Goodnight Legacy
Mary Ann Dyer, known as Molly, was born on September 12, 1839, in Madison County, Tennessee. Her mother was Susan Lynch Miller, the granddaughter of William Blount, the first territorial governor or Tennessee and her father, Joel Henry Dyer, was the attorney general of West Tennessee and fought in the Battle of New Orleans.
There were no formal schools in that part of Tennessee while Mary Ann was growing up, consequently she received no formal education. However, her parents tutored her from a young age, so she learned to read and write. When Mary Ann was fourteen, the family moved to Belknap, Texas. Soon after the family moved, Mary Ann’s parents died, leaving her to raise her three young brothers.
When Mary Ann was twenty-four, she taught school in Weatherford, Texas, where she met her future husband, Charles Goodnight. Goodnight with a partner, Oliver Loving, created the Goodnight-Loving Trail, driving their large herds of Texas Longhorns in the later 1860s, from Texas to Southern Wyoming. The couple were married in 1870 and moved to Pueblo Colorado to live at the newly established Rock Canon Ranch, where she settled in and was active in the community. Mary Ann established the first Southern Methodist Church in Pueblo.
Charles moved back to Texas during the financial crisis of 1873. He sent Mary Ann to live with relatives in California, waiting until he found a suitable situation for them three years later in the Texas Panhandle. This suitable situation was the JA ranch formed with a business partner, wealthy businessman, John George Adair.
Not one to sit on the sidelines, Mary Ann immersed herself in the ranch, acting as ranch manager when Charles was away on business. Another role she assumed was nursing sick cowboys back to health. She was also a keen hand as a spiritual advisor for those in troubled times and patching the cowboy’s torn clothing.
Mary Ann convinced her husband, Charles, to bring her the bison calves that were left behind by buffalo hunters. This resulted in the Goodnight Bison Herd and its descendants are the last of the Southern Plains Bison. The Texas State Bison Herd, known as the Goodnight Bison Herd’s descendants, live at Caprice Canyon State Park. In 1887, Mary Ann and Charles moved to Armstrong County, Texas, in a community named for Charles, Goodnight, Texas.
The following year, the couple built the Goodnight Ranch House and Mary Ann had a hand in establishing Goodnight College in 1898. The Goodnights funded around three million dollars to construct all the buildings on campus. Shortly before her death, Mary Ann advocated for Palo Duro Canyon to become a National Park. Though she didn’t succeed in making it a National Park, the Northern section of the canyon became Palo Duro Canyon State Park. (Palo Duro Canyon is a canyon system of the Caprock Escarpment in the Texas Panhandle near the cities of Amarillo and Canyon. As one of the largest canyons in the United States, it is roughly 25–40 mi long and has an average width of 6 mi, but reaches a width of 20 mi at places.)
The National Register of Historic Places listed the Goodnight home in Armstrong County, Texas in 2007. The Charles and Mary Ann Goodnight Ranch State Historic Site, which is the Goodnight home, is open for tours at a minimal fee.
Worthy of Note:
Veryl Goodnight is a direct descendant of Charles Goodnight. Living in Mancos, Colorado since 2006, she is a sculptor and painter known for her equine sculptures, especially her realistic depictions of horses, often in an American West context. In 2016, the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame in Fort Worth, Texas inducted Veryl Goodnight.
