The Outlaw and the Lawman: a melodrama
 
Left, 'Ferd' Patterson (image courtesy of KerbyJackson.com) and Hugh Donahue
as played by Clark Colahan.
Not everyone who came to the area made it a better place to live. Gunslingers, cutthroats, robbers and those with little to lose. Throughout the West, men … more or less honest … felt a need to take the law into their own hands when the law itself was powerless against these ne’er-do-wells.
Among these men whom trouble followed as closely as his own shadow was Ferdinand ‘Ferd’ J. Patterson. A Southern sympathizer during and after the Civil War, Patterson found himself in the Boise region following the discovery of gold there in the 1860s. Fond of wearing plaid trousers trimmed in buckskin, silk vest over a cashmere shirt, custom-made boots all set off with a chain of gold nuggets, no one called Patterson a fop or dandy, as he stood well above six feet tall, weighed more than 200 lbs., and always carried a gun.
Stories have Patterson drifting through California and Oregon before arriving in the Boise Basin to take up the gambler’s trade, likely the easiest way of relieving a miner of his gold dust short of killing him outright. Tales of his gunfights, the scalping of an other-than-faithful woman, and the killing of a riverboat captain in a Portland Hotel lie somewhere between bravado and point of view.
While in Boise, Patterson ran afoul of one Sumner Pinkham, the County’s former sheriff and a Unionist. Pinkham had organized a parade of sorts for the Fourth of July, complete with fifer, drum and flag from nearby Fort Boise, and homemade cannon built from a rusty length of iron pipe. Patterson and a gang of ruffians decided to interrupt the parade for sport and an alleged exchange of hot words between Pinkham and Patterson ensued. Though no blows were exchanged at the time, most folks thought violence would be inevitable. By summer’s end it happened. In a dispute over their political sympathies, shots rang out and soon Pinkham lay dead. Patterson was arrested, avoided a lynch mob and vigilante pursuit, and managed to be acquitted at his trial.
Leaving Boise City, Patterson made his way west to Walla Walla. He apparently told an acquaintance that he was giving up the dangerous life and would work as a gambler through the winter. Nevertheless, a local night watchman had roused his ire. Patterson jotted Hugh Donahue’s name in his little black book and swore an oath of vengeance.
On February 15, 1866, Patterson went to the barbershop for a shave, hanging his coat and gun belt on a rack.. Entering the back door as Patterson sat with a hot towel over his face, Donahue warmed himself at theshop's stove before yelling, “You must kill me or I’ll kill you!” With that, he shot Patterson, hitting him in the jaw. Patterson ran from the shop and Donahue fired twice more and hit him once. Staggering into the neighboring saloon, Patterson collapsed to the floor. Donahue shot him twice more as he lay there, then surrendered to the law. One night as he awaited trial, Donahue found his cell door ajar and disappeared into the darkness.
Patterson is portrayed by Dr. Paul McLain. Donahue is played by retired Whitman College Professor of Spanish and accomplished musician, Clark Colahan. They are joined by Joan McLain as a “barroom floozy,” and Barbara Coddington as “a decent Civil War widow, driven to gambling to save her family from destitution.”
Night watchman Donahue was a Portland policeman before moving to Walla Walla; it was he who arrested Patterson in the scalping incident. In another odd twist of fate, Patterson allegedly killed a man in the mining town of Waldo, Oregon. Waldo was named for William Waldo, a brother of Daniel Waldo. Daniel Waldo moved from Missouri to Oregon Territory in 1843 with his wife, family and slaves. One of those slaves became the mother of his child, America Waldo. On January 1, 1863, the day President Abraham Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, America Waldo married Richard Bogle, an escaped slave from Jamaica. After their marriage, the Bogles moved to Walla Walla where they farmed and opened a barbershop. It was in Bogle’s barber chair where Patterson was shot.
Ferd Patterson's tombstone in the City of Walla Walla's Mountain View Cemetery
Museum hours are 10 am to 5 pm daily. Admission is free to members, children under 6, and through a reciprocal agreement Tamástslikt Cultural Institute's Inwai Circle cardholders and enrolled members of the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation; $3 for children ages 6-12; $6 for seniors (62+) and students; and $7 for adults. Your admission cost can be applied to a membership, which includes free admission to all Living History performances, priced beginning at $25. For more information, contact Fort Walla Walla Museum at 509-525-7703 or email: info@fortwallawallamuseum.org. |
