Answers

On our way to Hell Gate at Beaver Dam we met two fine looking young men. One of them said his name was Henry Plummer, the other was Charles Reeves.... They were from Elk City on Clearwater, and enquired about the mines at Gold Creek and at Beaverhead. They rode two good horses and had another packed with their blankets and provisions. We liked their looks and told them that we were going down to Hell Gate and would return to Gold Creek in a few days and asked them to return to Hell Gate with us and then we could all go up the Canyon together. They accepted our invitation. For further details see Hanging the Sheriff(Deer Lodge).

2. Plummer and an acquaintance from California, Jack Cleveland, were hired on at the Government farm in October 1862, by James Vail, the husband of Electa Bryan's sister Martha Vail. Electa and Henry spent about two months together at the Sun River farm, and at the end of that time, were engaged to be married. Henry decided to go to the new mines at Bannack, instead of returning to the States, promising to return in the spring to marry Electa.
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3. Henry Plummer was elected Sheriff of the Bannack Mining District, Territory of Idaho (which is where Bannack was at the time), on May 24, 1863. The proceedings are recorded in The Bannack Mining District Records, SC 238, MHS Archives, Helena. There were 554 votes cast. B. B. Burchett was elected Judge, Henry Plummer Sheriff, and J. M. Castner coroner. Plummer received more votes (307) than anyone else. One of the election judges was Edwin Purple. Purple says of this election (see perilous Passage, A Narrative of the Montana Gold Rush, 1862-1863):

Plummer was elected by a round majority, there having been over three hundred votes polled. After the election Plummer, who since his shooting scrape with Crawford had demeaned himself with utmost propriety, started for Sun River, married Miss Bryan, her brother-in-law officiating as Clergyman, and returned to Bannack, where he was well received by the people, and at once assumed the duties of his office. [Purple is wrong about who officiated. See Q. 5.]
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5. Electa and Henry were married on June 20, 1863, by Father Minatre, a Catholic priest from nearby St. Peters mission, although the couple were both Protestants. They immediately started for Bannack in a wagon hitched to "four wild Indian ponies." About a week later they arrived in Bannack, where Henry had previously bought a house (a log cabin). For further details, see Hanging the Sheriff.
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6. It is likely, although not certain, that Henry Plummer built the first jail from funds he raised by popular subscription. One miner, N. H. Webster, left a journal in which he had this to say:

Met Henry Plummer just before getting to Rattlesnake, he was on horseback; I told him about losing my robe and overcoat there a few days before and he said he would try to find them for me; he is the sheriff of the country. He appears to be a very nice man, I like him very much.

7. On August 19, 1863, a judge and jury in Bannack sentenced Peter Horan to die by hanging for the premeditated murder of his partner. The court instructed Sheriff Plummer to build a set of gallows and hang Horan. Let Art Pauley, Henry Plummer Lawman and Outlaw tell the story:

By late summer Virginia City had become the business center of the territory. Bannack, with a loss in population and business, found the sheriff's office involved in sheriff's sales for those who wanted to dispose of mining claims and possessions prior to leaving the town. Among the latter was Peter Horan who wanted to sell his interest in a mining claim owned jointly with Laurence Keeley. Prior to the time that Horan called on Plummer in regard to holding the sale, there had been some difficulty between Horan and his partner. The sale held on the afternoon of Friday, August 14th, brought $500.00, far less than Horan had expected. There is some reason to believe that Keeley had bought Horan's interest or had a third party buy it for him. In any event, Horan blamed Keeley for the low price that he had received and threatened to even the score. Using some of the money, Horan bought a horse and kept it at a corral at the edge of town with the stated intention of leaving the country. At five o'clock on the morning of August 19th he knocked on Keeley's door, saying that it was important that he talk to him. As Keeley opened the door, he was shot at close range and dropped to the floor. As a final gesture, Horan stepped in the doorway and fired several more shots into the body. The sound of the firing had aroused several nearby residents and Horan was captured at the corral before he could leave town. At nine thirty on the morning of the 19th, a coroner's jury was called into session to consider the evidence in the death of Laurence Keeley. The facts as presented left little doubt that Peter Horan was guilty of premeditated murder, and was sentenced to death. That same afternoon Horan was taken to the scaffold that Sheriff Plummer had hastily constructed by nailing a crosspiece across the top of two pine trees only hours before.

A party was detailed for the work, and going down unobserved and unsuspected to New Jerusalem, they arrested him at night and brought him up to Bannack, without the knowledge of a single soul except his actual captors. As it was deemed necessary for the safety of society that a sudden punishment should be meted out to him in such a manner that the news should fall upon the ears of his associates in crime like a thunderbolt from a clear sky, he was taken to Hangman's Gulch, and, maintaining the most dogged silence and the most imperturbable coolness to the last moment, he was hanged on the same gallows which Plummer himself had built for the execution of his own accomplice, Horan, and on which he himself had suffered.

8. In August of 1863 (exact day not known), the Union League of Bannack unanimously recommended that Henry Plummer be appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal for the region of Idaho Territory east of the mountains. This episode is reported in detail in Langford, Chapter23.

The fact that Langford would not forward the nomination of the Union League to the Territorial Government, and the resulting animosity between Langford and Plummer would have dire consequences for Plummer. Many writers have commented on this. Art Pauley, in discussing the summer of 1863 has this to say:

During this period it seems that Plummer tried to improve his image in the community; he had submitted an application to join the masonic lodge that was never approved. As an ardent supporter of the union cause, he became an active member of the town's Union League, a membership that would alienate some of the support that he had formerly received among the southern element of the town.

... Whatever his past may have been, his record in Bannack as sheriff was not all bad. One event that happened in August of 1863 bears this out. In that month, D. S. Payne, the United States Marshal of Idaho Territory, arrived in Bannack. Marshal Payne was interested in having a representative from the eastern portion of the territory sitting in the legislature. Nathaniel Langford, as president of the Union League, was the logical candidate. Payne offered to present Langford's name for consideration at the capitol which was tantamount to appointment. As an added inducement, Payne, believing that he was doing both Langford and the Union League a favor, offered to appoint a deputy marshal to be stationed at Bannack. As the selection was left to the Union League, its members (some thirty in number) were asked to vote a secret ballot on a man for this position. To the chagrin of Langford, Henry Plummer was the unanimous choice. Neither Langford nor W. C. Rheem, the vice president, had voted and both notified Payne that they would not endorse Plummer for the position even though he had received the balance of the votes cast. Payne returned to Lewiston somewhat disappointed that his trip had been useless. Langford did not receive the appointment nor was Plummer appointed marshal. This was a keen disappointment to Plummer who, it was said, dropped out of the Union League and never spoke to Langford afterward.

However the fact that Plummer was nominated does show how extensive support was for him as Sheriff. He was in fact doing a good job.
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9. On August 3rd, 1863, by Henry Plummer, Sheriff. Al Noyes in History of Southern Montana, Chapter IV. describes the discovery and history of the Dakota Lode (from which, by the way, Henry Plummer and his partner, Charles Ridgely, made a lot of money):

The Dakota was to make history. It was on this lead that Frank Allen was to build the first quartz mill in Montana. It was discovered by Charles Benson, H. Porter, E. Porter and C. W. Place. Probably the first Sheriff's deed on record in Montana, was the sale of a certain piece of property, described as follows: The undivided one-quarter interest in and to claim No. 9, west, on the Dakota Lode, Idaho Territory, on August 3rd, 1863, by Henry Plummer, Sheriff, to Moses Burring and J. D. Ritchie, to satisfy a judgment of Moses Burris, Plaintiff, against John Ault. Execution issued out of the Miners' Court, Bannack District. We also find that Power of Attorney was given by H. Plummer, to George Chrisman, to settle with parties who owed him $3,500.00, on half interest in No. 7 Dakota lode, on December 27th, 1863, recorded January 2nd, 1864 -- eight days before Plummer was hung. If Henry had been wise, he would have left Montana. As to this particular matter, I can find no final accounting with the Probate Court of Beaverhead, by Chrisman.

10. Sidney Edgerton, who had been appointed Chief Justice of the Idaho Territory, with instructions to go to the capitol at Lewiston, chose instead to stop off at the rich diggings on the east side of the mountains. The Edgertons and the Sanders families arrived in Bannack on September 17, 1863, and set about finding houses. This was not difficult since much of the population had moved to Alder Gulch by that time. Many properties were abandoned and could be bought at a sheriff's sale. There is a deed, in the handwriting of Henry Plumer (the correct spelling of the family name), issued to Sidney Edgerton. The deed now resides at the Montana Historical Society, but a photo of it is in Mable Ovitt's book Golden Treasure.

Sidney Edgerton never did get to Lewiston to be sworn in as Chief Justice of Idaho Territory; instead he and Wilbur Sanders were instrumental in setting up the extra-legal Vigilance Committee.
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11. There were exactly TWO stage coach robberies during the time Henry Plummer lived in what is now Montana, from about September 18, 1862 until he was hanged on January 10, 1864. The stories have been told and re-told, but nothing has been said which increases the number of robberies. They werethe following:

1. The Peabody and Caldwell Express was robbed on October 26, 1863. Granville Stuart has a complete description of it, as do Dimsdale, Langford, and Edwin Purple. This robbery took place between Rattlesnake Ranch and Bannack. No one was injured in this robbery by two masked men. This caused a great stir since it was the first stage coach robbery in the territory, and the only one on the stretch from Rattlesnake to Bannack, in spite of later designation of a prominent rock outcropping as "Road Agent Rock." This rock is a convenient fiction to make Bannack more attractive as a tourist mecca.

2. In the latter part of November, 1863 (none of the authors give an exact day), the regular Oliver coach from Virginia to Bannack was robbed by three masked men. This robbery took place along the east side of the Beaverhead River west of the Point of Rocks. Again, no one was hurt.

During the summer and fall of 1863, Langford was hauling lumber from Bannack to Alder Gulch. In all he made 30 trips between the two without mishap. Of course he was armed and took precautions. It is difficult to see how he could have done this if there had been an organized band of road agents.
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12. The sums vary according to the writer, but here are the amounts:

1. From the Peabody robbery, the amounts vary from writer to writer. The largest is $2800.00, but Purple (who as in Bannack at the time) says it was less than $2000.00.

2. Langford reports $500.00 lost on the Oliver coach robbery.

13. There are contradictory answers, especially to the Peabody coach robbery.

1. Dimsdale claims Frank Parrish and George Ives robbed the Peabody coach. You can check it out at Dimsdale, Chapter XI.

2. Langford, on the other hand, says:

   It was afterwards ascertained that Frank Parrish [Parish] and Bob Zachary were the men who committed the robbery. Bill Bunton, being in the secret, aided as much as possible in delaying the coach over-night at Rattlesnake, and supplying it with worn-out horses for the trip from his ranche to Bannack. "Bummer Dan" and Percy recognized the robbers, but were restrained by personal fear from exposing them.

   Note the use of the unidentified passive voice here, "ascertained ..." but by whom, where, when? The problem is there was no trial, no evidence, no judge, no jury, just hangings.

   Both accounts cannot be true, and it might be that neither version is true. No matter, all three men were hanged. It could be called justice by inclusion: if you suspect three people of a crime, hang them all, perhaps one of them was guilty.

14. The subject of how much and even by what mechanism Henry Plummer profited by the two coach robberies is never discussed by Dimsdale/Langford. A number of more recent writers have considered the problem however.

1. Art Pauley has this to say:

   The discovery of Alder Gulch relieved Bannack of many of the hoodlums who had made the town their headquarters during the spring of 1863. The distance between the two towns made communication difficult, at least a matter of two days being required to complete a round trip. For this reason there was little if any coordinated activity between the criminal elements of the two towns after the discovery of Alder Gulch. It is doubtful that the few stagecoach robberies that took place during the fall of 1863 were carried out by any pre-planned arrangement, but rather were the result of decisions made on the spur of the moment. Even if such was not the case, one would have to stretch the imagination to think that scoundrels like Boone Helm, the cannibal, or Jack Gallagher and others of the same stripe would split any of their blood money with the sheriff at Bannack. Plummer was indebted to these men for their silence and his life if he interfered with their life style. Langford and others of the time knew this and said as much. While Plummer tried, perhaps belatedly, to gain some measure of respectability, we find these outcasts living in their brush wikiups. Not that they enjoyed the fresh air or the sub-zero weather, but for the simple fact that they were not welcome among decent people. By necessity they ganged up to rob and murder and then like the jackals they were, oft times fought and killed each other over the spoils. There is no factual evidence that Plummer, in his position as sheriff, ever used his office to aid these felons in the commission of their crimes. Nor were all of the sheriff's deputies men with questionable backgrounds, men such as Ned Ray and Buck Stinson. Aside from Donald Dillingham, later killed at Virginia City, there were others (B. B. "Buz" Craven and Smith Ball) who had gained the trust and respect of their fellow residents. These are facts that seem to have been overlooked by others in writing the story of Henry Plummer. Not that these writers tried to mislead their readers; they only omitted pertinent facts and to create readers' interest, acted in the manner of attorneys for the prosecution.

2. Dan Cushman, in his book, Montana -- the Gold Frontier has this to say:

   ...The existence of any gang is doubtful, although the rough element knew who their friends were. A bandit organization headed by a single mastermind should have produced an example of organized banditry, but none can be found.

   ...A tribute later said the "trails were safe for honest men" after the vigilantes work was done. They were not safe at all, although the country was better off without the 22 of ill repute than it had been with them. Henry Plummer had tried to join the Masonic lodge, and probably he would had any regular chapter then been established. As the vigilantes were first closely associated with Freemasonry it is an interesting question whether they would have come down so hard on him if he had been introduced to the Mystic Shrine.

3. Mather and Boswell, after decades of studying the evidence have concluded there simply was no "Plummer gang." Here is a statement from Hanging the Sheriff:

   Most of the robberies attributed to the gang were not of wagon trains, but much smaller affairs such as the two holdups of stage passengers or some minor losses suffered by individuals travelling alone. No information exists that can link these isolated robberies together into a single chain, in fact the more we read of them the less we think they were connected by the planning of a leader who directed the roughs. No details exist of groups sharing information, working together, or dividing loot. In his book on the gold frontier, Dan Cushman expresses the same opinion, that judging by results no masterminding took place. "Men were robbed and brutally murdered by their own party," he writes. "Other robberies were hastily got up affairs, ill-planned and bungled."

   You may read the details in the document Hanging the Sheriff.
   

15. This has already been answered: There is no concrete evidence that Plummer was the head of a gang, or even that a gang existed.

The "evidence" given in Dimsdale, Langford, Beidler, and Callaway, is the "confession" of Red Yeager, hanged in secret on January 4, 1864. The Dimsdale version has a list of twenty-eight names. The Red Yeager confession is discussed in Hanging the Sheriff, and also in Vigilante Victims. Mather and Boswell point out there are four different versions of the list Yeager is supposed to have dictated: Dimsdale's, Beidler's, Langford's, and Callaway's, but there is no original. They remark:

According to Dimsdale, Williams ordered that Yeager's "words should be taken down." Thus the captain supposedly left the interrogation session with a written list of gang members. Yet, when quoting from this critical confession, four provigilante writers have come up with four different lists. Beidler, who was present during the confession, dictated twenty-three names for his journal. Yet Dimsdale added five more names to Beidler's list, and, though Langford agreed with Beidler in regards to the number of names on Red's list, he omitted four names Beidler had included and substituted four of his own. And Lew Callaway, who knew Captain Williams well and agreed that Yeager's confession was "committed to writing," prepared a roster which does not agree with any of the other three. Since the vigilantes preserved their "Oath," their "Regulations and Bye Laws," and even "Groceries Bought," but failed to retain the single document which might have justified lynching twenty-one men, no comparison can be made with the alleged original.

16. The question of where Henry Plummer was when George Ives was captured and tried has long bothered writers. It was only in Mather and Boswell, Vigilante Victims, published in 1991, that the mystery was solved. They found the memoirs of John Largent, a packer who travelled from Virginia City to Fort Benton with shipments of gold, and who revealed that while George Ives was being tried in Virginia City, Henry Plummer was accompanying him from Bannack to Fort Benton to protect him. These memoirs appeared in the Judith Basin County Press, January 4, 1937. The chronology is important, and is given here:

1863.12.17: Largent left Virginia City for Bannack and Fort Benton.
1863.12.18: George Ives captured and brought to Nevada City. Detained for the night there.
1863.12.18: Largent and Plummer slept in Thompson's store in Bannack.
1863.12.19: From Virginia City, Johnny Gibbons sent George Lane to Bannack to summon Sheriff Plummer.
1863.12.19: Ives trial began.
1863.12.19: Largent and Plummer left Bannack for Fort Benton.
1863.12.20: Ives trial continued. No word from Sheriff Plummer
1863.12.21: Last day of Ives trial. Hanged same day.
1863.12.23: Signing of the Vigilante Oath by 24 men.
1863.12.24: Plummer in Fort Benton with Largent, who discovered Henry Plummer had protected him all the way from Bannack to Fort Benton.

The entire article is interesting on several accounts.

This mid-winter trip from Bannack to Fort Benton might also explain why Plummer was sick at the time the Vigilantes picked him up at his sister-in-law's. He did suffer from consumption, and a week or more of open horseback travel in late December through the mountains might have caused a flair-up.
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17. Henry Plummer was not where Langford or Dimsdale say he was when he was captured by the Vigilantes. Langford has a long melodramatic account of his capture which starts out with what Langford must have known was a lie (to be fair, he was not in Bannack when Plummer was hanged, he had not returned from his business trip to the States):

The party detailed to arrest Plummer found him at his cabin, in the act of washing his face. When informed that he was wanted he manifested great unconcern, and proceeded quietly to wipe his face and hands. "I'll be with you in a moment, ready to go wherever you wish," he said to the leader of the Vigilantes. Tossing down the towel and smoothing his shirt sleeves, he advanced towards a chair on which his coat was lying, carelessly remarking: "I'll be ready as soon as I can put on my coat."

Art Pauley has this to say about the "capture" of Plummer:

I have said that Dimsdale and Langford were the first writers to give their versions of the arrest and execution of Henry Plummer. Intentionally they spared their readers some of the unpleasant events that took place prior to, and at the time of the hanging. Plummer was not taken from his cabin as they had claimed, but at the home of his brother-in-law, Major J. A. Vail, on Yankee Flat, where he had taken room and board.

Plummer had been resting on a couch when Wilbur Sanders, his next-door neighbor, came to the door and asked to see him. As he stepped outside he was seized by two men, his arms bound and was told that he had been found guilty of being a road agent. Mrs. Allie [Martha] Vail, frightened to the verge of hysteria asked, "Are these men going to kill you, Henry?" Trying to calm the frightened woman, he answered, "Don't worry, Allie, these men know that I have done nothing to be killed for."

For obvious reasons, Dimsdale as well as Langford failed to mention the crowd that followed the vigilantes up Hangman's Gulch. It was not a friendly crowd that gathered a short distance from the scaffold...

18. It was only a matter of an hour or so between the time Plummer was captured and the time he was hanged. According to Mather and Boswell he was accused of being a "road agent," but not from any account was there a specific crime mentioned. Just the general accusation of being a road agent. If you could say he had a trial, then it was in Virginia City sometime before his capture and hanging. No evidence, no witnesses, no counsel, no jury, and all secret.

In 1993 however, Henry Plummer did get a trial. This extraordinary event is discussed by Mark Weber.
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19. Did the robberies cease after the 21 men were hanged in January and February of 1864? No, and in fact after the "Plummer gang" hangings, the stage robberies showed more evidence of organized criminal activity, more robbers involved in the holdups, and more intelligence passed to the actual robbers. One example is discussed in great detail in Langford. The Port Neuf Stage Robbery. This was in the summer of 1865, long after the "Plummer gang" had all been killed. There were others, as noted by Mather and Boswell.
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20. Mexican Frank (also called Spanish Frank) was a young man employed at Rattlesnake Ranch, taking care of horses and doing general ranch labor. He was supposedly named as a "road agent" by Red Yeager before Red was hanged. His real name never appears in the literature, but Langford refers to him in the telling of the Peabody coach robbery. From Langford Chapter XXIV:

... Head Rock. The wearied horses gave place here to a fresher team, which continued on a keen run to Bunton's ranche on the Rattlesnake. It was now sunset, and yet twelve miles to Bannack. The herder who had brought up the horses for the change at the usual hour, finding that the coach did not arrive on time, had, under Bunton's orders, turned them out again, an hour before. Bunton pretended that he did not expect the coach. The herder was sent out immediately after the horses, and returned at dark with the report that he could not find them. Rumsey then requested "Little Frank," a Mexican boy in whom he had confidence, to go in search of the horses. He too soon returned with the report that they could not be found.

This "Little Frank," a few weeks afterwards, told Rumsey that the horses were near at the time, but that before he started to look for them, Bunton told him that if he did not report them to be missing he would kill him.

21. The last man hanged in Bannack was R. C. Rawley in November, 1864. Dimsdale devotes all of Chapter XXVII to him. The worst he can find to say about him is:

During the time when he was under influence of strong drink his old predilections were brought prominently forward, and he did not hesitate to utter threats of an unmistakable kind against the members of the Committee; and also to express his sympathy and identification of interest with the men who had been hanged, stating that they were good men, and the Committee were----strangling------, etc. This kind of conduct was allowed to remain unpunished for some six weeks or two months; but, as Rawley began to get bolder and to defy the Committee, it was resolved that an end should be put to such proceedings.

Let me tell you here that during the summer of 1864 I had learned to like Reighly. But I thought that he was a little, silly, ignorant being, or, in other words, a little, harmless, educated fool. I never in the fifty years since have been able to see why the road agents, so-called, would take this man as a brave into their band...

[He also gives a graphic description of the corpse swinging from the gallows, and says:]

In looking at the ragged human form suspended in mid-air, I said to myself, 'poor little fellow, you were certainly miserable enough without this.'

22. Langford (Chapter XLII) dates the murder of John White and his companion Rudolph Dorsett as "winter of 1863-64." He states:

Rudolph Dorsett arrived at Bannack with a party of miners from Colorado, in April, 1863. During the following summer, he, in company with John White, the discoverer of the Bannack mines, and a few others, left for the interior on a prospecting tour. The winter of 1863-64 found the little party near the head of Big Boulder Creek, where they had made some promising discoveries...

This was one of the earliest and most brutal tragedies in the newly discovered gold regions; and, happening when they were populated mostly by Eastern people, and before Plummer and his band of ruffians had been arrested in their grand scheme of wholesale slaughter, it produced a profound sensation throughout the country. The desire to capture and make a public example of the ruffian who had committed the shocking crime was universal.

However, Bannack's history was not to really begin until almost 55 years after Lewis and Clark, when John White and party discovered gold, July 28, 1862. White staked his claim on a sandbar a few miles upstream from the point at which Grasshopper Creek empties into the Beaverhead River. White, who was looking for Mort Lott's Pioneer Creek discovery, filed the first recorded mining claim. Unaware of the Creek's previous name, they christened it "Grasshopper Creek" because of the dense 'hopper population in the area. Like many "original" gold strike discoverers, White did not benefit from his find and was killed by road agents several months later.

We learn this from Noyes, Chapter XXIII where he is discussing the records of the first Probate Court of Madison County:

The first matter for probate was the petition of Maria V. Slade, on April 14th, 1864, for the probating of the will of J. A. Slade. Mrs. Slade did not appear, having left the Territory, taking the will with her and probably $7,000.00 or $8,000.00 in valuables.

The second matter was the estate of John White, the discoverer of Grasshopper, April 29th, 1864.

Henry Coppock, being duly sworn, deposes and said: I know John White, by sight. I went with Mr. Temple to White Tail Deer Creek, to bring his body to Virginia City, for burial. We found the body, he had died from effect of wounds. We brought his body from where we found it, to my camping place, and kept it there about four days. I saw his body searched for papers, and other things. No will was found on his person, and no property of any value, or money.

John Temple, sworn and says: I was well acquainted with John White in his lifetime. I saw him at Virginia City, about the first of February, last. After I heard of his death, I went with Coppock to bring in his body for burial -- found the body and recognized it. While at Virginia City, he boarded, and was out prospecting, at the time of his death. I don't think he left a will. If he had, I should have known it. I understand he was a married man, but don't know them (presumably the family).

Montana historians cannot escape the compulsion to mark down to the "road agents," and by implication, Henry Plummer, every crime committed in the area. In this case the facts show otherwise.

Noyes, in Chapter XIX, has a gem which should be applied more often in writing about Plummer and the Vigilantes:

One fact in history is worth much more than pages of stuff that is a matter of hearsay.

23. Dale Tash, writing in The History of Beaverhead County alludes to 102 murders committed by the "road agents."

Under the leadership of Henry Plummer the badmen were quickly organized. At the same time he was gaining his fellow citizens' trust, and won a miner's court election as sheriff on April 1, 1863. Simultaneously with his election, Bannack entered upon a period of violence which lasted as long as he was in office. Most of the crimes were committed on the road between Bannack and Virginia City. The road agents were said to have killed at least 102 individuals and robbed an unknown number of others. After George Ives, one of Plummer's henchmen, was hanged by Virginia City Vigilantes, other arrests and executions followed in rapid succession.

1863.12.18: George Ives captured and brought to Nevada City. Detained for the night there.
1863.12.19: Ives trial begins.
1863.12.21: Last day of Ives trial. Hanged same day.
1863.12.23: Signing of the Vigilante Oath by 24 men.

The phrase "the road agents were said to have killed at least 102 individuals" keeps cropping up in the vigilante literature. Said by whom? If one author puts it in print then the all later authors can allude to it by "were said to have ..." and get credibility since if it occurs in print it is true, or?

Mather and Boswell discuss the "102 murders" in Vigilante Victims:

Though only one man -- Nick Tiebolt -- was known to have been killed in connection with a robbery, vigilantes gained a great deal of support from the claim that the band regularly killed those they robbed. "It is a good job that the gang... was broken up," one citizen informed an Oregon editor, "for it is known that they have murdered over one hundred persons." Yet in a letter home, Mary Edgerton revealed that the one hundred murdered people "had not been discovered" because the bodies had been "cut into pieces and put under the ice, others burned and others buried." Mary was repeating the explanation her husband, Justice Edgerton, had given her. Evidently it did not occur to her that if the bodies had never been found, there would be no way to determine how many there were, nor what had been done to them. The rough estimate of 102 was based on letters various residents had received inquiring about a friend or relative. But even had there been a formal list of missing persons, their causes of death would have included disease, accident, and treachery from members of their own party, as well as from Indians. And in some instances, letters may have been lost, or travelers may have simply failed to keep relatives informed of their location. It is commendable that in the virtually lawless territory, a miners' court conducted a trial for the supposed perpetrator of the single confirmed robbery-murder.[15]

After the Masonic fraternity at Bannack had decided to organize a regular lodge, and a dispensation for that purpose had been applied for, Plummer expressed publicly a strong desire to become a Mason. Such were his persuasive powers, that he succeeded in convincing some members of the order, that in all his affrays, he had been actuated solely by the principle of self-defense, and that there was nothing inherently criminal in his nature. There were not wanting several good men among our brotherhood, who would have recommended him for initiation. It is a remarkable fact that the roughs were restrained by their fear of the Masonic fraternity, from attacking its individual members. Of the one hundred and two persons murdered by Henry Plummer's gang, not one was a Mason.

Miners and others who had worked out or sold their claims, were almost daily leaving the country. Often it was known that they took with them large amounts of gold dust. Various were the devices for its concealment. On one occasion a small company contrived to escape plunder by packing their long, slim buckskin purses into an auger hole, bored in the end of their wagon tongue, and closing it so as to escape observation. Others, less fortunate, lost, not their money only, but their lives, in some of the desolate canyons on the long route to Salt Lake. Many left who were never afterwards heard of, and whose friends in the States wrote letters of inquiry to the Territory concerning them, years after they had gone.

24. Lloyd Magruder was a Lewiston, Idaho, merchant who was murdered in the fall of 1863 on his way back from Virginia City. The news of the murder reached Bannack and Alder Gulch before the culprits were known, and the crime was imputed to the "road agent gang." Dimsdale in Chapter XV, accuses Plummer of orchestrating the crime. But Langford does not repeat this accusation, and the very complete and public record of the trial makes no mention of the involvement of Plummer or anyone else except the men hanged for the crime.

His murderers were tracked down, tried in Lewiston before a regular court of the Territory of Idaho, (which Bannack and Virginia City were part of at the time), and convicted by a jury, then hanged. The testimony was long, detailed, accurate, and public, in contradistinction to the proceedings of the Vigilantes.

In fact the apprehension, arrest, trial, conviction, and hanging of the murderers by a regular court in same Idaho Territory, has to say a lot about the necessity of the Vigilantes. Obviously they were not necessary. Had the "Chief Justice" established courts in Bannack and Virginia City instead of helping to establish a Vigilance Committee, history would have been much different, and innocent men would not have been hanged.

Langford has an even more extensive coverage of the Magruder murder in his Chapter XXXII, and Chapter XXXIII. He doesn't seem to realize he is making a detailed and convincing case against the necessity of the Vigilance Committee.

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