Photographs by Edward Fielding available for purchase – click here.
Real-life in the early days of the Wild West is often stranger than any Western dime novel would depict. Take the case of Henry Plummer which ended in a mistrial 6-6 post-humorously in a mock trial 129 years later after he was served frontier justice by a band of vigilantes.
The future Sherriff of Bannack, Montana began life in Addison, Maine back in 1832. At nineteen years of age, he heard the calling of the California goldfields.
The search for gold, riches and the violence that went hand in hand with the hard-scrabble type of men who sought the shiny metal flakes and nuggets would follow Plummer where ever he went.
Plummer found early success in Nevada City, CA so much so that within the first two years he already owned a mine, a ranch, and a bakery in town. Two years later he was elected sheriff, city manager and ran unsuccessfully for a state representative seat. Things went downhill from here.
Lucy Vedder came to the city marshall, Plummer, for protection from an abusive husband. On September 26, 1857, Plummer shot and killed John Vedder and claimed self-defense but the jury didn’t buy it and convicted Plummer of second-degree murder.
Plummer appealed the case, won a retrial but lost the case and was convicted again receiving a sentenced to ten years in San Quentin.
Through supporters, political connections and with the medical case of tuberculosis (then incurable), Plummer received a pardon from the governor in August 1859.
You’d think that would be the end of the story with Plummer, perhaps living out his last few years of poor health, quietly on some remote farm somewhere never to be heard of again. But the exploits of Henry Plummer continued.
In 1861, Plummer was involved in the manhunt for San Quentin escapee William Riley. In an attempt of a citizen’s arrest of William Riley, Riley was killed.
Plummer turned himself in and the police accepted the killing as justified but rather than allow Plummer to face a trial they allowed him to leave the state.
Have Gun Will Travel
Violence and disputes settled with a gun would follow Plummer to the newly discovered gold area in Washington Territory where he got into a gunfight after which he decided to return to Maine.
But on the way back home, he was persuaded to join a band of gunslingers to help protect a mission station in Sun River, Montana from attacks from the native American tribes in the area.
In a plotline ripped right out of a dime-store romance novel, the mission station’s founder, Jim Vail, happened to have an attractive and unmarried sister-in-law – Electra Bryan.
Plummer fell in love with Electa as did one of the other men hired to protect the station – Jack Cleveland. The trio ends up heading to Bannack, Montana where gold had recently been discovered.
Predictably, the combination of gold fever, guns, and jealous rage led to the predictable end of Jack Cleveland from a bullet fired by Plummer in a crowded saloon in January 1863.
Observers of the event agreed that Cleveland started the altercation and the death was ruled self-defense and within a few months, the popular Plummer was elected sheriff of Bannack. Here is where the story takes an even more evil twist.
Don’t Quit Your Day Job
The road between gold mine towns of Bannack and Virginia City (and Nevada just a few miles from Virginia City) is 70 miles long and proved to be one of the most dangerous stretches of wilderness in the old west.
Especially since the Sherriff of Bannack was moonlighting as the leader of the “Plummer Gang” or the “Innocents” as they became known because of their secret phrase “I am innocent”.
Between October and December 1863, the rate of robberies, stage couch holdups, train robberies and murders in and around Alder Gulch increased significantly – some accounts put the death toll at 100 deaths, although with the mythology of the west, certainly more crimes were attributed to the gang than reality.
The citizens of Virginia City grew increasingly suspicious of Plummer and his associates especially when one of the victims, Leroy Southmayd, reported a robbery and identified the road agents to Bannack Sheriff Henry Plummer.
Soon a posse of vigilantes was formed eradicate the scourge of crime in the region.
The Hanged
- “Erastus Red” Yeager and George Brown, hanged from a cottonwood tree on the Lorrain’s Ranch on the Ruby River. Yeager confessed and named names.
- Deputies Buck Stinson and Ned Ray arrested on the morning of January 10, 1864, and summarily hanged.
- “Dutch John” Wagner, a road agent, hanged in Bannack on January 11, 1864.
- “Clubfoot” George – show repairer at Dance & Stuart General Merchandise store where he spied for the Plummer Gang. He’d listen for reports of gold shipments and pass on the information to Plummer. Arrested in January of 1864 and hanged in Virginia City.
Between December 1863 and February 1864 the vigilante committee executed Plummer and twenty-two alleged members of his gang, including George Lane. At one point the vigilantes assembled a force of over 500 men and sealed off Virginia City in order to catch gang members.
Although the area remained a wild, dangerous place with, the large-scale robberies of gold shipments by highway gangs ended with the hangings.
Virginia City, Nevada City and Bannack
You can still visit these old gold mining towns today, see the original buildings and relive the history.
Virginia City is a well preserved old town with lots of original buildings converted into restaurants, shops, breweries and even a theater.
Nevada City is an attraction – museum, train ride, gold panning an more. It’s a collection of old buildings brought in from surrounding towns like old schoolhouses, shops, saloons, blacksmith shop and more complete with interiors. The state of Montana now owns the collection.
Bannack is a state park that “preserves” over 60 buildings in a state of arrested decay. You can walk into and around all the buildings.