In 1968 I became Head of the Department of Computer Science at Montana State in Bozeman, and during a visit to Virginia City I picked up a copy of Dimsdale's VIGILANTES OF MONTANA, which I read, but had no reason to doubt .
Then in 1993, after I had retired from active academic life, I found a copy of Hanging the Sheriff: A Biography of Henry Plummer, by R. E. Mather and F. E. Boswell, in the bookstore in Dillon. I marvelled at the meticulous research and careful attention to documentation the authors had put into their book, which took years to compile and write. Henry Plummer, and his wife Electa, became for the first time real people, not players in a nineteenth century melodrama.
In my mind Mather and Boswell clearly demonstrated that Henry Plummer was innocent of any crime during his stay in Montana, from September, 1862, until he was hanged by a vigilante mob in Bannack on January 10, 1864.
In the fall of 1996 I planned another trip to Dillon to visit my sister Esther Mooney there and my sister Merle McMannis in Hamilton. Before the trip I re-read Hanging the Sheriff, and decided to look into what present day Montana historians had to say about the vigilantes, so I bought and read the book Montana: A History of Two Centuries, by Michael P. Malone, Richard B. Roeder, and William L. Lang, Revised Edition, published in 1991. It was as if the authors had not read the Mather and Boswell book. Their account is straight out of Dimsdale, the original apologist for the vigilantes.
On this trip I met Mark Weber of Twin Bridges, Montana, who has devoted a great deal of time in researching the vigilantes, and who is also convinced of Plummer's innocence. He can be reached at plummerh@aol.com. Through him I was able to buy a copy of the second Mather and Boswell book Vigilante Victims: Montana's 1864 Hanging Spree.
This powerful and moving book convinced me that another look is needed at the vigilante episode. And that's what I want to present in these web pages. I hope you are informed and enriched by browsing these pages.
I would greatly appreciate any feed back by email to me at any time, and on any subject of relevance to the vigilante history.