Glenn Alvin Conner was born in Iowa in 1894. As a youngster he moved to Nebraska in a covered wagon. His father was a hog farmer, but disaster struck. The hogs succumbed to cholera and the family fell on hard times.
By the time Conner was 10 his family had relocated, once again in a covered wagon, to Wyoming. They lived in Douglas and eventually homesteaded near Shawnee. Conner had ambitions of becoming a cowboy and dropped out of school after the seventh grade. He worked odd jobs and as a sheep herder, spending the earnings from his first real job on a Stetson, Levi’s, cowboy boots, and spurs.
Conner realized his dream and hired on to the A2 ranch as a cowboy for $40 a month. He was injured more than once bronc breaking. In 1920 he married Nellie Maude Sanford. Conner documented the experiences of his youth in a memoir and was a writer of western fiction.
Read “Memoirs of a Tumbleweed” in the Glenn A. Conner papers at UW’s American Heritage Center. to learn more.