1. Nat Love was an American cowboy and writer active in the period following the Civil War.
16 Facts About Nat Love
1. 2.
Nat Love's reported exploits have made him one of the more famous heroes of the Old West.
3.
Nat Love, was born into slavery on the plantation of Robert Love in Davidson County, Tennessee on June 14,1854.
4.
Nat Love's father was a slave foreman who worked in the plantation's fields, and his mother the manager of its kitchen.
5.
When slavery ended, Nat Love's parents stayed on the Nat Love plantation as sharecroppers, attempting to raise tobacco and corn on about 20 acres, but Sampson died shortly after the second crop was planted.
6.
Nat Love used the money to leave town, and at the age of 16, headed to the Western United States.
7.
Nat Love traveled to Dodge City, Kansas, where he found work as a cowboy with cattle drivers from the Duval Ranch.
8.
Nat Love trained himself to become an expert marksman and cowboy, for which he earned from his co-workers the moniker Red River Dick.
9.
In 1872, Nat Love moved to Arizona, where he found work at the Gallinger Ranch located along the Gila River.
10.
Nat Love wrote in his autobiography that he met Pat Garrett, Bat Masterson, Billy the Kid, and others while working the cattle drives in Arizona.
11.
Nat Love claimed to have won the rope, throw, tie, bridle, saddle, and bronco riding contests.
12.
In October 1877, Nat Love wrote that he was captured by a band of Pima Indians while rounding up stray cattle near the Gila River in Arizona.
13.
Nat Love left the cowboy life before he settled down, and married a woman named Alice Owens, in Denver, Colorado, on August 2,1888.
14.
Nat Love then took a job in 1890 as a Pullman porter, which involved overseeing sleeping cars on the Denver and Rio Grande Railroad.
15.
In 1907, Love published his autobiography titled Life and Adventures of Nat Love, Better Known in the Cattle Country as 'Deadwood Dick,' by Himself, which greatly enhanced his legacy.
16.
Nat Love spent the latter part of his life as a courier and guard for a securities company in Los Angeles.