- Joined
- Nov 16, 2016
- Messages
- 22,113
- Reaction score
- 62,826
- Location
- Flowery Branch, GA (Oakwood area..)
As a young man, Tom Blasingame came to the JA Ranch in 1918. Blasingame worked there most of the next 71 years, having, at the time of his death in 1989, become the oldest cowboy in the history of the American West. He had chosen to be a cowboy when he was a little kid, The reason he lived so long (91 years old when he passed) was because he did what he loved for his entire life. And, he died as he wanted. He once said he wanted to die where he spent his life: on the range. On Wednesday, Dec. 31, 1989, the man believed to be Texas` oldest working cowboy climbed down from his horse, stretched out in the prairie grass and left this world the way he desired, with his boots on & facing the sky. About 400 people attended graveside services at the JA Cattle Co. cemetery. The last burial in the cemetery had been in 1899. He was given the "traditional cowboy funeral", with the hearse accompanied to the graveyard by Blasingame’s riderless horse and cowboys on horseback attending.
