http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fik01In 1855 the family moved to a home about nine miles southwest of Weatherford in Parker County, probably the most dangerous and violent part of the United States at the time. Goes without saying I guess that, more so than most Americans, the fate of a slave depended a great deal upon where chance had landed 'em. In my twenties I had occasion to spend considerable time each summer for a few years out on the flats along the Brazos River, west of College Station. Prime cotton country in its day, and if Hell has farmland, its probably hot and flat, and they probab'ly grow cotton.
Might be all our imagination, but different places we go have different "feels" to 'em. Many folks remark upon this when visiting over-the-top places like Gettysburg, other places are more subtle. But I can state for a fact that, when laboring out there on the flats under that summertime Texas sun, the constant gut impression was
slaves, like you could feel the presence of those who had been condemned to a life of hard labor out on those same flats.
Ain't much opportunity for heroism or aquired skill and competency out in a cotton field, more opportunities for the same among those slaves fortunate enough to be owned by a ranching family along the Texas Frontier.
We have already heard from Smithwick about the case of one Joe, living near present Marble Falls Texas, who if he had most of his earnings co-opted, at least had the freedom to pick his employment and enjoyed the responsibility of being, if Smithwick is to be believed, the prime wage earner for his White "family".
Exactly the same time (1850's) that Smithwick and Joe were living in the relatively safe and settled Burnet County near present Marble Falls west of Austin on the Colorado, one Dr Milton Ikard, late of Noxubee County, Mississippi and Union Parish, Louisiana, was moving his wife and four sons to Parker County TX, just west of present day Fort Worth, Parker County being "then one of the most dangerous and violent parts of the US".
Hard to imagine today staid Fort Worth being located in such a perilous region, but at the time it was all at once on the fringes of Comancheria, the Indian Territories, and on the far edge of a Frontier. Dunno which, Comanche, Eastern tribe, or White Frontier ne'r-do-well, would have been the greater threat. Depended on the given moment I'd guess.
Probably a whole thread could be devoted to the likes of a Dr Ikard and what exactly possessed him to make such a move with a young family in tow. To engage in the cattle business certainly, but to put his family in such imminent peril I dunno. Perhaps that was where land was cheapest.
Dr Ikard had four sons, all of whom the link states, were to become became very prominent in the post-war West Texas cattle industry. Prototypical Old West cattlemen as popular history pictures them; fighting Indians, outlaws and nature to carve out holdings on the Far Texas Plains.
The sort of people Louis L'Amour based his works of fiction upon.
Might be that Bose Ikard was a fifth son, if not biologically so then perhaps a de-facto one. Certainly he seems to have been regarded as an intergral part of the clan...
http://www.tshaonline.org/handbook/online/articles/fik03 IKARD, BOSE (1843�1929). Bose Ikard was born a slave in July 1843 in Noxubee County, Mississippi, and became one of the most famous black frontiersmen and traildrivers in Texas.
He lived in Union Parish, Louisiana, before his master, Dr. Milton Ikard, moved to Texas in 1852. Several months later Bose helped Ikard's wife, Isabella (Tubb), move the family's belongings and five children to their new home in Lamar County and soon afterwards to Parker County. The young slave grew to adulthood with his owner's family, learning to farm, ranch, and fight Indians as the Civil War drew near. From there the rest is history, Bose being employed first by Oliver Loving and thus developing his famoous working relationship with the equally legendary Charles Goodnight.
When the likes of a Charles Goodnight spoke, people listened, and one should probably not take lightly Goodnight's ringing endorsement of Ikard...
"farther than any living man. He was my detective, banker, and everything else in Colorado, New Mexico, and the other wild country I was in." Obvious parallels here in the plot and characters of "Lonesome Dove", even to the lengthy epitaph, that of the the REAL Bose Ikard was written by Charles Goodnight and inscribed upon his tombstone in 1929, perhaps a full half century after the wildest days had passed...
"Bose Ikard served with me four years on the Goodnight-Loving Trail, never shirked a duty or disobeyed an order, rode with me in many stampedes, participated in three engagements with Comanches, splendid behavior." Perhaps I had been influenced by Deets and Morgan Freeman's character in "The Unforgiven", somehow I imagined Bose Ikard as being older than he was. Ikard was actually seven years younger than Goodnight and a full thirty-one years younger than Oliver Loving. So in 1867 when Oliver Loving was mortally wounded on the Pecos by Comanches, Bose Ikard would have been just twenty-four, and Charles Goodnight thirty-one.
Anyhow, the years that followed must have indeed been shining times, inspiring as it did a lifelong friendship and Goodnight's undying high opinion.
And Ikard's adventures were surely just beginning, at the close of those year he would marry a woman that would bear him an extraordinary total of fifteen children.
Birdwatcher
