Introducing 2009 Montana Cowboy Hall of Fame Inductee…
John B. Kendrick (1857-?)
One of John Kendrick's first jobs, around the age of fifteen, was breaking horses for room and board. In 1879, the twenty-two-year-old hired on with the Snyder-Wulfjen Brothers of Round Rock, Texas, to help move a herd of cattle from Matagorda Bay (on the Gulf of Mexico) to the grasslands of Wyoming. Along the way he experienced the worst of what the new land had to offer: drought, flood, storm and stampede. As he noted in 1917,
Anything at night almost, a stumbling horse, the odor of some wild animal or a blinding flash of lightning would start the herd to running. Then the cowboys would have to follow. Sometimes the cattle would run until morning. Or they might stop now and then for a few minutes. Whereupon, of course, we would halt with them, the rain meanwhile coming down in torrents and the night being so black that nothing could be seen but the electricity on our horses' ear or the lightning wriggling over the ground like illuminated serpents.
Like many of the cowboys with whom he rode, Kendrick's formal education was incomplete: he did not continue with school much after the fifth grade. Unlike the others, however, whatever lessons he missed in the classroom he more than made up for on the trail and during roundups. Instead of gambling and drinking, Kendrick spent his spare time reading and studying from the books he carried in his saddle pockets.
With his cowhand's wages Kendrick bought a few head of cattle which his employer, Charles Wulfjen, allowed him to graze with the main herd. By 1882, when Wulfjen's holdings were absorbed by the massive Converse Cattle Company, Kendrick was able to sell his own cattle to that company, using the profits to begin another herd. He managed his herds and finances so successfully that when the disastrous winter of 1886-87 brought an end to the golden age of the cattle baron, Kendrick was in the financial position to take advantage of what was for nearly everyone else an impossible situation.
In 1887 Kendrick signed on as superintendent of the Converse Cattle Company. Two years later he moved the entire operation from eastern Wyoming to the OW Ranch on Hanging Woman Creek, near Decker in south-central Montana. Within another eight years, John completed his purchase of the Converse Cattle Company. Then he started expanding its holdings. Before he was finished, Kendrick's ranching empire grew to include over 210,000 acres of deeded and leased land in southern Montana and northern Wyoming.
In 1891, he married Eula Wulfen and the lived on the OW until 1909 when they moved to Sheridan, Wyoming. Kendrick became involved in banking and other business enterprises as well, primarily in the Sheridan area. Very involved in politics, he became governor of Wyoming and was elected to three terms as Senator from Wyoming.
Resource: Taken primarily from the Trail End Historical Site’s website, with additional information from Wyoming State Archives website, and Biographical Directory of the United States Congress website.
