Montie Ritchie - Family Ties and Early Years

Family Ties and Early Years

Ritchie was the older of two sons and a daughter born to Montgomery Harrison “Jack” Ritchie (1861–1924) and Ritchie’s English wife. He was a grandson of Cornelia Wadsworth Ritchie Adair, widow of John George Adair, who solely owned the JA Ranch from 1887 until her death in 1921. His paternal grandfather, Montgomery Harrison Ritchie (1826–1864), Cornelia Adair’s first husband, died of illness contracted in the American Civil War. He was the great-grandson of Union general James Samuel Wadsworth, Sr., of New York, who was mortally wounded in the Battle of the Wilderness in Virginia. Montie Ritchie’s father, Jack Ritchie, was born in Geneseo a village in Livingston County in western New York State. He was educated and reared in England, became an international sportsman, and worked at the JA Ranch for a time. He once told his son "Montie" that his JA experiences were the happiest times of his life and urged Montie to consider management of the ranch. Jack purchased JA horses and sold them to the New York Police Department. He enlisted in the British Army during the Boer War, where his knowledge of living on the Texas prairies proved helpful in organizing the movements of men and horses across the South African veldt. Montie Ritchie was born in the English village of Ashwell. He graduated from Cambridge University in 1931. When Ritchie first came to the JA, he was given the most difficult jobs and the toughest broncos to ride. He persevered and obtained proxies from his sister, Gabrielle M. Ritchie Keiller, and younger brother to become the new JA manager. His younger brother, Richard Morgan Wadsworth Ritchie (1912–1940), known as “Dick Ritchie”, was like their father an international sportsman and also an actor. “Dick” died at the age of twenty-eight from inhaling carbon monoxide which leaked from a faulty heater on his yacht, from which he was fishing off Corpus Christi.