PLUMMER'S WIDOW, THE VAILS, AND THE EDGERTONS
After Plummer was hanged, Francis Thompson wrote a letter informing Electa of her husband's death but received no answer. Thompson had in his possession "quite a little sum of money" that Plummer had deposited with him, and not being sure what to do with it, he consulted Edgerton and Sanders. In accordance with vigilante bylaws, an executor was to be appointed for Plummer's estate, who was to pay the expenses incurred in carrying out the execution. Thompson, however, did not claim to be this executor. He explained only how he spent the sum left with him, a portion of it, $42.50, going for "a coffin and the expenses of a decent burial."[1] By a decent burial, he meant having the coffin placed in a gully above the gallows with rocks piled on top of it, thus leaving it vulnerable to vandalism. It is said the grave was broken into twice, first by Dr. Glick, who out of curiosity severed the right arm from the corpse to search for Crawford's bullet, reporting he found it "worn smooth and polished by the bones turning upon it." The second violation is attributed to strangers passing through town, who, after spending a few hours at a local bar, hit on the idea of digging up the grave. To prove their bravery, they detached the skull and carried it back to the Bank Exchange Saloon, where it was kept on display for several years, eventually being consumed in the fire that destroyed the building.[2]
After Thompson paid the carpenter for building a coffin and performing the burial, he sent the remainder of the money left with him to Electa, though if she ever received it, she refused to so acknowledge, giving some hint of her opinion of Thompson for the friendship he had developed with the vigilantes. Excepting the shotgun claimed by Goodrich, no record exists of the disposal of Plummer's property other than the funds left with Thompson, though the estate was undoubtedly considerable, one of his last requests having been time to settle his business affairs. The vigilantes made no accounting to the public as to how Plummer's mining claims were disposed of, but it is doubtful his widow received any of the proceeds.
On learning of her husband's death, Electa claimed he was innocent, that he had been the victim of a conspiracy, and the idea of his innocence was shared by others, though not freely expressed because of the watchful attitude of vigilantes. One news correspondent did send an item back to his paper, a month after the hanging, that Plummer's close associates "profess the greatest astonishment at the charge preferred against him -- of being the chief of this organized band of fiends." However, there is no record of Electa ever having made any attempt to clear her husband's name.[3]
Plummer's ordeal with the vigilantes on 10 January 1864 was brief compared to the subsequent experiences of his widow, who survived to carry in her mind for nearly fifty years the moments of his death. The degree of tragedy is said to be measured by the sufferer's capacity to feel pain, and Electa mourned the loss of her husband through ten years of widowhood. When she had left Bannack a few months after their marriage, it was evidently not because she loved him too little to stay, as he had probably believed, but because she loved him too much to share with others. A romantic, Electa had been attracted at Sun River by Plummer's appearance, his confidence, and his mysterious past. But from the intense romantic love she felt for the man who had first appeared in her life as a protector against the Indians, she expected practical things, such as the security of home and family. She knew he had been through a period of disillusionment, but their love had restored his faith in the order of things, and she sensed in him a basic commitment to traditional values. After marriage, however, Plummer's dedication to his job and his sympathy for the needs of anyone who came to him for help left her alone and with the feeling she was not loved enough. For all her good traits, she was possessive of the man she had chosen, wanted him to herself, and left him, feeling confident that her loss would cause him to give up his position and, as she told Thompson, follow after her. Once she had made up her mind to go, she stubbornly refused to listen to reason. Going against Martha's advice, Electa persisted in her own course and then suffered the consequences. She had the rest of her days to regret not spending the last months of her husband's life with him.
Over the years, doubts may have eaten away at her once unshakable faith in her husband's good character, but if that is the case, she did not speak of it to anyone, never reaching the point where she could discuss her life in Montana, not even with family members. [4] Martha and James Vail left Bannack and returned to Sun River farm, but were "turned out" by the Piegans the following winter, true to the prediction made in the newspapers at the commencement of the project.[5] The Vails then moved to South Dakota to take out homestead land, and Electa, making no particular show of her grief, left Iowa to join them, taking a teaching position at the town of Emory and spending vacations with the Vails on their farm located on the Missouri River near Vermillion.[6]
Life in Dakota Territory was not easy. To build homes on the vast, untimbered plains, farmers tilled up thick strips of sod, which they cut into blocks and mortared together with a mixture of mud and dry grass. The houses were snug enough except during rainy weather, when roofs tended to become soggy and leak muddy water. Winters were cold, as low as thirty-five degrees below in January and February, sometimes freezing the Missouri to a depth of three feet. It was not unusual for early settlers to go without sufficient clothing during the cold months or to run out of the two main staples they had raised and stored: wheat and corn. With spring thaws came flooding, followed by summer's hot winds that carried the constant threat of prairie fire. Crop failure was frequent. The scorching heat of summer sometimes arrived early, withering tender green corn shoots, or in those seasons when the wheat grew tall and its heads were plump with grain, a horde of grasshoppers might come to in vade the lush fields, leaving nothing standing but a few broken stems. The farmers who had been forced to borrow against the expected crop to survive were often faced with foreclosure of their homesteaded land.[7]
But there were also good years when plentiful harvests were gratefully celebrated with corn huskings, quilting.bees, and church socials. Churches had been established early in the area around Vermillion, and Electa and the Vails were regular attenders, James acting as superintendent of the Sunday school for several years.
Like the South Dakota homesteaders, Electa was a survivor, emotionally as well as physically. After ten years as a widow, she chose a second husband, again showing a flair for the exotic combined with an appreciation for financial security. James Maxwell was a foreigner and a prosperous farmer, but unlike Plummer, he offered the companionship and security of a large family. He and his wife, Christian, had migrated from Ireland, and at her death, Maxwell was left with six children, an older son and five young daughters. Electa's second marriage was a happy one that supposedly left her little time for recalling the past, though who can say that there were no lingering memories, bathed in the golden glow of the Indian summer spent at Sun River, of the man, destined to remain eternally young, whom she had loved and who had loved her.
As a mother of the Maxwell household, Electa found herself in a situation very similar to that of her own childhood -- a large family of girls growing up on a farm. Having been a stepdaughter herself, she had an understanding of the children in her care, and as adults they wrote of her, "She was a fine, noble woman, and we children were indeed fortunate to have so kind and good a mother to take the place of our own mother, whom we lost when we were very young." In this same letter, her stepdaughters put an end to persistent rumors that Electa had a son by Plummer and that when the child was eight years old, she returned to Montana to search for treasure buried by Plummer on the Ford ranch just before he and Cleveland rode to Bannack. "She had no children by Henry Plummer," they wrote. "She never returned to Montana after leaving there, and there is no truth in the story that she did.[8]
Electa and James Maxwell had three sons of their own, the youngest dying in infancy and two living to adulthood, marrying and settling in Iowa. During the last years of her life, Electa suffered badly from rheumatism and died from the effects of a fall, resulting in a hip fracture that would not heal, only three days before her seventieth birthday. She was buried at Wakonda, South Dakota, being survived by her husband, two married sons, and five married stepdaughters, who described her as "an unusually devoted wife and mother," whose "home life was her delight and it was there that her tender womanliness and loving sympathy were best shown."[9]
Electa showed her mettle, rising above personal tragedy to dedicate the rest of her life to family, church, and school, but few remember her for these contributions. Her fascination lies in being the woman Henry Plummer loved, the woman who was not there when he most needed her.
Though Electa spent the remainder of her life in South Dakota, the Vails returned to their native Ohio, thus making the full circle back to Hancock County, their point of departure for Sun River in 1862. James also returned to schoolteaching, the occupation he had followed in Hancock County when he and Martha had first married. At the time of the Bannack hangings, Martha had been expecting their third child, Rena, a daughter who did not survive childhood. They also lost another child, an infant born while they were homesteading near Vermillion. After leaving Dakota, Martha had their fifth and last child, Suzie, who survived to womanhood. When James died in 1882, at the age of forty-four, Martha moved into nearby Findlay to accept a job as matron of a home for orphans, hiring Suzie, her youngest daughter, as the assistant matron. With the help of a nurse and a seamstress, who both resided at the orphanage also, Martha and Suzie shared the care of thirty-two children ranging in age from two to sixteen.[10]
Though at the government farm Martha had been outspoken in her criticism of Plummer and by at first rejecting him as a brother-in-law had not shown her usual optimism, at Bannack she had come to be numbered among his loyal supporters, spending twice as many months with him as Electa had, and it was she rather than Electa who domesticated Plummer and provided him with the months of family life he enjoyed before his death. When in town, he was regularly seen crossing the log bridge to her home several times daily, and during his sicknesses Martha cared for him. It is likely he was again suffering from consumption during the winter of 1863-64, and references to his "fleshless" cheeks, a "dead" look to the eyes, and a form that had become almost "effeminate" in its frailness suggest that his health had continued to deteriorate ever since he had left San Quentin.[11] With James absent from the home much of the time, Martha and Plummer seemed to live together compatibly, planning and hosting the most extravagant banquet ever held in Bannack. Plummer spent the last day of his life in Martha's home and was still there when they came for him at ten o'clock that night. The words he spoke to her as he left the cabin provide an answer to the mystery his accusers have never satisfactorily explained -- why he did not leave the area, as Reeves and others did, when the vigilantes first began their vigorous roundup.
When the armed party appeared at the door of the Vail cabin that night, Plummer had no reason to suspect they had come for him. As he told them while they walked, he had done nothing to be hanged for. He told Martha, just as they had told him, that the party was searching for Dutch John, who had been hidden by Howie and Fetherstun in a cabin on Yankee Flat. He went along with them to see that the right thing was done, stopping off first at Sanders's cabin for additional support in preventing a lynching of John. Sanders put out the light and did not answer the knock, and at this point the determination behind the real intentions of the hastily assembled group was beginning to crumble. Sanders quickly appeared and gave the military order to proceed with the prescribed death sentence, bringing on Martha's alarm.
Martha's attempt to save Plummer and her fainting at the news he had been hanged have been used by some as argument that she was in love with her brother-in-law, perhaps as early as Sun River. This theory supposedly explains her motivation in opposing Electa's marriage to Plummer and her following the couple to Bannack and inviting them to take their meals at her home. The theory is unsupported by evidence and therefore hardly worth mentioning, except for its implications as far as Plummer's having left any descendants. There is some indication that Martha and James Vail were having their problems -- a land deed on file in the county in which the couple homesteaded, whereby Martha sold James a piece of land on the Vermillion River. There is also a bit of mystery surrounding their third child, Rena, born several months after Plummer's death. Neighbors who homesteaded next to the Vails reported that James and Martha arrived from Sun River with only two children, Mary and Harvey, though Rena had been born by that time. Also, they report the death of the Vails' infant, but not the death of Rena, who lived beyond the age of six. Not only is Rena not mentioned by the Vails' neighbors in South Dakota, but at her death she disappears without leaving any trace in vital statistic records. Even more mysterious is her birthplace. Rena was born in Iowa, but it was not Martha who was in Iowa in 1864, but Electa, thus leading to speculation that the child was actually Electa's and only raised by the Vails, perhaps so the child would not have to bear the Plummer name after her father's being branded an outlaw. Regardless of who was the child's true mother, Martha or Electa, and who was her true father, Henry Plummer or James Vail, little Rena died without continuing family lines. As for Martha's feelings for Plummer, whether they were those of a family member or of a lover will probably never be known.
Of all the members of the two families involved in the tragedy, Plummer was the only one to remain permanently in the town of Bannack. Like the Vails, the Edgertons made the full circle back to their home in Ohio. Edgerton's career in Montana Territory had come to a standstill and his efforts to get Wilbur Sanders elected as Montana's first delegate to Congress had failed. Still he had enjoyed his days of glory, persuading Lincoln to sign the bill making the area east of the mountains the new Territory of Montana and to appoint him to reign over it as its first governor. The Edgerton cabin became a beehive of activity as the new legislature came into session, late night compromises over card games held in one curtained-off room and daily visits from lobbyists bearing gifts. The two Edgerton boys were selected to serve as pages to the two houses of the legislature and voted a wage of $5 per day, a sum nearly equal to that earned by the miners. The boys' visions of the peppermint sticks and candy beans they would buy with their new wealth did not materialize, however. Mary advised them that when and if funds finally arrived from Washington, she could "find ways enough to use the money when flour is twenty-eight dollars a sack and sugar is one dollar a pound." To meet the high living expenses, the legislature doubled the governor's salary, and in way of thanks he busied himself passing out political favors earned since his arrival in Bannack; Dimsdale was appointed as the first superintendent of public instruction and a petition was sent to Washington requesting Francis Thompson be made secretary of the territory.[12]
With Edgerton's backing, the government elected by the miners had been successfully overthrown -- Sheriff Plummer backing up the miner's courts -- and replaced by the vigilante justice system. But from the outset, the scales had been tilted in Edgerton's favor. Bringing with him a reputation for respectability that Plummer did not have, he had arrived in the territory as the first representative of the U.S. government. However, as territorial governor, he soon aroused antagonism by forcing the resignation of a respected member of the house, a Democrat, who had once served in the state militia of Missouri and was therefore unacceptable, thus upsetting the delicate balance that had existed before his interference: A Republican majority of one in the Council and a Democratic majority of one in the House of Representatives. Throughout his term of office he continued to offend the "Copperheads," as he called them. Also, his early affiliation with the vigilantes led to the charge that his administration was under their control, he being nothing more than a figurehead. But probably the greatest factor influencing his decision to resign as governor of the Territory of Montana was the complete lack of financing for the territorial government. President Andrew Johnson readily accepted Edgerton's resignation.
Back in Tallmadge, Ohio, the Edgertons bought a fine home and settled down, being welcomed back in town by an article in the local paper stating that though the Montana experience had been a "losing venture" for the governor politically, it had been quite a success financially despite his never having received a salary. "Mining interests" from seventy-five claims and other "investments" were reported to have been sufficient to "richly repay himself and family for the inconveniences and privations" suffered in the West.[13]
Sanders stayed on in Montana, eventually overcoming his earlier unpopularity, to become the state's first senator and also serving as head of the Montana Historical Society.
Though in 1863 Plummer had written letters to his sister and brother saying he, as a Unionist, was in constant danger from the Secessionist majority in the area, he did not seem to recognize the danger Edgerton and Sanders presented. Like both of them, he saw the opportunity for a career in the developing territory, but his unusual sensitivity to the needs of others made him more than just a politician. He shared many of the qualities of the family he married into, the Vails, who dedicated their entire lives to the service of others.
THE PLUMMER MYTH
Probably more myths have collected around Plummer than any other hero or villain of the West, stories still existing of his buried loot, totalling three or four million dollars. Whereas Dimsdale attributed every crime committed in the mining area east of the Rockies to Plummer, the author of the Banditti book included those on the west side also, embellishing them with details of mutilation of the victims. A robbery took on much more public interest if committed by a big-time operator like Plummer, who was laying plans to take over as Emperor of the West, rather than by some relatively unknown bummer temporarily down on his luck, such as Dutch John or Steve Marshland. Typical proof that Plummer was secretly pulling all the strings from behind the scene ranges from Dimsdale's simple "intuition" to the more firmly based "suspicions" mentioned by the following historian: "While Henry Plummer has never been directly connected with the Magruder murder, there has always been a well-founded suspicion that he was the instigator of this most dreadful crime."[14] "Never been directly connected" means that Billy Page, the territory's sole informant regarding the crime, made no mention of Plummer whatsoever in his testimony, but the meaning of "well-founded suspicion" remains vague since the writer provided no additional clarification. Not only is Plummer held responsible for every robbery and murder committed during his career, but also every other unrelated wrongdoing that occurred, whether it be a rumor that was spread or a wife who ran away with another man.
Because Plummer broke his rifle grip crossing the mountains to the Deer Lodge Valley, Dimsdale accused the Plummer gang of committing the attempted robbery of a Wells Fargo stage in Washoe County, Nevada, more than a year earlier -- even placing the famous barrel that fell off the stock of the rifle in Plummer's hands. Items in local newspapers at the time of the robbery, however, gave the correct name of the gunman who was so unfortunate as to have his piece fall apart on him just at the critical moment -- an exconvict who had served time in San Quentin for robbery and had been released by the governor after receiving an impassioned plea from the young man's parents in Ohio. Even Dimsdale should have recognized that such a botched job showed no similarity to the success with which Plummer brought in prisoners while he was serving as a law officer. Myths of Plummer's outstanding abilities exist side by side with his supposed record of bungled robberies; he was "the best" at everything: dancing, selecting a wardrobe, seducing women, planning and organizing, leading men, riding a horse, and shooting, even though he had two crippled hands. Forgetting the myths and taking a more practical look at Plummer, we see a man who obtained his gold dust, not by waylaying passing travelers, but by excavating the earth. We have examined Plummer's alleged tendency to violence, and it is not appropriate to label a man violent for defending himself in two instances in which he would have been killed otherwise, first by John Vedder's borrowed revolver and second by William Riley's knife. Testimony at the Vedder trial revealed that Plummer's strong streak of pacificism had prevented previous trouble with John.
Looking at the two halves of Plummer's career -- California and Montana -- we note they fit into the same pattern. He came to both Nevada City and Bannack with intentions of settling down to family life: first buying a home and next making plans to marry. For financial security at both locations he relied on mining, but followed the profession of a law enforcement officer. In both instances, his downfall was brought on by his being too democratic to make a successful politician, becoming involved with helping social outcasts such as Lucy Vedder and George Hilderman and granting them the same respect as influential citizens. Skeptics might attribute his kindness to others as a method of getting votes, but a good indication of the sincerity of his sympathy for others comes during the last moments of his life, when he noticed the distress of Joseph Swift, who was crying because he could not save Plummer, and threw his scarf to his young friend.
A second way of making sense of the two separate parts of Plummer's career is to use details provided by Nevada City newspapers and trial records to give additional meaning to the abstract assessments of his character that have been left to us by Dimsdale and Langford. There are few records of his actions as sheriff of Bannack, but we can assume they were similar to those reported in Nevada City, where he spent days on the road carrying out manhunts yet still earning a reputation for efficiency and business integrity by, at the age of twenty-four, being in charge of the finances of a city of several thousand. And we understand the leadership qualities Langford claimed in noting that Pat Corbett, even though no longer a policeman, obeyed Plummer's order to watch over Lucy Vedder to see no harm came to her on her final night in town. But probably nothing could better illustrate the courtesy and gentleness referred to by Montana writers than the words Plummer chose in urging Lucy Vedder to leave his house and return to her hotel room: "Have you made up your mind to leave the fire?"[15]
In contrast to those in both California and Montana who pre-judged Plummer, he stands out for his calm refusal to prejudge those he was called upon to arrest. Open minded and gentle mannered, yet flamboyantly courageous, Plummer assumed an important leadership role in civilizing the mining frontier, and his downfall is therefore a true tragedy, in the literary sense of the word, brought on mainly by his being too tolerant for his times, that is, showing a lack of discrimination in the regard he held for others. He was unusual not only for his leadership qualities and his seemingly opposite traits, such as aristocratic tastes and democratic ways, but for a distinctive manner of doing whatever he chose to do which sets him apart from others, as for instance, on the morning when he rode alongside Electa's stage wagon as she was leaving him.
Plummer's basic philosophy of life can be described as a subscription to fundamental Christian precepts adapted to fit the gold rush environment. Though he admitted to being a man who "wanted no trouble," the dominant way of life during his times involved both intemperance and violence. Turning the other cheek so John Vedder could spit on it or making peace between Cleveland and Perkins would not be particularly easy. Neither was it a simple matter to enforce law in a community whose members valued personal freedoms to the extent that they selected to obey those laws that proved convenient and then undercut elected authority by acting as law officers themselves whenever the notion took them. In way of examples, Wallace Williams laid plans to recapture Webster instead of notifying authorities; Neil Howie held Dutch John in his own custody instead of delivering him to the jail; Alex Toponce turned the deputies away instead of allowing Buck Stinson to serve a warrant on a member of his freighting party; and Sanders organized a vigilance movement instead of recognizing the authority of the miners' courts.
Though Sanders criticized the miners' courts for being slow, expensive, and imperfect in judgments reached, all of which was true, their replacement by the secret vigilante courts was of such little value as to provide posterity with nothing more than a negative example. Plummer's trials also point up the weaknesses of our justice system, the main one being the near impossibility of finding jurors who have moral perception and a sense of justice and who are free from prejudgments. Still, even the most cynical critics of our justice system would have to acknowledge the beauty of the concepts behind the system as presented by Judge Terry after reviewing the Nevada City trial. He said, in part, "One of the dearest rights guaranteed by our free Constitution is that of trial by jury -- the right which every citizen has to demand that all offences charged against him shall be submitted to a tribunal composed of honest and unprejudiced men, who will do equal and exact justice between the government and the accused, and in order to do this, weigh impartially every fact disclosed by the evidence."[16]
In 1864, Plummer was deprived of this "dearest right," and he is again deprived of it by historians who accept the untried judgment passed down. Having read the standard histories, and therefore having formed prejudgments, disqualifies the present generation from being acceptable jurors for Plummer's case. There are at the present time no minds "as free as unsunned snow from any previous impressions" in regards to Plummer.[17] It may take a new generation with a new historical perspective to reach a fair verdict, to be able to see that Plummer was exactly what he seemed to be and nothing more. He admitted to killing men in self-defense and to forming bad associations, but laws were not intended to hinder a man from using past experiences to lead a more productive life. As Langford rightly claimed, Plummer possessed outstanding executive ability and a remarkable power over other men. He was a gifted leader whose peculiar background on both sides of the bar of justice left him in a position of making a special contribution to the growth and development of the West, if he had been allowed to live out his natural years rather than being killed in the thirty-second year of his life.
THE MYSTERY OF PLUMMER'S BIRTHPLACE
Drawing any conclusions about Henry Plummer's life inevitably leads back to the mystery surrounding his early days. Langford, who claimed Plummer was born in Connecticut in 1836, was the only writer to meet the Plummer family. He and Mr. Purple held an interview with Plummer's sister and brother in New York City in the summer of 1869 and learned that Plummer had maintained correspondence with his family up to the time of his death. According to Langford, the family "mourned his loss not only as a brother, but as a martyr in the cause of his country." Langford found the Plummers to be "well-educated, cultivated people," who "were eager in their desire to find and punish the murderers of their brother, and repeatedly avowed their intention to leave, almost immediately, in pursuit of them." To prevent their leaving for Montana, Langford gave them a copy of Dimsdale's book, which he happened to have with him, assuring them that "all it contained relative to their brother was true." He and Purple followed up their attempt to halt the Plummers' mission by calling on them again the next day, reporting the brother informed them, in a voice broken with emotion, that the sister was "prostrated with grief" and could not greet them.[18]
On reading Langford's account, Mattie Edgerton raised the question of how Langford and the Plummers happened to meet in the first place. The probable explanation is that Langford and Purple located the family, after several years of searching, for the express purpose of delivering the book to their hands. Dimsdale, who received as rewards for writing his book a political appointment from Edgerton and a gold-handled pistol from the vigilantes, never intended the book as a Bible for historians of the territories of Idaho and Montana. He wrote it to stem current criticism of the vigilantes' activities from both the West and East and to deter investigations into the events of 1864 that might prove embarrassing to participants. The visit to the Plummers, like the book, was part of a cover-up of the fact that men were hanged without sufficient evidence of their guilt. Langford hints that a similar visit was paid to Electa to make certain she did not pursue the issue of her husband's innocence. In the effort to see that the story, as related by Dimsdale, was passed down to posterity intact, the control the Sanders family maintained over the Montana Historical Society for two generations was no handicap.
Dimsdale's brief biography of Plummer disagrees with Langford's suggestion that the place of birth was Connecticut. After sorting through "the most contradictory accounts," Dimsdale gave up on solving the riddle. "Many believe he was from Boston, originally; others declare that he was an Englishman by birth, and came to America quite young," he wrote, but "the most probable is that he came to the West from Wisconsin."[19] Dimsdale has in mind the theory put forth by Matilda Dalton Thibadeau and seconded by Mattie Edgerton. Mrs. Thibadeau claimed Henry Plummer was born in Maine and moved to Wisconsin with his family, the Rial Plummers, taking a farm next to the Daltons. In 1853 her father, Mr. Dalton, ran into Plummer in California and again met him in Bannack in 1863.[20] Mrs. Thibadeau's theory has been so widely accepted that Plummer is cataloged in such prestigious libraries as the Bancroft under the name she gave him: Henry Amos. But when Mr. Dalton spoke to Plummer regarding the old days in Wisconsin, Plummer responded he had never been there in his entire life. Though Dalton did not believe him, Plummer was telling the truth. Amos Plummer, son of Rial and neighbor to the Daltons, was never marshall of Nevada City or sheriff of Bannack, but a farmer in Wisconsin, as confirmed by his living descendants and other vital records. The 1880 census lists the Amos Plummer who was born in Maine in 1832 and subsequently moved to Wisconsin as being alive and well, supporting a wife and children on his farm, sixteen years after the hanging at Bannack.[21]
A second theory can be discarded for the same reason. The Plumer Genealogy compiled by Sidney Perley lists a Henry Plumer who married an Eliza Bryant. This William Henry, the son of Jones, was born in 1835 in Winchester, New Hampshire, but, like Amos, also lived long past the year 1864. Likewise, a third possibility, a William H. Plumer born in Maine in 1832, the correct year as based on both the San Quentin and the census records, is disqualified by a town record showing his selection to the office of hog reeve for Alna, Maine, in the year 1859, the period Henry Plummer spent in San Quentin. A final claim worth mentioning is that Plummer was the son of a baker who lived in East Boston, but Plummer families still residing in Boston deny this is true, and census records confirm their denial.[22]
Though for over one hundred twenty years the William Henry Plummer who was hanged at Bannack in 1864 has proven impossible to trace, we will at this point present the findings of our genealogical search. When he was admitted to San Quentin, Plummer gave his place of birth as Maine, and throughout our extensive research we have not found a single instance in which he told anything other than the truth. We therefore presumed that Maine was indeed his native state, a fact we have verified by an affidavit taken from the foreman of the jury at the Nevada City trial, George S. Getchell, who swore that Henry Plumer was "born and reared" in the state of Maine, and "in the immediate neighborhood" of Getchell's former residence. This statement was introduced as evidence to the California State Supreme Court in an attempt to prove that this juror, being from Plummer's home county, was not prejudiced against the defendant, and Plummer's attorney, when referring to the Getchell affidavit, did not refute its contents.[23] Being granted a new trial depended upon discrediting Getchell as a fair juror, and therefore beyond a doubt the attorney would have pointed out to the court any untruths in the affidavit as further support for his argument that Getchell was unfit. Since he did not, we conclude that the portion of the affidavit dealing with Plummer's place of birth and rearing is true and correct. This assumption also makes clear the defense attorneys' reasoning in their selection of Getchell in the first place from among the three hundred residents summoned for possible jury duty, a belief that Getchell's being from the same region as Plummer would free him of prejudice against the defendant's peculiarities as a native of the state of Maine. Even the theory Matilda Thibadeau Dalton proposed, if seen in the proper light, supports Getchell's claim of Plummer's birthplace. When Mr. Dalton met Henry Plummer at Nevada City, he assumed he had been his former neighbor in Wisconsin because Henry, like Amos Plummer, had been born in Maine. Though Matilda stated, in an effort at disparaging Plummer's veracity, that the sheriff, when he spoke to her father had forgotten all about his residence in Wisconsin, she did not state that he had forgotten anything about Maine, the place of his birth. As explained earlier, Plummer could not recall the days back in Wisconsin with Dalton because he had never been there; neither could he forget Maine because it had been his home since the day he was born until the day he sailed to Panama en route to the gold fields of California.
Though he was attracted to this strange new world of the gold frontier and was flexible enough to adopt many of its ways, Plummer neither gave up the pride in his original home nor forsook the identity acquired during the days of a childhood and youth spent in rural Maine. Having grown up in an area where the common speech retained a strong flavor of the language as brought over from England, Plummer's word patterns and manner of expressing himself were quite noticeable to others. The typical Yankee taciturnity, understatement, and ironic wit come through in nearly every instance in which he speaks, as in his answer to Garvey's exclamation that Jim Webster's voice was rising up out of the darkness of Gold Ravine, "I guess it is"; or on being asked who Vedder was going to kill, "No one, I guess"; and finally, in response to Cleveland's provocations, "I'm tired of this." Judge Rheem's belabored exposition of Plummer's unusual vocal qualities, the wary monotone and lack of expressiveness, is nothing more than an attempt to describe the rhythms and tone peculiar to a speaker from as far "down East" as it is possible to be.
These regional traits provide the key to interpreting much of Plummer's behavior; he was a man who relied not on discourse as much as action as a means of communication. His tendency to be sparing with words was no asset in resolving the problem of Electa's loneliness after their marriage, and he evidently expressed his deep sense of loss at her leaving only by riding day after day alongside the cumbersome, slow-moving wagon. Even the prejudice he attracted during the state assembly race in California and during the inception of the vigilance movement in Montana arose partially from local suspicions that he had something to hide because of his hesitancy in volunteering information and his refusal to waste words in his own defense, trusting instead that he would be judged on the efficiency and dedication with which he performed his duties. As stated in the letter to the Democrat, he asked for nothing more than the reputation he deserved based not on his own assertions or on the accounts of the press, but on his past performance.
Recognized as a "polished gentleman" who "had a brain" and a keen "power of analysis," Plummer was undoubtedly intelligent and cultivated enough to be, when he deemed the occasion appropriate, both charming and persuasive. Despite a belief that words were not to be wasted on idle chatter and that familiarity with strangers was a breach of good manners, he realized that while entertaining Thanksgiving dinner guests, not laconic responses but cordial conversation was called for, and though it was not genteel to brag about one's own integrity or achievements, a moment of eloquence could be required to prevent an injustice from occurring in the streets of Lewiston.
Plummer was in no way provincial, as evidenced by his appreciation for the refinements of life, but he did display several traits in addition to those mentioned above that are also characteristic of the social mores of rural Maine: an independence and need for privacy that left him willing to "live and let live"; a self-assurance combined with humility that aroused the allegiance of other men; a dislike for pretension that attracted him to Electa Bryan; a genuine concern for others that caused him to go out of his way to help even those at the bottom of the social scale; a stubborn honesty and forthrightness that forced him to risk his freedom by listing Nevada City, California, as his former residence even though a fugitive from justice in that city; and lastly, a trust in the social and political institutions passed down by his ancestors.
The neighboring community in Maine in which Plummer was born and reared, as referred to by jury foreman George Getchell in his affidavit, was Addison, located between the Pleasant River and the Atlantic Coast and settled in 1764 while still part of the Massachusetts Bay Province. In 1770, the sixty families residing in the Pleasant River area delivered a petition to Governor Hutchinson, complaining of the disorderly condition reigning in their isolated region -- cursing, fighting, and mobbing -- that left decent citizens afraid to go to sleep at night and requesting that a justice of the peace be appointed. The first signature on the petition was that of Moses Plumer. Three generations of Plumers had inherited the hundreds of acres of both cultivated and timbered land as well as salt marshes reclaimed from the sea by the construction of dikes by the year of 1832, when the last child was born to the family of Jeremiah, the son of Moses III. The child's mother, Elizabeth Handy Plumer, following a custom very popular in her family, christened her youngest son as a namesake for a member of her own family, William Henry Handy, calling the boy Handy at home, but William Henry outside the home.[24]
William Henry Handy Plumer grew up in a new state much more liberal than its parent state of Massachusetts, but one in which a bitter boundary dispute with Acadian neighbors in Canada was raging. During the boy's tenth year, a compromise was reached, allowing tranquility to return to the troubled countryside. The Plumers' large family home was located but a few miles from the treacherous rocks, alternating with peaceful coves, lining the coast of the easternmost tip of the United States, almost to the Canadian border. Shipping lumber from the extensive surrounding forests and building the graceful schooners that transported it were the main industries of the area. Though they invested in nearby sawmills, the Plumers were in the main sea captains, men with a compulsion to explore and a resulting familiarity with the cosmopolitan ways of the two local ports of Boston and New York, as well as more exotic ones, such as the Madeira Islands, where Captain William Handy had contracted a tropical fever, causing his death aboard ship in Boston. Still the Plumer family found time for civic and social affairs in their hometown, serving as selectmen and school board trustees, joining the Masonic lodge, and attending the Methodist Episcopal church.
The household of Jeremiah was a prosperous one, having one member who belonged to a learned profession. His wife, Elizabeth, as well had come from a family of doctors and professional men. Though the couple had six children older than William Henry -- three sons and three daughters -- the youngest son of the aging parents, lavished with care and given special education, grew into a leader, a young man of unusual sympathy for others. Because of his rather delicate health, having contracted tuberculosis in childhood, the boy was not sent to sea, but allowed to pursue his studies and work the family farm. While he was still in his teens, his father, Jeremiah, died, and two of the older children returned to make their home with the widowed mother, a sea captain and a daughter married to a sea captain. After the death of Jeremiah, the family fortune gradually took a turn for the worse, and William Henry, hearing of a company of gold seekers who had left Maine for California, persuaded the family to allow him to join the rush also, promising to alleviate the financial problems at home. The hard winters of the area provided a strong incentive for a mother concerned over her son's consumption, and she gave her consent to his migrating to the more temperate climate. Being seafaring people, the family selected not the more popular overland route, but the mail steamer as being the better means of transportation. After the departure of his nineteen-year-old brother, the captain gave up the sea and worked the family farm for his mother.[25]
The Plumers of Addison, who originally came to Maine from Massachusetts, descend from a Francis Plumer, a linen weaver from England, who came to Massachusetts Bay in 1634 and joined others in creating a settlement in the fertile wilderness west of Plum Island. Francis Plumer was a bit of a rebel, distinguishing himself by signing a petition criticizing the local court for its religious intolerance and requesting the restoration of the due rights of a certain citizen who had been disfranchised. Of the fifty-five petitioners, Francis Plumer and his two sons were among those who refused to back down during the ensuing investigation, continuing instead to assert their right to petition. Francis's younger son was reported to the court and bound over for trial for his part in the matter, though no further action was ever taken against him. Other than this one showing as an early advocate of civil rights, Francis was a model puritan who remained a church member in good standing up to his death. His estate, valued at over four hundred pounds, and which included the following, provides an interesting picture of life during his times: thirty-five acres of land, an orchard, a barn, five horses, four oxen, eight cattle, twenty-five sheep, four swine, a shop containing a weaver's loom and twenty-five pounds of wool, and a dairy house filled with butter, bacon and pork, and twenty-eight pounds of cheese. In the parlor of the dwelling house was a feather bed with bolster, pillows, blanket and coverlet; in the hall, a table, cupboard, and chest; and in another room a bed with coverings. Kitchen furnishings included chairs and table, iron kettles, pewter dishes, wooden platters, brass candlesticks, and a smoothing iron. In a hall chamber were bushels of barley, rye, wheat, oats, peas, beans, and malt for beer.[26] From this typical puritan household descended William Henry Handy Plumer, and his values and ways of thinking did not stray as far from these roots as we have formerly been led to believe.