Jim Kershner’s this day in history

From our archives, 100 years ago

The Samuel Clemens trial in Colfax had people transfixed, because the story had elements of a tragic novel.

Clemens was on trial for second-degree murder in the killing of a young man named George Boland 14 years earlier in Pampa, Washington, near La Crosse, Washington.

In that long-ago incident, Clemens had forbidden his daughter, Nellie, then 20, to go to a dance with her sweetheart, T.E. Carter. She went anyway, along with Boland and Miss Lena Schreck.

Clemens, angered, went to the gate near the schoolhouse where the dance was held. It was dark and he stopped every wagon that exited the gate and demanded the names of the occupants. Finally, the rig bearing his daughter, along with Carter, Boland and Schreck arrived at the gate. Clemens demanded to know whose rig it was. When nobody answered, he drew a gun and fired.

Clemens claimed that he intended to fire over their heads. But in the darkness, the bullet struck and killed Boland.

When Clemens realized what he had done, he kissed his daughter goodbye, mounted his horse and rode into the darkness.

Nobody heard from him for 14 years, until the day in July 1914 when “an old man with a white beard and a haggard look” approached a city marshal in Colfax and asked to be arrested.

Now, his fate was in the hands of a jury.