2026 is the 150th anniversary of the founding of the JA! It seems like a good time to publish Montie Ritchie's speech at the 100th anniversary.
It is the greatest pleasure and honor for us tonight to welcome so many guests to our ranch home. I would like to give you a background history of Mrs. Conelia Adair and three generations of her family who succeed her on the JA Ranch.
Mrs. Adair was born Cornelia Wadsworth in the year 18371 at her famous American Colonial family's farm estate at Geneso, New York, on lands her Yankee forebearers had acquired by treaty from the Seneca Indians. She married Montgomery Ritchie of Boston in the year 1857, who died during the Civil War serving with his regiment, The Second Infantry Battalion of the New England Guard. A few months before Major Ritchie died2, he had crossed the confederate lines, after the battle of the Wilderness, and retrieved the body of his father-in-law, General James Wadsworth, and escorted the body to the family burial plot in Geneseo. Beside this fresh-dug grave, he, himself, was buried a few months later. The widow, Cornelia Ritchie, took her two sons to Europe to be educated, and while there, met and married John Adair in 18693 , an Irish landowner with whom she returned to the United States.
John Adair had a great black beard and Irish temper to match and proved unadaptable to New York City's society and even to the Wadsworth famly living peaceably on their farmlands. I have always suspected that the Wadsworths heard of the rugged frontier types in the mining towns of the west and decided they had just such a one in John Adair in the bosom of their own family and they promoted, perhaps, John's departure for the wild west. During the year 1874, the Adairs journeyed west to Colorado, riding up the Platte River from Sidney, Nebraska, visiting Indian lodges as they went and protected by an escort of Cavalry. They spent the summer inspecting mining properties in Colorado in which they had originally intended to invest. The highlight of their trip was a buffalo hunt on the plains of Colorado guided by Charles Goodnight4 . Around the campfire at night, Goodnight told them of the Palo Duro Canyon in Texas and explained its unique properties for a cattle ranch where the cattle could roam as the buffalo did and thrive, grazing on the surrounding plains land in the summertime and wintering in the shelter of the canyons. Alas, the buffalo hunt ended on an unfortunate note when John Adair's horse, galloping after buffalo, put its foot in a Prairie Dog hole and fell. John Adair's gun was accidently discharged killing his horse and John, himself, sustained serious injury as a result of the fall5 .
Returning in 1876, The Adairs rode with Mr. and Mrs. Goodnight from Pueblo, Colorado, to the Palo Duro Canyon and finding it as Mr. Goodnight had represented, formed a ten-year-term partnership with Goodnight6 . Charles Goodnight was to provide the know-how and the Adairs the money to purchase the land to control the grazing of, at one time, almost one million acres of land on both sides of the Palo Duro Canyon. John Adair's initials became our brand.
John Adair died in 1885 prior to the expiration of the orginal term of the contract with Charles Goodnight. Mrs. Adair continued all her life to take an intense personal interest in the growth, consolidation, and operation of the ranch. She insisted on a remuda of all bay horses. Dhe imported purebred Hereford cattle from England. And once, when she found a portion of the ranch stocked with spotted SanSimone cows, she was so outraged that she discharged teh foreman who had been responsible for this aesthetic affront.
My father worked on the ranch as a young man and came to manage the Tule ranch, which was then the steer division. Buring this time, he lived in a dugout on the plains on the south side of the Palo Duro Canyon. My father often told me those were perhaps the happiest days of his life and his stories so impressed me that having completed an education in Europe, I came to the ranch to see these wonders for myself, and perhaps to check on the veracity of the wild tales my father had told me.
Mrs. Adair was an extremely social person and lived in very considerable style. It bothered her and her ambitions for her son when her elegant friends inquired about the welfare of her handsome boy, and she had to reply, "My handsome son is punching cows in Texas." This was of course long before such activities were glamourized by the movies and TV. Her concern for her son's future promoted her eventually to order him away from the ranch, egged on perhaps by Goodnight's allegation he was shooting craps with the cowboys7 . My father then became a sportsman and worldwide adventurer engaging in activities ranging from buying JA horses for the New York City Police to visiting ranches in Outback, Australia and Enlisting in the English Army during the Boar War, where his knowledge of living on the Texas prairie was ideally suited to organize the movements of men and horses across the South African Veldt.
When Mrs Adair died in 1921 in England, my father was living there, too, but his health had so deteriorated he could not return to Texas to care for his heritage, and he died in England three years after Mrs. Adair. His English wife, my mother, felt so strongly about her English family ties she was renaturalized a British subject and raised her family in Europe. In 1931, I came to this ranch and have remained here ever since, assuming the management in 1935. There have been many, many chages here since then. Mostly for the worse, I often think. These wagons for instance were, for months on end, the home and sole source of supply for our cow wagon crew. Today, they are curiosities.
Now we have a fourth generation who loves the ranch and knows most of its secret places and will likely carry on the family tradition. My daughter, Cornelia Wadsworth, recently was married to Teel Bivins, also of famous Panhandle ranch heritage. I with them luck in their great venture.
Nobody or organization suceeds alone in this world, so the fact that we are able this year to celebrate our 100th birthday is due, in large part, to the wonderful, loyal men Á women, leaders who worked for and with us, men of imagination, emn of skill, men of courage, men who braved the elements day or night, men who took pride in their crafts, loved their horses and understood their cattle and were eager to enhance the reputation of the JA and proud to be part.
This party and distinguished group is also gathered to honor Jimmy Whittenburg and his wife Jeanie and most of their five children, who are here tonight with them. Jimmy is too well-known in Amarillo, throughout the United States and among national business and charitable organizations to read you a long list of his many distinguished offices as trustee and director of corporate ventures. I feel perhaps his proudest public position is his recent election as President of The Texas and Southwestern Cattle Raisers Association. The only thing we have on Jimmy, and in this matter he is probably not too competitive, is that he is not 100 years old tonight.
50
years later, Lela Bivins, Ninia Ritchie, Nolan Bivins and Andrew Bivins
celebrate their JA's 150th birthday.
Alex Hunt, professor at WT A&M has done considerable research on the JA and Cornelia Adair. He has pointed out some variances:
1. Cornelia's birth year was 1838, though many sources report 1837 or 1839
2. Montgomery Ritchie died in G3eneseo in 1864 after leaving service. While he served in a variety of posts, he was discharged as a Captain in the 1st Massachusetts Calvalry.
3. The marriage occurred in May 1867 in Paris. Various published histories have the date and other details wrong.
4. Charles Goodnight was not on this buffalo hunt. The Adairs met Goodnight later in Denver (after John Adair set up a brokerage business in Denver in 1875) sometime betwwen November 1875 and May 1877, and heard of Palo Duro then.
5. John sustained only minor injuries from this incident.
6. Goodnight and John Adair formed a five-year partnership, which was later renewed. Conelia became Goodnight's partner after Adair's 1885 death. The first contract was effective June 18, 1877.
7. As Goodnight was keenly trying to train Jack as his replacement, this situation put a wrench in his plan, and the allegations of gambling are most likely true.
Click here to see Ninia's early experience horseback
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A modern story of cowboys and desperados. Click here.
Rhett Cauble's son Billy's paper on Charles Goodnight.
Nick Auker's son Oscar wrote a
couple of poems while
living at the JA.
Early Cowboys: John Mann, Frank Mitchell
Cowboy memories: Tom Blasingame, Snooks Sparks, Jiggs Mann, Fish Wilson, Bob Bullock on John Rhea.
JA Links:
1908 Photographs of JA by
Click on brand to link to another ranch's
information.
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