National Archives at Kansas City

Author Jim Hoy to discuss Cowboy’s Lament: A Life on the Open Range at the National Archives

For More Information Contact:
Kimberlee Ried, 816-268-8072

Kansas City, (MO)…The National Archives at Kansas City will host professor and author, Dr. Jim Hoy, on Wednesday, April 6, at 6:30 p.m. for a discussion of his book Cowboy’s Lament: A Life on the Open Range. Hoy will be available to sign copies of his book after the discussion. A 6:00 p.m. reception will precede the event.

In 1870 sixteen-year-old Frank Maynard left his home in Iowa and arrived in Towanda, Kansas, where he soon took a job helping to trail a small herd of cattle from Missouri to Colorado. Thus began his adventures as an open-range cowboy, a ten-year career that coincided with the peak of the great trail-drive era. Among the highlights of Maynard's time on the range were brushes with outlaws and encounters with famous lawmen, such as Bill Tilghman and Bat and Ed Masterson. Maynard's most enduring contribution sprang from overhearing a version of an old Irish ballad in 1876 and reworking it as The Cowboy's Lament, the standard most recognize today as The Streets of Laredo. His role in adapting the song and his other colorful experiences on the trail have come to light with the recent discovery of his unpublished memoir now detailed in Cowboy’s Lament.

About the Author

Jim Hoy, professor of English and director of the Center for Great Plains Studies at Emporia State University, is a native of Cassoday in the Flint Hills of Kansas. He is a past president of the Kansas State Historical Society, the Kansas Folklore Society, and past chair of the board of trustees of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. He has published a dozen books.

Copies of Cowboy’s Lament: A Life on the Open Range will be available for purchase via the Kansas City Store onsite. For more information or to make a reservation for this free event call 816-268-8010 or email kansascity.educate@nara.gov.

The National Archives at Kansas City is one of 13 facilities nationwide where the public has access to Federal archival records. It is home to more than 50,000 cubic feet of historical records dating from the 1820s to the 1990s created or received by nearly 100 Federal agencies. Serving the Central Plains Region, the archives holds records from the states of Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, and South Dakota. The facility is located at 400 West Pershing Road, Kansas City, MO 64108. It is open to the public Tuesday - Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. for research, with the exhibits open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, call 816-268-8000 or visit us online.

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NREKA 11-65

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