sumner, only to die there of gangrene.<ref name="chron"/> Before he died on September 25, 1867, Goodnight assured him that his wish to be buried in Texas would be carried out.<ref name="juliacauble"/><ref name="richardmelzer"/> After a temporary burial at Fort Sumner, while Goodnight drove the herd on to Colorado, Goodnight had Loving's body exhumed and returned to Texas.<ref name="juliacauble"/> Stories differ as to who accompanied the body back to Weatherford, but he was reburied there in Greenwood Cemetery on March 4, 1868.<ref name="juliacauble"/><ref name="richardmelzer"/> As a member of Phoenix Lodge No. 275 at Weatherford, Loving was buried with Masonic honors.<ref>Sammons, Dexter; Phoenix Lodge: The First Twenty-Five Years, 1864-1889; 1987, Nortex Press, Austin, Texas.</ref>
LegacyEdit
Loving County, Texas is named in his honor, as is the town of Loving, New Mexico.<ref name="juliacauble"/><ref name="richardmelzer"/> Additionally, Loving Bend on the Pecos River is also named for him.<ref name="richardmelzer"/> He has been inducted into the National Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.<ref name="chron"/><ref name="juliacauble"/> Also, his death was borrowed by novelist Larry McMurtry for his Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Lonesome Dove. In the book, Augustus "Gus" McCrae is injured by Indian arrows and sends his companion Pea Eye Parker to retrieve Woodrow F. Call. McCrae makes it to Miles City, but dies of blood poisoning, despite having one of his legs amputated. Call, like Goodnight, brings him back to Texas to bury him.Template:Citation needed In 1958, he was inducted into the Hall of Great Westerners of the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum.<ref>{{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}</ref>
Secondary sourceEdit
- Madeline Meyercord. Oliver Loving, Pioneer Drover of Texas. 277 pages.<ref>Template:Cite book</ref>