Everything about Cornelia Adair totally explained
Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair (
April 6,
1837 -
September 22,
1921) was the
matriarch of
Glenveagh Castle in
County Donegal,
Ireland, now an Irish
national park, and the large
JA Ranch southeast of
Amarillo in the
Texas Panhandle, a still active
cattle ranch. She is also remembered for having become a
naturalized British subject and as a published
diarist.
Early years and first marriage
Cornelia was the second of six children born to a prominent couple, future
General James Samuel Wadsworth, Sr. (1807-1864), and the former Mary Craig Wharton (1811-1872). Though she was born in
Philadelphia, the Wadsworth family lived at the Hartford House estate in the
village of
Geneseo, the seat of
Livingston County in western
New York State.
In 1855, the Wadsworths traveled to
England and
France on a two-year sojourn. On their return, Cornelia married Montgomery Harrison Ritchie of
Boston, a descendant of
Federalist Party leader
Harrison Gray Otis (1765-1848). The Ritchies had two sons, Arthur (who died in childhood) and Montgomery Harrison “Jack” Ritchie (1861-1924), who outlived his mother by only three years..
The senior Montgomery Ritchie fought in
North Carolina in 1862 in the
American Civil War under General
Ambrose E. Burnside. In 1864, he entered a battlefield to retrieve his father-in-law, General Wadsworth, who was mortally wounded in the head in the
Battle of the Wilderness in
Virginia. Ritchie brought Wadsworth’s body to Geneseo for burial. Not long afterwards, Ritchie himself died of an illness contracted in battle and was buried in Geneseo.
The Ritchie family was staunchly Republican from 1854, when the party was established. At the gathering, she first met
John George Adair, a
Scottish-
Irish businessman and
landowner from County Donegal. The two married in 1869 and lived in Ireland, in
Great Britain, and in
New York City, where Adair, also known as “Jack Adair”, opened a
brokerage house.
In their contract, John Adair put up two third of the capital to establish the ranch, and Goodnight was able to borrow his one-third at 10 percent interest from Adair as well as supply the initial cattle. The Adairs rarely stayed at the ranch, because of their other properties in England and Ireland. The ranch still bears Adair’s initials, the JA. Goodnight and Adair signed two five-year contracts. In 1885, Adair died of natural causes while he was in
St. Louis,
Missouri. At the time, he was returning with a servant to Ireland. Cornelia, who didn't accompany Adair on that trip, had his body returned for burial at the Glenveagh.
In 1911, while she was in
London, Cornelia came upon her
nephew,
James Wolcott Wadsworth, Jr., then a former
Speaker of the
New York Assembly. She persuaded Wadsworth to take the vacant position of JA manager. He agreed but after four years left again in 1915, having been elected in 1914 as a Republican to the
United States Senate from New York, the first class elected under the
Seventeenth Amendment to the
United States Constitution.
Managing Glenveagh Castle
Glenveagh was completed between 1867 and 1873. After Cornelia inherited the estate, she added a new wing and round tower to the building. She planted
Scots Pine and
rhododendron in her garden. Before he married Cornelia, John Adair had become notorious for having driven poor tenants off the land to improve the aesthetic beauty of Glenveagh. Cornelia though was renowned as a kind landlady and a benefactor. During
World War I, she used the castle to house wounded
Belgian soldiers and
refugees.
A personal friend of
Lord Baden-Powell, Cornelia donated generously to establish the
Boy Scouts. She died in England and is interred next to Adair at Glenveagh. In the years after Cornelia’s death Glenveagh fell into disrepair. In 1984, it became an Irish national park.
The JA Ranch today
In 1935, after the death of Timothy Hobart, the management of the JA passed to her grandson,
Montgomery Harrison Wadsworth Ritchie, son of Jack Rithie. He managed the ranch, alsong with another spread in Colorado until his retirement in 1993. The ranch then passed to Montie Ritchie’s daughter, Cornelia Wadsworth “Ninia” Ritchie, later the wife of Republican
Texas State Senator Teel Bivins of Amarillo. “Ninia’s son, Andrew M. Bivins, has since joined the JA management team.Teel Bivins served as
U.S. Ambassador to
Sweden during the second administration of
U.S. President George W. Bush.
Further readings
Cornelia Adair, My Diary: August 30 to November 5, 1874 (
Austin:
University of Texas Press, 1965).
Armstrong County Historical Association, A Collection of Memories: A History of Armstrong County, 1876-1965 (Hereford, Texas: Pioneer, 1965).
Virginia Browder, Donley County: Land O' Promise (
Wichita Falls: Nortex, 1975).
Harley True Burton, A History of the JA Ranch (Austin: Von Boeckmann-Jones, 1928; rpt., New York: Argonaut, 1966), now a rare out-of-print edition
J. Evetts Haley, Charles Goodnight (
Norman:
University of Oklahoma Press, 1949).
Further Information
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