JA Ranch
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J A Ranch
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 JA Ranch
JA Ranch
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| Nearest city | Claude, Texas |
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| Coordinates | 34°49′0″N 101°11′17″W / 34.81667°N 101.18806°WCoordinates: 34°49′0″N 101°11′17″W / 34.81667°N 101.18806°W |
| Built | 1879 |
| Architect | Charles Goodnight |
| NRHP Reference # | 66000807 |
| Significant dates | |
| Added to NRHP | October 15, 1966 |
| Designated NHLD | December 19, 1960 |
The JA Ranch, jointly founded by John George Adair and Charles Goodnight, is the oldest privately owned cattle ranch in the Palo Duro Canyon section of the Texas Panhandle southeast of Amarillo. At its peak size in 1883, the JA, still run by descendants of the Adair family, encompassed some 1,335,000 acres (5,400 km2) of land in six counties and a herd of 100,000 cattle. The name "JA" is derived from the initials of John Adair, a businessman from Ireland. Goodnight managed and expanded the ranch, while Adair provided the working capital. Upon Adair's death, his wife, the former Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie, took over Adair's interest in the JA. In 1888, Goodnight left the arrangement to establish his own ranch and in time ventured into other business activities, as well. The ranch was added to the National Register of Historic Places listings in Armstrong County, Texas in 1966.
Cornelia Wadsworth was born in 1837 in Geneseo, the seat of Livingston County in western New York. In 1857, she married Montgomery Harrison Ritchie (1826–1864) of Boston, a descendant of the Federalist Party leader Harrison Gray Otis (1765–1848). During the American Civil War, Ritchie served with the New England Guard. After the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia in 1864, he crossed Confederate lines to retrieve the body of his fallen father-in-law, General James Samuel Wadsworth, Sr., (1807–1864), and return it to Geneseo. Cornelia was reared near Geneseo on a farm that her ancestors had purchased from the Senecas. A few months later, Ritchie, who had fought earlier in the war under General Ambrose E. Burnside in North Carolina, died of an illness during the war.
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