This couple endured what could possibly be the shortest marriage in frontier Washington history—all because one person chased their lifelong dream.

Kate, a young, blushing bride, married W.P. Horton on September 21, 1861 in Walla Walla County in Washington Territory. W.P. promised “to be to her a good, kind, faithful, and affectionate husband,” and Kate “to make him a kind, faithful, and affectionate wife.” This is not how things turned out.

According to court testimony, the very day after the wedding, Kate Horton began “disregarding her duties and obligations as the wife,” and initiated a series of quarrels featuring abusive and insulting language towards her new husband.

According to Mr. Horton, his new wife only married him to get away from her mother. What she really wanted was to “go away and reside in a house of ill-fame." He tried to talk her out of this rash course of action, but Kate replied that "she had always wanted to be a whore and that she would be one.”

A few days later, Kate left for a dance hall and warned W.P. that he should not follow, presumably because she would be fulfilling her desire to become a prostitute.

On September 30th, nine days after the wedding, W.P. Horton made his way to the courthouse. Mrs. Horton was issued a summons, but court records show that she was not present at the time the case was heard. The divorce was granted that same day, which was very uncommon for cases of abandonment which normally required a year waiting period.

This was perhaps because of W.P. Horton's standing in the community. The next year, he was elected County Recorder and soon he was a Justice of the Peace himself, granting a divorce for Ned and Mary Clough in 1862. A few conclusions can be made about Mr. and Mrs. Horton’s divorce— it could have been granted quickly due to his influence and connections in Walla Walla County, the very short duration of their marriage, or additional knowledge that the presiding judge may have had.

This is not the last we heard of Mr. Horton. He remarried about a year after his divorce, had children, and continued on with his life, eventually ending up in Whitman County. Mrs. Horton is not mentioned again in either newspaper articles, marriage records, or court records, and she vanishes without a trace.

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A woman is blatantly cheated on by her husband while cleaning the rooms in the boarding house. She found her husband’s mistress outside on the roof of the saloon next door, trying to escape.

“I stepped round to the next room and found Bertie Rockhold out on the shed room being the roof of the Saloon Building…” So Bell Ford testified in 1889 as she recounted her husband’s cheating ways. Her husband, B.M. Ford, had been treating her unkind for many years but this was the final straw.

According to Mrs. Ford, she married Mr. Ford in 1878, yet after 10 years of marriage, he would call her a “damn bitch” and “would refuse me and call me harsh names”. Also that he “was a daily and constant drinker for the last year.”

Matters reached a climax when Bertie Rockhold and
Mr. Ford began a flagrant affair--at the same boarding house that employed Mrs. Ford. She testified that after finishing her lunch in the kitchen, she went back upstairs to finish cleaning the rooms. She went to room No. 3, an unoccupied room she had already finished cleaning, yet she found the door locked.

She continued, “I knocked on the door and received no answer and I heard the window shoved up. I stepped round to the next room and found Bertie Rockhold out on the shed room being the roof of the Saloon Building …. I heard Mr. Ford’s voice in the next room and it being locked I forced it open and found Mr. Ford in the room with her. Mr. Ford was dressing himself.”

Two other witnesses, Wilfred Baulue and William Parker, provide pages and pages of testimony corroborating Mr. Ford’s habitual drunkenness and inappropriate treatment of Mrs. Ford.

Mrs. Ford was granted a divorce but kept her last name. A few years later she owned her own boarding house. Bertie Rockhold disappears from the historical record.

Infidelity was rampant on the frontier and was one of the more common reasons for divorce. If one party was able to prove infidelity by the other then the divorce would most likely be granted. If there was witness testimony, the divorce was a slam dunk for the plaintiff. The case of the Fords is a perfect example of infidelity and witness testimony in a divorce case, with a happier ending for Mrs. Ford.

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