The Cowboy & The Ballerina

Hollywood has never made a love story better than this one.

He was a cowboy. She was a ballerina.

John Baker Omohundro grew up in a fine southern plantation home in Palmyra, Virginia, and Giuseppina Antonia Morlacchi was born in Milan, Italy. His education was earned on horseback, exploring and hunting the wilderness along the Rivanna River, and hers was at La Scuola di Ballo del Teatro Alla Scala (the La Scala Theatre Ballet School), one of the most prestigious classical ballet schools in the world, where she endured marathon training sessions from the age of five.

During the Civil War, he became a man, joining the Army of Northern Virginia and serving as a courier, cavalryman, and spy for General JEB Stuart. She was a beautiful young woman, traveling across Europe to appear by royal command in the finest theaters, playing some of the most demanding ballet roles in Paris, Lisboa, Berlin, and London.

After the war, he set off west on a barge that overturned in the Gulf, stranding him for a time on the west coast of Florida. Her passage to America was aboard the fastest boat to ever cross the Atlantic, setting a record during her journey. He earned the name "Texas Jack," delivering a herd of cattle from the Lone Star State to drought-stricken and meat-starved Tennessee. The press fawned over her magnificent performances and dubbed her "The Peerless" Morlacchi, as no ballerina in the world could match her grace and beauty.

In 1869, he traveled north from Texas towards Nebraska, where he met a young Army scout named William F. Cody. They hunted together, drank together, pursued Sioux warriors, and led aristocrats on buffalo hunts across the prairie. She introduced the cancan dance to America, creating a sensation only tempered by the high esteem she was held in by critics across the country. While he hunted bison with the Pawnee, impressing the Chief of Men with his skills with the lasso, she started her own ballet troupe, making headlines in New York and New Orleans, Boston, and San Francisco, delighting critics and audiences everywhere she performed.

Dime novels back East featured tall tales about "Texas Jack" and "Buffalo Bill," with readers back east devouring dime novel adventures of these brave scouts rescuing maidens from fierce braves and dangerous renegades. At the same time, newspapers reported on their real-life exploits, like Texas Jack lassoing and capturing eight live bison for the Niagara Falls museum. As Morlacchi continued to enchant everywhere she went, newspapers reported that her legs had been insured for the exorbitant sum of $100,000, the equivalent of over $2.2 million today.

In December of 1872, he and his best friend Buffalo Bill boarded a train for Chicago, where they had been convinced by their dime novelist friend Ned Buntline that they could pass as actors, dazzle audiences, and create a stage sensation. Just as they arrived, she was wrapping up a series of engagements in Chicago at Nixon’s Amphitheatre, where she was approached by Buntline to star as the female lead in his brand-new play.

We will never know why she agreed to act with untrained actors in an untried play with an untested manager. By all accounts, she didn't need the money. There was no time to rehearse the show, as it was set to premiere just four days later, and her costars were busy capturing a pair of bears that had been released in Lincoln Park. Nevertheless, she took the part of Dove Eye, "the beautiful Indian maiden with an Italian accent and weakness for scouts."

By all accounts, the first show was a disaster. Morlacchi was a consummate professional who performed her part to perfection, but Texas Jack and Buffalo Bill, her costars, forgot every one of their lines. The show was only saved by the fact that, even though they were incredibly bad actors, Jack and Bill were handsome and rugged scouts of the first degree.

Recognizing that they couldn’t last long with their leading men forgetting their lines, the show's manager decided to work with Buffalo Bill personally and asked Morlacchi to instruct Texas Jack on the finer points of acting. Buffalo Bill's wife Louisa wrote "Many a time I heard Texas Jack call a dance. Many a time, I saw him swing off his horse, tired and dusty from miles in the saddle, worn from days and nights without sleep when perhaps the lives of hundreds depended on his nerve, his skill with the rifle, his knowledge of the prairie." But she had never seen Texas Jack scared—had never seen him unsure until the moment when the brave cowboy was introduced to the beautiful ballerina. “Texas Jack put out his hand in a hesitating, wavering way," she wrote, and "his usually heavy bass voice cracked and broke. There were more difficulties than ever now, for Jack had fallen in love, at sight…And never did a pupil work harder than Texas Jack from that moment!”

When the tour ended, Jack returned to North Platte to hunt with Buffalo Bill and their friend Wild Bill Hickok. After talking to them about his feelings for the beautiful ballerina, Jack raced to Rochester, New York, where Morlacchi was starring as Esmerelda in The Hunchback of Notre Dame. To her surprise, she opened the theater’s back door, where he dropped to his knee to ask for her hand in marriage. They were married on August 30, 1873, at St. Mary's Roman Catholic Church in Rochester.

I wish I could tell you that they lived happily ever after, but Texas Jack's life was tragically cut short at the age of 33 when he was stricken by pneumonia in the Rocky Mountain town of Leadville, Colorado. Morlacchi retired from performing and died of stomach cancer just six years later. But the short time they shared was filled with the kind of deep romantic love and lives full of adventure that Hollywood wishes it could write.

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The story of Texas Jack and Giuseppina Morlacchi has never been fully told. Until now.

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns tells the true story of the Virginia boy who became a Texas cattleman, of the Confederate spy who scouted for the US Army, of the cowboy who became a star. Julia Bricklin, the author of The Notorious Life of Ned Buntline, calls it a "groundbreaking work that brings to light a lesser-known but vitally important figure in any history of American pop culture...Kerns meticulously reconstructs the fascinating—if sadly shortened—life of Texas Jack Omohundro. What emerges is the story of the man who actually was the driving force behind Buffalo Bill's decision to go into show business, and perhaps was too authentic to shine as brightly as Cody through the ages. Until now."

Texas Jack: America's First Cowboy Star by Matthew Kerns, available at:

Amazon - https://amzn.to/3wncTNk

Signed and inscribed first edition copies of the book and Wild West merchandise featuring Texas Jack, Wild Bill, Buffalo Bill, and more are available at no additional charge at:

https://www.dimelibrary.com/shop