Molly Goodnight’s Academy/College

Mary (Molly) Goodnight, wife of renowned cattleman ranch owner Charles Goodnight of the Palo Duro Canyon region, is well known historically as founder of the Goodnight Buffalo herd by rescuing bawling calves of the slain buffalo in Texas during the last of the 1800s. One reads little of another accomplishment, the Goodnight Academy/College that opened its doors in 1898.

Mary Goodnight became called “Molly” by the ranch hands she nurtured on the vast Goodnight ranch. She was not only interested in their well-being but that they should read and write. Though it is said that Molly’s husband Charles, himself, did not read nor write and depended on his wife to approve contracts, keep the books, and write his letters.

Molly was not college educated but reared by her lawyer father and educated mother. Molly was born Mary Dyer to Joel Henry and Susan Lynch Dyer on September 12, 1839 in Madison County, Tennessee. She was 14 years old when her parents relocated to Fort Belknap, Texas in 1854 just three years after the fort had been established to protect the region from the Kiowa and Comanche Indians. Her parents both died a short time within each other. She was left with the rearing of her five brothers. By the late 1850s into the 1860s she taught school to support the youngest three brothers.

Molly first met Charles Goodnight at Fort Belknap in 1864. As a teacher she relocated to Weatherford, Texas in the late 1860s. After a year’s courtship they married in 1870. Eventually they settled in the Palo Duro Canyon. Sometimes, it would be a year before she would see another woman, so the cowboys drew her attention. When a cowboy gave her three chickens she was delighted as it gave her someone to “talk to.”

By the late 1800s, just before the turn into the 20th century, it was most likely Molly’s idea to establish a college for the children being reared on the surrounding ranches. The college was established as an academy in 1898. A Methodist Church and five dormitories were built. Classes were first held in the Goodnight Methodist Church taught by Rev. Marshall McIlhaney and his daughter Annie Scott. It was a coeducational industrial institute with Goodnight’s donation of 340 acres of surrounding land wherein the students could work and pay for part of their tuition.

Research shows that the Goodnights first offered the college to the Methodists, but declining to accept, it was transferred in 1905 to the Baptists. The school prospered, enrollment increased to 175 with a three-story brick administration building erected and the faculty increased to six. By 1914, a summer school and summer normal division was established as it became a junior college. It was the first in the Texas Panhandle. The yearbook was symbolically named the “Buffalo” printed for the first time in 1916.

By this time, other upper schools were being organized such as the West Texas State Normal College that eventually became West Texas A & M University. The Goodnight College soon closed with the building used as the Buckner Orphans home until fire destroyed the administration building in 1918 and the property was returned to the Goodnights after 1920. In turn, the Goodnights gave the property to the Goodnight Independent School District.

Molly would die six years later in 1926 at the age of 87, followed by Charles in 1929 at the age of 93.

Written by Betty Dunn, Two Rivers Heritage Foundation. See www.tworiversheritagefoundation.org for more info and membership.