Juan Patrón: A Fallen Star in the Days of Billy the Kid

Hard to believe, but I find today that well over half a century has passed since I began writing about the explosion of civil disobedience and violence that became known as the Lincoln County War. In articles, books, at seminars and supper tables, I have throughout those years voiced my conviction that no history of that war and/or the legendary life of Billy the Kid can be considered complete without a serious examination of the part played in it by the downtrodden and ruthlessly exploited Hispanic population of Lincoln County. As the author remarks, nearly all the histories brush past any heroics by Hispanics.

But not this one. That its subject should be the life and death of Juan B. Patrón is—to me at least—a brilliant, much-needed step in the right direction. I remember my early mentor, Colonel Maurice G Fulton, extolling Patrón as a fine example of the very best kind of Hispanic citizen—only eighteen years old when he became a teacher to the town’s children, then probate court clerk (the probate judge was Lawrence G. Murphy!) and eventually Speaker of the House of Representatives. That this man of the humblest Hispanic origin achieved so much in his life during those turbulent years is a close to astonishing achievement.

The story told here presents the other lifestyle never mentioned elsewhere, the way the work was done, the way the food was cooked, the way the children were raised, the primitive facilities that were all they had; it has understanding and respect and with admirable research offers the reader a great deal of new material and—perhaps its most valuable achievement—the fullest and most reliable account of Juan Patrón’s mysterious death.

The author gently corrects a comment I made twenty years or so ago that there were no heroes in the Lincoln County War, and proposes that if anyone qualified, Patrón might very well be the one. Born in the most humble of circumstances, he became a leading figure among the Hispanic citizens of Lincoln, played a significant part in ridding the county of the Horrell clan in 1873 and just ten days before his twenty-fifth birthday won election to the Territorial House of Representatives in Santa Fe.

Refusing to take arms during the so-called war, he concentrated instead upon keeping the wheels of local government turning. Nonetheless, at the height of hostilities, and at some risk to himself, he gave shelter to Susan McSween and the Ealy family, and, at the behest of Governor Lew Wallace, formed and led the short-lived militia corps known as the Lincoln County Rifles—all but one of whose members were Hispanic—which helped bring a troubled peace to the county.

In 1879, Patrón moved to Puerto de Luna and married Beatriz, one of the daughters of Lorenzo Labadie, another influential Hispanic citizen whose life has been (until now) largely overlooked by historians. The author gives a detailed and long-overdue account of Patrón’s by no means uneventful political career, and rounds it out with an impeccably detailed presentation—undoubtedly the fullest ever written—of the mysterious manner of his death in 1884, mapping out exactly what happened and offering some pertinent theories as to why Michael Erskine Maney, the man who killed him, never spent a day in jail and lived a long and comfortable life (he died in 1942 at the ripe old age of eighty-four) without ever being required to account for or explain why he did it.

The picture of Juan Patrón that emerges here is largely that of a genuine, intelligent, honest, industrious man, but undoubtedly one with a dark strain in his personality. Even so, it is not too difficult to imagine that had he been born a decade or two later in a settled and more tolerant society, he might well have become New Mexico’s first Congressman when statehood was conferred in 1912. This recognition of his achievements and premature death is long overdue, and I commend both it and its author to you.

Frederick Nolan

Chalfont St Giles, England

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Acknowledgements

A score of published histories about violence in Lincoln County enabled me to set the proper stage for this book. Most notable are the excellent works by Frederick Nolan, Robert Utley and Mark Lee Gardner. To those authors and others noted in this book, I express my sincere thanks. I am especially indebted to Frederick Nolan for his foreword to the book.

This book also owes a large debt to many others. Most deserving of thanks is my good friend and fellow writer, Doug Wilburn, whose critical eye combed through the initial manuscript and brightened it. Also, his sleuthing spirit and that of Thalia Stautzenberger helped me piece together the life of Patrón’s killer after his escape from jail. Heretofore, Michael Maney’s whereabouts during the remainder of his life had been undisclosed.

Because Patrón’s personal papers were lost in a shed fire after his death, I relied heavily on a small army of archivists and librarians who dredged for data that eventually fleshed out Patrón’s story. These unsung heroes gave generously of their time and deserve high praise. They are Barry Drucker, former archivist at the New Mexico State Records and Archives; James Bradshaw, recently retired archivist at the Haley History Center; Laura Smith, archivist at the Santa Fe University of Art and Design; George Franchois, coordinator of library services at the U. S. Department of Interior Library; Karen Mills, historical records clerk for Lincoln County; Marina Ochoa, curator at the Catholic Archdiocese of Santa Fe; Tomas Jaehn at the Fray Angelico Chavez History Library, and Allison Deprey, collections assistant at the Indiana Historical Society.

Others who contributed in unique ways include Cleis and Jerome Jordan, who shared their Patrón collection while hosting my wife and me in the old Patrón home for several days; Herb Marsh, who escorted my small party to the canyon site of John Tunstall’s murder; Fiorella Sanchez, who translated numerous documents in Spanish for me, Daniel Flores, who scoured church records and cemeteries to find certain marriage and death dates and Shelley Butler, who kept my confounded computer humming. To all of these friends, I express my deep gratitude.

Several Patrón descendants also deserve thanks for their support and for sharing family photographs and recollections. They are Charles Jones, Charles Munro, The Reverend William Sanchez, The Reverend John Brasher, Frances Aguilar and Francis Racel.

Writers need editors, and I was fortunate to have Annie Tobey assigned to me. With her seasoned eye, she suggested changes that gave the book greater clarity and readability.

Finally, I cannot begin to express the depth of my gratitude to my wife Mary Ann for her encouragement during the five years it took to develop and write this book. Throughout it all, she kept me on a steady course, endured my bouts of frustration and anxiety with quiet patience and consoled me with her gentleness. For that, I have dedicated this book to the love of my life.

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INTRODUCTION

A Man for All Seasons

If one applied today’s vernacular to history, Juan Patrón easily would be viewed as the go-to-man during New Mexico’s frontier days. When urgencies demanded a courageous leader to defuse troubles in Lincoln County in the 1870s, those around him turned to Patrón. Whether asked to wield a six-shooter or a chairman’s gavel, he always answered the call. Three examples stand out. After the Horrell brothers shot up the town of Lincoln, killing his father, Patrón secured a critical governor’s reward that sent the murderous brood scurrying home to Texas. Later, Governor Lew Wallace trusted him to hold Billy the Kid in protective custody in a specious deal the governor brokered with the Kid. Finally, when the army refused Wallace troops to settle Lincoln’s troubles, he turned to Patrón again, directing him to organize and command Lincoln County’s first militia.

Yet nearly all histories about violence in Lincoln County brush past any heroics by Hispanics. They center instead on the lives of desperados like Billy the Kid or greedy Anglo merchants willing to kill for economic dominance over a region populated mostly by Hispanics. This book is a modest effort to correct that historical imbalance.

Patrón and most of his people wisely sat out the Lincoln County War. Instead, they directed their energies toward good. While bullets flew all around them, dirt-poor Hispanic farmers, who had defied the Apaches, persistently tilled their lands and fed their villages. Despite the war and threats on his life, Patrón kept a nascent government in America’s largest county, when judging by land size, functioning without any interruptions.

A respected historian correctly suggests there were no heroes in the war. But if one looks to the sidelines, the real heroes were those Hispanic and Anglo settlers who holstered their guns, kept their heads down and pushed forward in life without schools, churches, sanitation and doctors. In their struggle, they slowly paved a pathway toward New Mexico’s statehood a century ago with modest achievements despite a litany of deprivation.

An important disclosure is necessary here. I am the father of four of Juan Patrón’s great-grandchildren, having previously been married to one of his grandchildren. That being said, every effort was made to remain objective and true to history as I tried to resurrect the life of Juan Patrón from musty public records, newspaper articles and the private collections of personal papers. This is not the work of a historian but that of a former newspaperman who prayerfully has not betrayed the tenets of sound journalism. I introduce you to Don Juan Patrón.

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CHAPTER 1

The Bishop and the Boy

If ever a chunk of real estate embodied the wild American West, it was the Territory of New Mexico when it was ceded by Mexico to the United States in 1848. It was a raw frontier, rife with immorality and violence. Catholic priests passed their nights with dancehall girls. Feuds were settled with blazing guns, and a bottle of ninety-proof whiskey could ignite a drawdown over the slightest insult, be it intended or imagined.

The lives of two men, born nearly forty years apart on separate continents, eventually converged in this harsh, unbridled frontier, and through their own pursuits, they worked to tame it. Their beginnings were similar in some ways. Both men emerged from peasant families, benefited from Catholic schools and lost brothers and sisters to the rigors of early childhood. Their lives, however, ended in sharp contrast. One died peacefully in his sleep after a long life of religious accomplishments. The other was cut down by a Texas cowboy in a senseless saloon shooting at the height of a promising career in politics and business.

Jean Baptiste Lamy was the older of the two men, a French priest who came to America in 1839 when he was twenty-five years of age to serve as a missionary. Working in undemanding obscurity for eleven years, he established three busy missions in southern Ohio and in 1850 opened a new church as pastor of St. Mary’s Parish in Covington, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from the bustling port of Cincinnati. Lamy’s productive methods for acquiring land, creating new Catholic communities and raising money to erect new churches did not go unnoticed by his superiors in America.¹

When the Vatican decided in 1849 that it wanted a spiritual leader to oversee its seventy thousand Catholics in the sprawling New Mexico Territory, it tasked the bishops of America to submit a list of candidates. Meeting in synod in Baltimore in May of that year, the bishops settled on three candidates, listing Lamy first because of his piety, honesty, prudence and zeal for saving souls and sent their list of names to Rome.

On July 19, 1850, Pope Pius IX established the vicariate apostolic of New Mexico and four days later appointed thirty-five-year-old Father Jean Baptiste Lamy as its vicar apostolic with the title of Bishop of Agathonica. Receiving news of his appointment, Lamy sat amazed at his desk, wrestling with a bout of self-doubt about whether he was suited for the task. As letters of congratulations poured in from fellow priests, his confidence quickly lifted, and Lamy prepared for his journey to a land unlike any he had ever seen, a mixture of white desert sands, snow-capped mountains clad with piñon, cedar and pine and river valleys rich in grassy ranges.²

Bishop Jean Baptiste Lamy in 1870s

On November 24, Father Lamy took the short ferry ride from Covington to Cincinnati and climbed the hill to St. Peter’s Cathedral, a massive Dayton limestone structure known among the clergy as the bishop factory for the past twenty-one bishops consecrated there. Inside the Greek Classical church, this humble French priest soon would become the center of a majestic and precise ceremony reaching back to St. Peter.

Trailing a long procession of priests, bishops and consecrators, robed in colored brocade vestments sewn with silver and gold, Lamy entered the grand cathedral and knelt between a pair of kneeling marble angels flanking the ornate altar. Thus began a three-hour ceremony, starting with an examination of faith, followed by the act of consecration and his investiture with all the regalia of his new office—pectoral cross, mitre, crozier, gloves and ring. Then Lamy read his oath as a new bishop, vowing his unflinching obedience to his Church.³

It was a dazzling moment for this unassuming priest, born of peasantry in a small clay farmhouse in the south of France. Lamy entered the world on October 11, 1814. Of eleven children born into his family, only four survived as adults. Two sons, Louis and Jean Baptiste, became priests, and daughter Marguerite entered the sisterhood. A third son, Etienne, fathered a son, Antoine, and a daughter, Marie, who in turn became a priest and nun. Antoine would later serve as a frontier priest under his uncle.⁴

Bishop Lamy set off for New Mexico in November 1850. After traveling for ten months by steamship, railroad, stagecoaches and mule wagons, Lamy and his trusted vicar general, Father Joseph Machebeuf, finally arrived in Santa Fe on Sunday, August 9, 1851. To their surprise, they were greeted by a throng of thousands, including the territorial governor and Monsignor Juan Felipe Ortiz, the ecclesiastical dean of New Mexico.

The afterglow of Lamy’s jubilant welcome evaporated quickly the next day. Reflecting on his long journey across New Mexico, Lamy mournfully recalled that at every stop he had seen his beloved Church in general disarray and beset with moral and physical decay. Schools were non-existent. Of the fifteen priests available to serve parishes scattered across a land larger than France, six were so feeble they were inactive. The other nine priests either were too lazy to provide spiritual succor to the faithful or behaved scandalously, drinking, gambling and dancing with carefree women in local saloons.⁵

Thousands of Catholics—Mexicans and Indians—who inherited the faith, Lamy learned, were foregoing religious sacraments. They were unbaptized, unconfirmed and cohabitating outside of marriage and producing illegitimate children, simply because the clergy levied outrageous charges for pastoral services at birth, marriage, baptism and burial. What, an exasperated Lamy asked an associate, would you think of a priest who does not preach to his congregation but only once a year, and then on condition he will receive eighteen dollars? In some cases, the exorbitant fees demanded by the clergy supported addictions to liquor and gambling. One old priest, while riding to a distant mission, was so drunk he fell off his horse and broke a leg in three places.

Still worse, priests openly betrayed their vows by indulging in adultery, some with live-in mistresses. Their behavior shocked visitors from the States. One layman observed, The priests of New Mexico were noted for their corruption and profligacy, and instead of being teachers in morals they were leaders in vice. There was hardly a priest who did not rear a family of illegitimate children, in direct violation of his holy vows and laws of religion and morality.⁶

Most notable among the sexually active priests was Father Jose Manuel Gallegos, a popular pastor in Albuquerque. Vain and pretentious, he was the convivial crony of politicians and lived openly with a married Mexican woman, who had been the mistress of two Mexican officers in turn, by whom she had three children. With her money, she and Gallegos operated a general store that they kept open on Sundays in violation of church rules. Gallegos’s behavior was so reprehensible, Lamy succeeded in removing him from the church.⁷

The vicariate Lamy inherited could not have been in a worse way. Illiteracy was widespread. Less than half of his Catholics could read their catechisms or sign their names because there were no public or religious schools. It was the ugly legacy of government policies imposed first by Spain and then Mexico to keep the populace ignorant and in peonage. Lamy faulted the priests and their previous superior, the bishop of Durango, Jose Antonio Zubiria, for the deplorable situation facing him. Bishop Zubiria, based fifteen hundred miles away in Mexico, had visited the New Mexico sector of his diocese only three times in twenty years. Lamy had a plan to fix his broken and neglected Church.

Lamy’s first concerns were education followed by reformation of an errant clergy. The state of immorality in matters of sex is so deplorable that the most urgent need is to open schools for girls under the direction of the Sisters of Charity, Lamy advised his financial supporters in France. He asked for fifteen thousand francs to open the first school and told of his plan to have a school for boys in each of his twenty-six parishes. Boys were being raised without being taught to respect female chastity. As a result, both boys and girls generally were promiscuous. Most appalling to Lamy was the common practice of parents selling their daughters into sexual servitude to older men, either through cohabitation or marriage.⁸

Life in the rural reaches of Santa Fe had not changed much since the days of the Spanish conquistadors. Mexicans and a few Anglos farmed in the valleys and on the plains. Although everyone called them Mexicans, they were Hispanic native New Mexicans who had lived there for generations. Their farming methods were handed down from past generations. The soil was tilled with a wire fork bound to a log and drawn by mules. In the canyons and on the mesas, they grazed sheep and ran goats, which they used for both meat and milk. They farmed as the ancients did, one new arrival observed. They tramp out wheat with sheep or goats, fan it by the wind and keep their guns tied to the plow beam.⁹

Such was the grim life facing a boy named Juan Bautista Patrón, the son of peasants, unable to read or write English and doomed to work long days in the fields, helping his family scratch out a living from a small patch of land. Luckily for this boy, Bishop Lamy opened his first schools in Santa Fe just in time to rescue his future.

Juan was the third of five children born to Isidro and Felipa Martinez Patrón. Born on November 20, 1852, he was christened with the same name of the Patrón’s first son, who died shortly after birth in 1850. The family lived in a squat adobe house close to a stream that irrigated its small farm outside of Santa Fe. Juan’s older sister Juana was born on November 29, 1845, and a younger sister, Encarnacion, on March 29, 1856. A younger brother,