FIRST WESTERN GUNFIGHTER?

His name was J. Ferdinand Patterson (we have late author Glenn Shirley’s unsupported word the J stood for “Jason”), and he is perhaps the least known and most underrated gunfighter in Western history.

Ferd Patterson was a contemporary of the infamous Cullen Montgomery Baker, the latter referred to, rightly or wrongly, by many writers and historians as the “first gunfighter.” But you won’t find Patterson in most standard encyclopedias of gunfighters, and someone has yet to pen his biography. Extant accounts of his life are scattered and conflicting and must be carefully scrutinized to get at the truth.

What little is known of Patterson’s early life appears more legend than provable fact. Most available sources, mainly secondary, place his birth in Tennessee in about 1820 or 1821. Baker was also born in that state, in 1835, his family moving to Texas in 1839. Although Shirley claimed Patterson moved to Texas that same year, in his late teens, contemporary sources suggest he moved there with his parents in boyhood. By all accounts young Patterson was educated and from a good family, his father a man of social standing.

According to author and frontier vigilante Nathaniel P. Langford, Patterson “[grew] to manhood among the desperate and bloody men of that border state. His character, tastes and pursuits were formed by early association with them.” Under their tutelage he became a gunman and professional gambler. He also developed a propensity for hard liquor. In the verbose writing style of his era Langford described Patterson’s behavior under the influence of drink: “He remembered on these occasions every person who had ever offended him and sought the one nearest to him to engage him in quarrel. His whole bearing was aggressive and belligerent, and his best friends always avoided him