Person:Clinton Ferry (1)

"Clinton P. Ferry, Duke of Tacoma"^[2]

C. P. Ferry came to Tacoma only a few months after Matthew Morton McCarver. He built a house near that of the old boomer in Old Town, served for a time as McCarver's private secretary, correcting the general's inspired spelling and eventually marrying a daughter of McCarver's second wife, which made him McCarver's stepson-in-law, though he preferred to be called the Duke of Tacoma.

A man of imposing presence, big-nosed, long-jawed, loose-framed, he was hard-working and intent on money. Ferry served as agent for the Tacoma Land Company, handled McCarver's estate after his death, and managed his own property well.

He pioneered the development of South Tacoma and the papers guessed he was worth a million or two. After his first wife died, Ferry courted and won a vivacious, auburn-haired divorcee, Cynthia Trafton, who of course was considerably younger than he. He was very proud of her. Jealous, too.

In 1889 Ferry's contributions to the Republican party were rewarded with an appointment as United States commissioner to the Paris Exposition. It seemed the perfect honeymoon: Paris, visits to the 984-foot tower Alexandre Gustave Eiffel had built for the event, a suite in the best hotel, a government carriage for rides on the Champs Elysee, diplomatic status. What more could a girl ask? Well, Cynthia wanted to learn French.

Ferry hired as tutor a champagne salesman who claimed noble connections. Cynthia's efforts were assiduous, her accent improved steadily, but Ferry's enthusiasm for bilingualism lessened. He found the tutor to be more than efficient, he was also young and handsome.

A story in the Tacoma Ledger quoted a story in a New York paper to the effect that the Duke of Tacoma was going about with his hand in a cast because Cynthia had broken his forefinger when he waved it under her nose during a discussion about elisions in latinate derivatives.

Ferry decided it was time for them to return to Tacoma with the objets d'art they had collected for the new house Cynthia was planning. She wouldn't go.

Ferry agreed to stay in Paris a while longer if she would promise not to admit the tutor to their suite nor recognize him on the street. She kept her word. She met him at a hotel. Ferry and a detective interrupted one of the French lessons. During the explanations that followed, she bit a chunk off her husband's nose. He demanded, unsuccessfully, that Parisian authorities jail her as "a common woman."

When the Duke of Tacoma returned to his home turf, his patrician nose appeared intact but Mrs. Ferry was not with him. She was no longer Mrs. Ferry. He was accompanied, however, by the collection of art they had purchased for the new house.

Most of it Ferry gave to the city's new museum, which he helped finance and which was named for him. Some he gave to the city for its parks. The two maidens guarding the Division Avenue entrance to Wright Park are mementos of the Duke of Tacoma's time in Paris.

Out of personal misfortune, civic amenities.

1. ↑ Find A Grave.
2. ↑ "Clinton P. Ferry, Duke of Tacoma", in Morgan, Murray C. Puget's Sound: A Narrative of Early Tacoma and the Southern Sound. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1979)
   pp. 267-68.