Dear Kinfolk,

My favorite Western Classic of all time was Lonesome Dove.  The book by Larry McMurtry garnered numerous literary awards, among them was the Pulitzer Prize.  I recently learned it was based upon  the true accounts of Oliver Loving and Charles Goodnight.  The Goodnight-Loving Trail  was used in the cattle drives of the late 1860’s for the large-scale movement of Texas Longhorn cattle.  The trail was named after cattleman Charles Goodnight and Oliver Loving.

Their  cattle drive was organized from Fort Belknap, Texas, then to the Pecos River and up to Fort Sumner, New Mexico then north to Colorado.  This would be in the same time period when cattle ranches in Fort Belknap were owned by the Anderson and George families.  Goodnight and Loving with eighteen men and two-thousand head of cattle  set out on June 6, 1866 to blaze a trail from Belknap, Texas to Fort Sumner, New Mexico.  Among the eighteen men were cowboys Bose Ikard and Bill (one -arm) Wilson.  In 1867 they started another herd west over the same trail and struck the Pecos in the latter part of June.  Charles Goodnight wrote “after we had gone up this river about one hundred miles  it was decided that Mr. Loving should go ahead on horseback in order to reach New Mexico and Colorado in time to bid on the contracts which were to be let in July.  I selected Bill one-arm Wilson, the clearest headed man in the outfit, as his companion”.

While reading about Loving’s adventure, I remembered a old-old picture that my Aunt Noma Powers gave me of one of  our relatives named Billy Wilson, who had one arm.  He had lost his arm in a thrashing machine when he was about eight years old. He was our great grandmother, Nancy Wilson Anderson’s, brother. Nancy was married to Albert J. Anderson.

 Bill Wilson,  lived in the same Fort Belknap area, and  had one-arm.  Further research in the book INTERWOVEN, it refers to Bills brother “Fayette”, our Bill had a brother named Lafayette. On the back of the above picture it says “Uncle Billy Wilson and wife Aunt Em.  Grandmother Andersons brother”,

 In the movie “Lonesome Dove” you will remember the scene where Gus McRae (Loving) and the old man (Wilson) are caught in an Indian attack.    The Comanche’s spotted Loving and Wilson and once the two men were alerted they high tailed it back to the Pecos, where they hid in the bank overhang.  Loving was seriously wounded and he begged Wilson to escape down the river and tell his family of is fate.

Wilson’s descriptions of the events that follow are in the historical records kept in Texas Cushman Library and other Texas Historical Society documents: “When I went down the river about a hundred yards, and saw an Indian sitting on his horse out in the river, with the water almost over the horse’s back.  He was sitting there splashing the water with his foot, just playing.  I got under some smart-weeds and drifted by until I got far enough below the Indian where I could get out.  Then I made a three days march barefooted. Everything in that country had stickers in it.  On my way I picked up the small end of a teepee pole which I used for a walking stick.  The last night of this painful journey the wolves followed me all night. I would give out, just like a horse and lay down in the road and drop off to sleep and when I would awaken the wolves would be all around me, snapping and snarling.  I would take up that stick, knock the wolves away, got started again and the wolves would follow behind. I kept that up until daylight, when the wolves quit me.  Aboutt 12 o’clock on that last day I crossed a little mountain and knew the boys ought to be right in there somewhere with the cattle.  I found a little place, a sort of cave, that afforded protection from the sun, and I could go no further.  After a short time the boys came along with the cattle and found me”.  The book “Interwoven” said “Here his brother Fayette, who was with the cattle, found him ready to die from hunger and thirst”.

After being somewhat restored, Wilson guided a rescue party to Mr. Loving’s hiding place under the banks of the Pecos.  They found him almost dead from hunger added to weakness from his wound.  Loving was picked up and carried by some Mexican teamsters to Fort summer where there was a garrison  at that time and was put in the hospital, but he did not live long.  Before Oliver Loving died he asked that Charles Goodnight take his body be returned to Texas, he did not want to be buried in a “foreign land”.  Goodnight took Oliver’s remains 600 miles back to Texas.  This trip was the final link connecting Lonesome Dove to the Goodnight-Loving story.

So another exciting story of the wild-wild west with our kinfolk.

Jim Lee