Nat love biography

Nat Love, the son of enslaved parents Sampson Love and a mother whose name is unknown, was born in June , on Robert Love's plantation in Davidson County, Tennessee. After Emancipation, Nat Love's parents remained on the plantation as sharecroppers. In February , Love left Tennessee and headed west. He found work as a cowboy, first on the Duval Ranch in the Texas panhandle, then on the Gallinger Ranch in southern Arizona (). During these years, Love traveled extensively throughout the western U.S. as he helped herd cattle to market. In , he married a woman named Alice, and the couple had one child. In , Love retired from cow-herding and worked on the railroads as a Pullman sleeping car porter. His last job was as security guard with the General Securities Company in Los Angeles, California, where he died in

Love's story, The Life and Adventures of Nat Love, was published in , and has been reprinted several times since the s. Scholar William Loren Katz describes it as "the only full-length autobiography by an African-American cowhand" (p. ). But while Love claims that his book is intended for "those who prefer facts to fiction," several scholars express doubts about the book's veracity (p. 3). Katz, for example, claims that the "typical Western braggadocio" with which Love recounts his abilities as an expert horseback rider, marksman, drinker, and fighter makes him appear "more like a dime novel hero than a flesh-and-blood cowpuncher" (p. ). This comparison between Love's autobiography and the mass market adventure novels popular in the late nineteenth century is apt, given that Love is one of many men who claimed to be the "real" Deadwood Dick. According to Durham and Jones, Deadwood Dick was the literary creation of Edward L. Wheeler, a best-selling dime novelist who never traveled west of Pennsylvania. Many scholars believe that Love laid claim to Wheeler's character's nickname to sensationalize the events of his own life; yet, they also argue that Love's lar

American cowboy (–)

Nat Love (June 14, – February 11, ) was an American cowboy and writer active in the period following the Civil War. His reported exploits have made him one of the more famous heroes of the Old West.

Early life

Nat Love, (pronounced "Nate") was born into slavery on the plantation of Robert Love in Davidson County, Tennessee on June 14, His father was a slave foreman who worked in the plantation's fields, and his mother the manager of its kitchen. Love had two siblings: an older sister, Sally, and an older brother, Jordan.

Despite slavery-era statutes that outlawed black literacy, he learned to read and write as a child with the help of Sampson, his father. When slavery ended, Love's parents stayed on the Love plantation as sharecroppers, attempting to raise tobacco and corn on about 20 acres, but Sampson died shortly after the second crop was planted. Afterward, Nat took a second job working on a local farm to help make ends meet. At about this time, he was noted as having a gift for breaking horses. After some time of working extra odd jobs in the area, he won a horse in a raffle on two occasions, which he then sold back to the owner for $50 each time. He used the money to leave town, and at the age of 16, headed to the Western United States.

Life as a cowboy

Love traveled to Dodge City, Kansas, where he found work as a cowboy with cattle drivers from the Duval Ranch (located on the Palo Duro River in the Texas Panhandle). According to his autobiography, Love fought cattle rustlers and endured in

After the Civil War, when the slaves were freed, Nat&#;s father worked a small farm he rented from his former master, Robert Love. But, freedom was short-lived for the former slave, as he died just a few years later.

Nat then took various jobs on area plantations to help support the family and found that he had great skill in breaking horses.

In , Love left his family in an uncle&#;s care and headed west with $50 in his pocket. When he reached Dodge City, Kansas, he ran into the crew of the Texas Duval Ranch. Having just brought a herd to the Kansas railhead, the cowboys were having breakfast when Nat joined them. The young man soon approached the trail boss, asking for a job. The boss agreed that Nat could join them if he could break a horse named Good Eye. The wildest horse in the outfit, Nat would later say it was the toughest ride he&#;d ever had. But ride he did and got the job with the Duval Ranch at $30 a month.

The year-old quickly adapted to the life of a cowboy, showing excellent skills as a ranch hand, and practiced so often with a revolver that his shooting skills also became very good. Earning a reputation as one of the best all-around cowboys in the Duval outfit, he soon became a buye