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.  

The Case of George Ives

The story  so far in Montana where Sheriff Plummer and his men - Gallagher, Stinson and Ray have control of the town of Bannack, stealing, gold, property, and Killing over 100 of the townspeople. The honest citizens have begun to organize,  beginning at the murder trial of Deputy Billingham. ' Presiding was Dr. G. G. Bissell, along with two other doctors. The prosecutor was blacksmith Cutler and the citizens were the jury. 

The trial was held in Wallace Street with Judge Bissell on a  wagon. By noon the trial was  over und by second  day a verdict of guilty was returned for the Sheriff's men.   In a last minute softhearted pleas by a few women present, Plummer's men were let go. The community did not agree. Several more unpunished crimes were committed (more on that later) until one day...
 

The bloodstained and mangled body of a young boy, Nicholas Tbalt, an orphan,  was found murdered for his little money and mules in Stinkingwater Valley. The murderer was discovered to be another of Sheriff Plummer's men, George lves. The trial and conviction was the first victory of the Montana Vigilantes.

Several citizens along with 25 men captured lves and his two co-horts, "Long John" Franck and George Hilderman, the  "American Pie Eating Champion." They were captured just outside Plummer's jurisdiction on October 19, 1863. Fifteen hundred men took part in the trial-just to see justice done to “one of Plummer's men." It was decided that all 1500 citizens would serve as jury with 25 acting as an advisory jury. The accused had attempted escape several times, so he and his cronies were held in  logging chains, secured by padlocks. 

The trial began in the afternoon and lasted until night fall. Ives tried to establish an alibi through the testimony by Honest Whiskey Joe.   The defense attorney attempted to discredit the prosecutor because of his place of origin. The evidence showed lves to be a robber and a killer on other occasions. The advisory jury found 23 to 1 for  a guilty verdict.  Out of the 1500 "jurors" less than 100  voted against the verdict. George Ives   was to be "Forthwith hung by the neck until dead."  Within 58 minutes lves was on the scaffold. His comrades? Hilderman was banished from Montana forever, and Long John had turned in evidence, and allowed to remain. 

 

The Vigilante Committee grew to large proportions and determined that and order would win in the end every  time. The fate of Henry Plummer?

 
Next time  - the fate of Henry Plummer and his Highway men

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Today in Pioneer History: "On June 20, 1619, the first elected legislative assembly in America convenes in Jamestown.  The House of Burgesses convenes in the choir of the town's church.  Jamestown was just 12 years old at the time, founded by the London Company and governed by Sir George Yeardley.  The assembly included 22 representatives, free adults male of voting age. 

Vigilantism in Montana

In Bannack,  Montana, the story of vigilantism is best told in a book titled Vigilantes of Montana by Thomas Dimsdale in 1866. The book was the first book published in Montana/Idaho Territory. 

It's the story of Henry Plummer who first arrived in gold country in 1852 as a teenager.  He settled in Nevada City.  He visited many mining camps before coming to Bannock, ran professional gambling houses and organized a group of men who preyed on people moving in and out of the camps. In nearby Lewiston,  Plummer was an established merchant when gold was first discovered in Montana July 1862, at Grasshopper Creek. The discovery site quickly became the town of Bannack. In October 1862,  bandits robbed a pack train of 14 pounds of gold and were hanged in Lewiston.

Plummer moved to Bannack and organized a new group of highwaymen in April 1863. He got elected Sheriff of Bannack. On May 24 1863 another deposit of gold which was later proved to be the greatest of the world, was discovered at Alder Gulch, 80 miles from Bannack - later to be Virginia City. Meanwhile, it was decided that one Sheriff would be over all camps east of the Bitter Root Mountains - including Bannack, Lewiston, and Virginia City. Plummer got the job.

It didn't take long for Plummer's highway men to plunder the gold being shipped out of these new found deposits of Montana. Plummer discovered it was more profitable to mine these shipments than to mine the streams, and made his headquarters at Rattlesnake Ranch where his arsenal and hideout were. His cover was a signpost for practicing marksmanship. Interestingly,  Plummer could draw and shoot 5 bullets from his pistol in 3 seconds. He had the reputation of the quickest shot in mountains. 

His men also used the ranches of  innocent people who were not foolish enough to even

hunt at what was going on. A conservative estimate based on bodies actually found was that Plummer and his men murdered some 102 people, not counting those whose remains were never found.  Plummer was the sheriff and three of his highwaymen were his deputes -  Jack Gallagher, Buck Stimson and Ned Ray. The one honest deputy Dillingham was murdered  by his "deputies" in cold blood.

Next time - Community Reaction Part 2

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Today in Pioneer History: "On July 27, 1921, scientists successfully isolate insulin,  a drug they believed could prevent diabetes, at the University of Toronto, Canada.  Frederick Banting and Charles Best saved countless lives within a year of their discovery.  

Cyrus Skinner

Cyrus Skinner was typical of the thieves and murderers who terrorized the gold fields of Montana in the early 1860s.  Skinner was born in Ohio in 1829 and began his robbing as a teenager.  Immigrating to California in 1850 was arrested for burglary soon after, and served 2 years in San Quentin.  Six months after his release, he was again arrested for burglary in Yuba County, California, being sentenced to 3 years in San Quentin again but escaped and committed 5 more robberies before his recapture and sentencing to San Quentin for 15 years this time.

In early 1859, Henry Plummer, an old friend of Skinner, joined him in San Quentin, and together they escaped for the final time in 1860 and fled to gold camps in northern Idaho where he became of a part of Plummer's gang of criminals.

Skinner moved east over the mountains to Montana gold fields, establishing saloons at Bannock and Virginia City.  Skinner was one of the most brutal of Plummer's gang and occasionally killed his victims just for the fun of it.  By early 1864, he and the gang had taken over 100 lives.

After Plummer was caught and hanged by the Vigilante's, Skinner left town but was tracked down to Hellgate, Montana in January of 1864. He had a morbid fear of being hanged, so he ran, thinking the Vigilantes would shoot him instead.  Then denied him that privilege and recaptured him and hung him, the last of the 24 bandits that were executed by the Montana Vigilantes.

The Sheriff of Bannock

Montana was isolated with little connection with the rest of the West.  That isolation led to many unsavory bandits  and marauders that found Montana country to be a prime place to operate. The greatest and most murderous of these gangs of organized thieves and bank robbers ever to operate in the West's gunpowder days was in Bannock.

Henry Plummer, was a charming psychopath who managed to con the citizens of Bannock into electing him sheriff from where he ran a highly organized dynasty of 100 highwaymen whose murders numbered into the hundreds and whose value was worth millions in stolen goods. Stage robbery was their game, and they were quite good at it.

Plummer was also quite adept at espionage and covered a wide part of Montana and nearby territory, from Salt Lake to Virginia City, confident that the meager law enforcement in the region was no match for him and his men. 

There was just one thing he didn't count on...next time.