Sackrider: Shadows and Light Behind a Legacy

It’s an unusual name - “Sackrider”, but yes, that was his name. One would think with a name like that, perhaps his destiny was to be a military man, or a manly man in some other sense, a physical man, a man of adventure, and his father, a Colonel, would certainly have loved if his son would have went into military service, actually hoping West Point may be his destiny at some future time. Though Sackrider was a large and strong boy that loved adventure and the outdoors, swimming, hunting, riding horseback and camping, he was a fairly poor student, which ended up dashing his father’s hopes for a son in the service - and an only child at that - such are the hopes and dreams of parents of what they want their kids to become. Even matriculations into a couple of military schools didn’t spark his interest in a career in the military or do much to give him focus. It was the late 1800s, and boys of that time often dreamt of far-flung adventures, travels to distant lands, which yes, the military could provide, but…

No, the military was not for him, and although his student peers found him to be a pleasant fellow, he was a bit careless, and even lazy. He wrote to his uncle that “life was short, and (he) would never intend to do any great amount of labor; that he did not aspire to wealth or fame in a degree which could only be obtained by an extraordinary effort on his part.”

That’s odd, because fame, and yes, some fortune, would come to Sackrider eventually, even though he lived a relatively short life.

He found some joy in sketching caricatures of his classmates, though he found football and boxing more interesting than any formal art training he may have taken. He eventually went on to become a reporter for his uncle’s newspaper, had a clerical job and did other short-lived vocations.

Though Sackrider did report in words, later on his reports would come through other expressive mediums, and that’s the other part of this Amazing Story.

His father dies young, at 50. Using his modest inheritance and work income, Sackrider took trips out west to finally embrace his want for travel and adventure, and the old west of the late 1800s certainly had plenty of that. He once hunted grizzly bears in New Mexico, and witnessed the last major confrontations of the US Cavalry and Native American tribes, scenes he had imagined since his childhood. He ended up in rural Kansas, to try his hand at the booming sheep ranching industry and the wool trade, one of the many “holiday stockmen” - rich easterners - trying to make a killing in the trade. He bet his entire inheritance on the effort, but found it to be a rough, boring and and isolating occupation, depriving him of the finer things in life that civilization on the east coast afforded him. Real ranchers thought of him as lazy. He soon sold his land and went back east. Securing some capital from his mother, he returned yet again to Kansas City to start a hardware business, but due to an alleged swindle, it too failed, and taking what money he had left, invested in a saloon, as a silent half owner. Then he went back east again, and married Eva Caten, brought her back to Kansas City right away, only she was unhappy with the saloon life and unimpressed by his artwork - mostly sketches of saloon bar flys and other characters - and she left him and went back east. All Sackrider could do was barter his sketches and painting for life essentials at this point. His paintings sold a bit more, as he gained some traction in the art world, yet he still returned to home back east - though a bit heartened with a new found possible income; maybe there would be hope for his future after all.

That might have been the height of Sackrider’s adventures in the west, but he would return to the west many times more, enthralled with the tales and the ways of life of the real cowboys and Indians, the vast landscapes and prairie animals.

Not only did Sackrider make the excitement and romance of the Old West part of his legacy, but so did his cousin, Eliphalet, with whom he shared his surname, as an arms maker. Did I forget to mention Sackrider was related to….George Washington? Yes, THAT George Washington! He even had a personal and business friendship with Teddy Roosevelt.

Yes, he did go back out west. You see Sackrider did more work with drawing and painting, did some study of the arts, and it was so good, he eventually retained commissions to pursue this line of work from magazines, finally coming into his own, not just reporting on how the old was not in words, but in the visual mediums of oils and sculpture, this supposedly lazy easterner boy was hard at work, and making good money at that. Yes, he did reunite with his wife Eva and remained with her for the rest of his life.   

Seems the old west made an impression on these two men of the same surname, and to this day, their legacy lives on.

So the next time you visit an art museum, or take to the rifle range, you may see the efforts of these two cousins on whom the Wild West shaped their fame and fortune - Frederick Sackrider… Remington, and  Eliphalet Remington, of the Remington Arms company.

Now that’s an Amazing Story.