Henry Plummer

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Henry Plummer (* 1832 in Addison Washington County ( Maine ); † 10. January 1864 in Bannack Beaverhead County ( Montana , Idaho Territory )) was an American prospector , city marshal , sheriff , outlaw , stagecoaches - robber , and leader of a criminal gang in the American West in the 1850s and 1860s that were known to have killed several men, some in some form of self-defense.

Henry Plummer

Origin and life

Plummer was born in 1832 as William Henry Handy Plumer in Addison, Maine, the last of six children to the married couple Jeremiah (1794–1873) and Susan C. Plumer (1804–1877), whose ancestors first settled in Maine in 1634 when it was still part of the Massachusetts Bay Colony . When Plummer was gripped by the Californian gold fever, he sailed from New York on April 27, 1851, at the age of 19, on board the US mail ship Illinois to Aspinwall , Panama , where he and the other passengers went ashore take a mule train to Panama City and from there board a floating palace called the Golden Gate. They reached San Francisco at exactly midnight on May 21st . Plummer's journey from the east to the west coast to the gold fields of California had taken only 24 days. Then he settled in the California gold rush town of Nevada City , where he ran a mine and a ranch, opened a bakery and became active in the Democratic Party . Here he changed the spelling of his last name from Plumer to Plummer. Elaborate, friendly, and ambitious, Plummer won sheriff elections in 1856, became town administrator, and did well enough to win re-election the following year. However, later in 1857, Plummer suffered two setbacks. First, he lost his application for a seat in the California legislature and, second, he was convicted of second degree murder for killing the unarmed John Vedder as city marshal of Nevada City in the Hotel de Paris on September 26, 1857, in the course of his duty. Plummer claimed he acted in self-defense trying to protect Lucy Vedder, John's wife, who was trying to flee from her abusive husband, but the jury apparently believed witnesses who said the real motive was an affair he was with the Wife of the murdered. He won a retrial appeal but was again sentenced to ten years in prison. Plummer was sitting six months in prison in San Quentin in the US state of California, but in August 1859 his followers asked the Governor of California John B. Weller , in a letter to a pardon because of his alleged good character and citizenship performance. The governor granted the pardon due to Plummer's (largely feigned) poor health as a result of the incurable tuberculosis at the time . When he returned to Nevada City, he won re-appointment as Assistant Marshall.

In 1861, Plummer tried to civilly arrest William Riley, who had fled San Quentin. In the attempt, however, Riley was killed in a brawl in a brothel . Plummer turned himself in to the police, who accepted that the murder was justified. Fearing that his prison record would prevent a fair trial, they allowed Plummer to leave the state. Plummer made his way to the Washington area where gold had been discovered. There he became embroiled in an argument that ended in a shootout won by Plummer. He decided to leave the west and return to Maine. On the way back east, Plummer waited on the Missouri River for a steamship to reach Fort Benton , Montana, and was approached by James Vail. He recruited volunteers to help protect his family from Indian attacks at the mission station he was trying to find in Sun River, Montana . Since no passage home was possible, Plummer accepted along with Jack Cleveland, a horse dealer who had known Plummer in California. During the mission, both Plummer and Cleveland fell in love with Vail's attractive sister-in-law, Electa Bryan. Plummer asked her to marry him and she agreed. With gold recently discovered in nearby Bannack, Montana, Plummer decided to go there and try to make enough money to support both of them. Eventually he contacted a gang of desperados who were robbing and killing miners in Idaho. When a frank and courageous saloon owner named Patrick Ford began to suspect Plummer, the outlaw arranged for him to be killed in a shootout. However, fears about Plummer grew and he fled again.

As Plummer on 22 November 1862 in which was founded the same year and after the local Bannock - Indians named City Bannack in Montana arrived, the 1862 venue was a big gold discovery and to 1864 for a short time as the capital of Montana Territory served until the capital to Virginia City was relocated, the people of the booming little mining town knew nothing of its past. On January 1863, he killed his friend Jack Cleveland, who had asked Plummer to fight to quench his jealousy. The argument took place in a crowded saloon, and observers agreed that Plummer had killed his enemy in self-defense. As the Idaho gold fields began to dry up, many of Plummer's old accomplices followed to Montana. Plummer was considered an honest citizen and managed to convince 307 residents of Bannack to elect him to sheriff in May 1863. Soon, however, he was accused of leading a stagecoach band of outlaws known as The Innocents who chased stagecoaches and gold shipments from Virginia City to other areas in order to rob them.

Plummer's sheriff's office was the perfect cover for running an effective and deadly criminal ring. Plummer provided his henchmen with information about the movements of the gold shipments and made sure that they were not caught. For the next six months, muggers ruthlessly terrorized the people of Bannack and the nearby town of Virginia City. To the dismay of the townspeople, Sheriff Plummer did not appear to be able to stop them. After more than 100 people had been robbed or murdered and in December 1863 the German Nicolas Tiebalt was murdered by George Ives for two mules and $ 200, sentenced to death by a gold digger court and hanged on December 21, 1864, the settlers organized the December 1863 in Virginia City consisting of almost 2,000 members so-called Montana Vigilantes (Vigilance) Committee of Alder Gulch (German: Self-Protection Committee ). The Vigilance Committee began under their leader, the US Deputy Marshal John X. Beidler (1831–1890), to crack down on Plummer's gang by obtaining confessions from a few men they had arrested in early January 1864.

The Vigilance Committee destroyed Plummer and his gang in a surprisingly short time. Her first victims included Erastus Red Yeager, who revealed Plummer's complicity and the names of the other gang leaders before he was hanged. Early on a bitterly cold Sunday morning, January 10, 1864, the vigilantes arrested Plummer and his two deputies Buck Stinson and Ned Ray. While his cronies swore and resisted, Plummer reportedly wept and begged to be spared, but to no avail. All three men were hanged at once on a gallows in Bannack that Sheriff Plummer had prepared for another delinquent . The vigilantes rode away, "leaving the corpses behind", as a contemporary wrote it, and "froze in the freezing cold". By the spring of 1864, all of Plummer's gang, The Innocents, were either dead or gone.

Posthumous process

A posthumous trial was held in the Virginia City, Montana courthouse on May 7, 1993 (Montana's Twin Bridges public schools initiated the event). The 12 registered voters in the jury were split 6-6 in the verdict, which led Judge Barbara Brook to declare the process flawed. Had Plummer been alive, he would have been released on a split verdict and not tried again.

Robberies and murders

Between October and December 1863, the rate of robberies and murders in and around Alder Gulch increased significantly, and the citizens of Virginia City became increasingly suspicious of Plummer and his associates.

Notable criminal acts, including those committed by suspected members of the Plummer gang:

  • On October 13, 1863, Lloyd Magruder was killed by the mugger Chris Lowrie. Magruder was an Idaho merchant who left Virginia City with $ 12,000 in gold dust from goods he had sold there. Some of the men he hired to take him back to Lewiston, Idaho, were criminals. Four other men in his group were also murdered in the camp; Charlie Allen, Robert Chalmers, Horace Chalmers and William Phillips from Lowrie, Doc Howard, Jem Romaine and William Page.
  • On October 26, 1863, Peabody and Caldwell's carriage between Rattlesnake Ranch and Bannack was ambushed by two muggers, believed to be Frank Parish and George Ives. Bill Bunton, the owner of the Rattlesnake Ranch, who hit the carriage at the ranch, was also involved in the raid. The robbers stole 2,800 dollars in gold from passengers and threatened them all with death if they talked about the robbery.
  • On November 13, 1863, young Henry Tilden was hired by Wilbur F. Sanders and Sidney Edgerton to locate and confiscate some of the men's horses. Tilden was confronted with three armed gangsters near Horse Prairie. He had very little money with him and was allowed to go unmolested, but was warned that if he talked about who he had seen, he would be killed. He told Wilbur's wife, Hattie Sanders, and Sidney Edgerton that he recognized one of the gangsters as Sheriff Henry Plummer. Although Tilden's report was dismissed because of the general respect for Plummer, suspicions grew in the region that Plummer was the leader of a band of robbers.
  • On November 22, 1863, the A. J. Oliver carriage was ambushed on its way from Virginia City to Bannack by the muggers George Ives, Whiskey Bill Graves and Bob Zachary. Less than $ 1,000 in gold and treasury bills was lost in the raid. One of the victims, Leroy Southmayd, reported the robbery and identified the muggers to Bannack Sheriff, Henry Plummer. Members of Plummer's gang confronted Southmayd on his return trip to Virginia City, but Southmayd was smart enough to avoid injury or death.
  • In November 1863, Conrad Kohrs of Deer Lodge , Montana traveled to Bannack with $ 5,000 in gold dust to buy cattle . After talking to Sheriff Plummer in Bannack, Kohrs was concerned about the risk of a robbery on his return to Deer Lodge. While his group was camping overnight, his staff found muggers George Ives and Dutch John Wagner, who were guarding the camp and armed with shotguns. A day or two later, Kohrs was riding the horse to the Deer Lodge when Ives and Wagner took up the chase. Since Kohrs' horse proved to be the faster, Kohrs avoided the confrontation and reached Deer Lodge safely.
  • In early December 1863, a three-car freight company organized by Milton S. Moody drove from Virginia City to Salt Lake City . Among the seven passengers was John Bozeman. They carried $ 80,000 in gold dust and $ 1,500 in treasury bills. While the troops were camping at Blacktail Deer Creek, gangsters Dutch John Wagner and Steve Marshland entered the camp, armed and ready to rob the van. Members of the camp were well armed, and Wagner and Marshland escaped by claiming they were only looking for lost horses. Two days later, Wagner and Marshland were wounded in an unsuccessful attempt to rob the wagon train as it crossed the North American continental divide near Red Rock River, Montana .
  • On December 8, 1863, Anton Holter, who wanted to sell oxen in Virginia City, survived an attempted robbery and murder. When the muggers George Ives and Aleck Carter, whom Holter recognized, discovered that Holter had no significant fortune, they attempted to shoot him. He avoided the shots and fled into the undergrowth .

At the time, Bannack and Virginia City, Montana, were part of a remote area of ​​the Idaho Territory that lacked formal law enforcement and legal systems. Some residents suspected that Plummer's band of robbers was responsible for numerous robberies, attempted robberies, murders, and attempted murders in and around Alder Gulch from October to December 1863.

Vigilance Committee

From December 19-21, 1863, a public trial was held in Virginia City in a miners' court for George Ives, the alleged murderer of Nicholas Tiebolt, a young Dutch immigrant. Hundreds of miners from around the area took part in the three-day outdoor trial. George Ives was indicted, convicted, and hanged in neighboring Nevada City, Montana on December 21, 1863 by Wilbur F. Sanders .

On December 23, 1863, two days after the Ives Trial, Virginia City leaders and Bannack established the Vigilance Committee of Alder Gulch in Virginia City. They included five Virginia City residents under the direction of Wilbur Fisk Sanders, including Major Alvin W. Brockie, John Nye, Captain Nick D. Wall, and Paris Pfouts. Between January 4 and February 3, 1864, the vigilantes arrested at least 20 suspected members of Plummer's gang and executed them without further ado.

Shortly after its inception, the Vigilance Committee dispatched men to search for Aleck Carter, Whiskey Bill Graves, and Bill Bunton, well-known allies of George Ives. The contingent was led by Captain James Williams, the man who investigated the murder of Nicolas Tiebolt. Near Rattlesnake Ranch on the Ruby River, the search party found Erastus Red Yeager and George Brown, both suspected robbers. While traveling back to Virginia City under guard, Yeager made a full confession naming the majority of the muggers in Plummer's gang as well as Henry Plummer. The gang found Yeager and Brown guilty and hung them from a cotton tree at Lorrain's Ranch on the Ruby River.

On January 6, 1864, the Vigilant (German: member of a self-protection organization ) Captain Nick Wall and Ben Peabody captured the road agent Dutch John Wagner, who was wounded in the Moody robbery, on the way to Salt Lake City . The vigilantes brought Wagner to Bannack, where he was hanged on January 11, 1864. By this point, Yeager's confession had already mobilized the vigilantes against Plummer and his main allies, Deputies Buck Stinson and Ned Ray. Plummer, Stinson, and Ray were arrested and unceremoniously hanged on the morning of January 10, 1864.

The gang's two youngest members were reportedly spared. One of them was sent back to Bannack, the rest ask to leave the area and the other was to Lewiston ( Idaho premised) to warn the band members to leave the city. (Lewiston was that the connection from the territory to the world, as it had river steamboats on the river Snake and Columbia to the coast in Astoria ( Oregon drove)). Plummer was known to travel to Lewiston while serving as an elected official in Bannack. The records of the hotel register with his signature from this time have been preserved. The large-scale robberies of gold shipments by gangs ended with the deaths of Plummer and the alleged gang members. Gang member George Lane, better known as Clubfoot George, was hanged 4 days later on January 14, 1864. His last words when he recognized an old friend in the crowd were:

"Good-bye, old fellow. I'm gone (German: Goodbye, old friend. I'm gone. "

- George Lane (Clubfoot George) :

family

Henry Plummer was married to Electra Bryan, daughter of the married couple James E. Bryan (1785-1856) and Mary Mae Johnson Bryan (1800-1849) , since 1863 . He had two siblings, William H. Plummer (1831-1906) and Jeremiah E. Plummer (1847-1812).

In popular culture

  • Francis M. Thompson's 1914 article in Massachusetts Magazine describes his relationship with Plummer and details some of the details of the case from the personal perspective of a mercantile owner in Bannack, Montana during that time. In 2004, Montana collected Thompson's memoirs in his book A Tenderfoot in Montana , disregarding Thompson's previous experience as a banker in the Midwest, which was very useful to him during his stay in the West.
  • Ernest Haycox The historical novel Alder Gulch (German title: Die Goldschlucht ) from 1942 depicts Plummer as handsome and eloquent, but as a cold and calculating murderer and thief without a conscience. He portrays the vigilantes as justified, but just as ruthless as they practiced their lynching by slowly strangling them by hanging.
  • In Two for the Gallows (German: Zwei für den Galgen ) from April 11, 1961 from the NBC TV series At the foot of the blue mountains , the actor Slim Sherman is played by ( John Smith ) under false pretenses to be hired by a certain man Bringing Professor Landfield , played by Donald Woods , to the Badlands to look for gold. Landfield is allegedly Morgan Bennett, a member of the former Plummer gang who escaped prison. Little does Slim have a clue that Landfield is looking for the booty his gang had hidden. Jess Harper ( Robert Fuller ), Pete Dixon ( Warren Oates ) and Pete's younger brother soon come to the rescue of Slim. The title of this episode is based on the two Dixon brothers who, due to their activities, likely had to await the executioner.
  • Scottish folk act The David Latto Band wrote Plummer's song about Henry Plummer, released on their 2012 debut album of the same name. The song was written from the perspective of a Bannack resident who had doubts about Plummer's guilt and alleged crimes.
  • Ghost Adventures (2008) S9, E4 Bannack Ghost Town talks about Henry Plummer.
  • In Expedition Unknown (2016) S3, E1 Plummer's Gold : Josh Gates sets off into the gold rush to search for the lost fortune of a notorious Montana sheriff. During his research, Josh explores hidden cave systems and blows up a mine that has been sealed for over a century.
  • The writer Zane Gray in 1916 wrote the book The Border Legion (German: The Border Legion ), under the name Cabin Gulch was re-released and was loosely based on the story of Henry Plummer and the discovery of gold in Alder Gulch.

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Henry Plummer in findagrave.com (English)
  2. ↑ a b c d e f May 24, 1863, Henry Plummer is elected sheriff of Bannack, Montana, In: history.com (English)
  3. ↑ a b Electa Bryan Maxwell in findagrave.com (English)
  4. ↑ Der Wilde Westen, homepage of Manfred Schmetkamp, ​​gangs and bandits, Die Plummerbande, In: wilder-westen-web.de
  5. ↑ 1831 Montana “Vigilante X” is born. Stagecoach Guard and Deputy US Marshall John X. Beidler. ( history.com ( memento of April 10, 2019 in the Internet Archive ), in English, accessed on June 22, 2020)
  6. ↑ Beidler, John X. (1831–1890) born in Mount Joy, Pennsylvania. US Marshall John X. Beidler Montana Post from Virginia City, In: Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement, by Mitchel P. Roth, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, London 2001, ISBN 0-313-30560-9 in the Google Book Search United States
  7. ^ Buck Stinson, In: de.findagrave.com
  8. ↑ Ned Ray, In: de.findagrave.com
  9. ^ Henry Plummer. In: RE Mather and RE Boswell - Wild West magazine. August 1993, accessed June 21, 2020 .
  10. ↑ a b c d e f g Montana Vigilantes 1863–1870 Gold, Guns and Gallows , by Dillon, Mark C., Utah State University Press, The Third Factor Leading to Vigilantism in the Region - The Insecure Means of Transporting Wealth, 2013, ISBN 978-0-87421-919-7, pp. 57-88 in the Google Book Search USA
  11. ↑ George Homer Ives at findagrave.com
  12. ↑ Montana Vigilantes 1863-1870 Gold, Guns and Gallows , The Murder of Nicolas Tiebolt and the Trial and Execution of George Ives, by Dillon, Mark C., Utah State University Press, The Third Factor Leading to Vigilantism in the Region - The Insecure Means of Transporting Wealth, 2013, ISBN 978-0-87421-919-7, pp. 89-118 in the Google Book Search USA
  13. ↑ George Homer Ives, In: de.findagrave.com
  14. ↑ Montana Vigilantes 1863–1870 Gold, Guns and Gallows , Formation of the Vigilance Committee, by Dillon, Mark C., Utah State University Press, The Third Factor Leading to Vigilantism in the Region - The Insecure Means of Transporting Wealth, 2013, ISBN 978-0-87421-919-7, pp. 119-134 in Google Book Search USA
  15. ↑ Montana Vigilantes 1863–1870 Gold, Guns and Gallows , The Hanging Spree Begins, by Dillon, Mark C., Utah State University Press, The Third Factor Leading to Vigilantism in the Region - The Insecure Means of Transporting Wealth, 2013, ISBN 978 -0-87421-919-7, pp. 135-155 in Google Book Search USA
  16. ^ The Oregonian's handbook of the Pacific Northwest , by Jones, Edward Gardner, 1894 (English)
  17. ^ The Massachusetts magazine: devoted to Massachusetts history, genealogy, biography, 1908, Vol. VI, No. 4, pp. 159–190, In: archive.org (English)
  18. ↑ Two for the Gallows in the Internet Movie Database (English)
  19. ↑ Plummer's Song, The David Latto Band .
  20. ↑ Call of Juarez Gunslinger Wiki: Everything you need to know about the game. In: Gaming Bolt. May 13, 2013, accessed June 22, 2020 .
  21. ^ Chapter I - Henry Plummer, pp. 12-15, Nathaniel P. Langford, Vigilante Days and Ways - The Pioneers of the Rockies in the Google Book Search USA
personal data
SURNAME Plummer, Henry
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Plumer, William Henry Handy
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American prospector, sheriff, town marshal and outlaw
DATE OF BIRTH 1832
PLACE OF BIRTH Addison (Maine)
DATE OF DEATH January 10, 1864
Place of death Bannack, Montana