The Fate of Henry Plummer

So what happened to Sheriff Plummer and his highway thugs? Henry was born of good stock whose family settled in New England in the early 1600s. Henry lost his father while Henry was still a teenager.
He went West at age 19 to search for gold in California. In two short years Henry owned a ranch, a mine and a bakery.  He was elected sheriff in 1856. He lost his election for state representative.

In 1857 Plummer shot and killed one John Vedder,  an abusive husband from whom  Henry had protected wife from.  Nevertheless, Plummer was convicted of 2nd degree murder.  Retrial on appeal resulted in conviction again and 10 year sentence to San Quentin. The governor granted Plummer a pardon because Henry suffered from tuberculosis.

Plummer had to leave the state in 1861 after killing William Riley while attempting to arrest him.  Thus began Henry's full time life of crime. He was involved in a shooting in Washington and decided to leave the West and go back home to Maine.  While waiting on a steamboat, he was recruited to help fight off Indians. Where he met Jack Cleveland and later killed him over a woman in Bannock, Montana.  (3 murders so far)  He was elected sheriff again, this time of Bannock.  See earlier posts about this time period. 

From Oct 1863 Dec 1863 history records eight separate crimes, from murder to horse stealing,  committed by Plummer and his gang.  Once the Vigilante Committee of Alder Gulch formed after more murders,   Plummer and his gang's days were numbered.  One Erastus Yeager,  of Henry's road gang was about to be hung, he named the majority of Pummer's gang along with Henry himself. It didn't help him as he was subsequently hung.

 

In 1864 The Vigilante Committee hunted down Plummer, Ned Ray, and Buck Stinson and on Jun 10, 1864 they were arrested together and hung together in the town square.   Plummer was given a posthumous trial in 1993 (130 yrs later) which led to a mistrial. The jury was split 6-6. if he had been alive,  he would have been freed and never tried again!  But history was already written and attests to the life of Henry Plummer!

 

Next time…I have no idea where we are going next :-)

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Today in Pioneer History: "On August 3,  1977, The TRS-80 Computer System, later renamed Model 1, was sold Tandy Corporations through Radio Shack.  It became one of the earliest mass produced and mass marketed retail home computers.