Henry Plummer – Sheriff Meets a Noose

The saga of Henry Plummer, a name synonymous with the tumultuous era of the Wild West, is a complex tapestry woven with threads of law and lawlessness, ambition and alleged treachery. His story, spanning a mere 27 years, paints a portrait of a man who seemingly straddled both sides of the law, ultimately meeting a violent end at the hands of vigilantes in Bannack, Montana. However, the historical record surrounding Henry Plummer is far from clear-cut, with modern historians continuing to debate the extent of his guilt and the true nature of the crimes attributed to him.

Born in 1832 in Addison, Maine, Henry Plummer was the youngest of seven children born to William Jeremiah and Elizabeth Handy Plummer. His lineage was steeped in maritime tradition; his father, older brother, and brother-in-law all commanded ships, charting courses across vast oceans. Young Henry was initially expected to follow in their seafaring footsteps, however, his frail physique and susceptibility to consumption (tuberculosis) rendered him unsuitable for the arduous life at sea.

The death of his father when Henry was a teenager plunged the Plummer family into financial hardship. Driven by a desire to alleviate their struggles, the ambitious young man, just two years after the onset of the California Gold Rush, promised his widowed mother that he would seek his fortune in the burgeoning West and restore the family’s prosperity.

In April 1852, at the age of 19, Henry Plummer embarked on his westward journey, sailing from New York on a mail ship destined for Aspinwall, Panama. The journey was arduous, involving a transit across the Isthmus of Panama via mule train to Panama City, where he boarded another ship for the remainder of his voyage to California. After a grueling 24 days, he finally arrived in San Francisco, the bustling gateway to the Gold Rush.

Plummer quickly found employment at a bakery in San Francisco. His industrious nature allowed him to accumulate sufficient funds to relocate to the mining camps of Nevada County, situated approximately 150 miles north of San Francisco. This move marked a significant turning point in his life, setting the stage for his rapid ascent and subsequent dramatic downfall.

Within a year of his arrival in California, records indicate that Henry Plummer had acquired a substantial stake in the local economy, owning both a ranch and a mine in the vicinity of Nevada City. Displaying a keen business acumen, he traded some of his mining shares for the Empire Bakery in Nevada City roughly twelve months later. His entrepreneurial spirit and apparent success garnered him the admiration of the town’s residents.

By 1856, the citizens of Nevada City, impressed by the young man’s capabilities and apparent integrity, encouraged him to run for the office of sheriff. At the remarkably young age of 24, Henry Plummer was elected marshal of what was then the third-largest settlement in California, a testament to his charisma and the trust he inspired.

The young marshal quickly earned a reputation for his effectiveness and dedication to law enforcement. He was well-liked by the citizens of Nevada City and respected for his promptness and boldness in handling his duties. His popularity was evident in his easy re-election victory in 1857. However, this period of relative success was soon marred by a violent incident that would forever alter the course of his life.

Shortly after his re-election, Plummer was involved in a fatal confrontation that resulted in his first killing. The circumstances surrounding the event were complex and fueled by passion. Plummer was rumored to be having an affair with the wife of a miner named John Vedder. When the enraged husband confronted him, the dispute escalated into a duel, in which Henry Plummer emerged victorious, leaving Vedder dead.

Plummer’s involvement in the killing of Vedder led to his arrest and a sensational, emotionally charged trial. The case was fraught with legal complexities, making its way twice to the California Supreme Court before a verdict was finally reached. Plummer was ultimately convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to a ten-year term in California’s notorious San Quentin Prison. He began serving his sentence on February 22, 1859. However, his supporters in Nevada City quickly mobilized, petitioning the Governor for a pardon based on the claim that Plummer had acted in self-defense.

Among Plummer’s fellow inmates at San Quentin was Cyrus Skinner, who was serving time for grand larceny. Skinner would later become connected to Plummer again in Montana. Plummer served only a fraction of his sentence, being released on August 16, 1859, ostensibly due to his deteriorating health as a result of tuberculosis and the persistent pressure exerted on the Governor by the petition.

Upon his release from prison, Henry Plummer returned to Nevada City, where he resumed his involvement with the bakery and frequented the town’s many brothels. This marked a period of decline and moral ambiguity in his life, signaling a shift towards the darker aspects of the Wild West.

Before long, Plummer found himself penniless and entangled with a group of bandits intent on robbing area stagecoaches. During one such attempted robbery, the stage driver managed to escape with his passengers and cargo, but Plummer was apprehended. Despite his prior conviction, the former sheriff caught a reprieve when he was acquitted due to a lack of sufficient evidence.

However, trouble continued to plague Plummer, and he soon became embroiled in a violent altercation over a "painted lady" (a prostitute) with a man named William Riley. When Plummer shot Riley on October 27, 1861, he was arrested once again. This time, he managed to escape prison by bribing a jailer before he could be tried and fled for Oregon.

During his escape, Plummer encountered another bandit named Jim Mayfield, who had allegedly killed the sheriff of a neighboring town. Both men were wanted by the authorities, so Plummer sent word to California newspapers that he and Mayfield had been hanged in Washington. The false report had the desired effect, alleviating the constant pressure of being pursued by posses.

In January 1862, Plummer arrived in Lewiston, Idaho, accompanied by a female companion, and registered at the Luna House. He took a job in a casino, where he crossed paths with his old cellmate, Cyrus Skinner, and other individuals who would later meet their fate on the gallows in Montana, such as Club Foot George Lane and Bill Bunton.

These like-minded men formed a gang and began robbing local families in the area mining camps. They primarily targeted gold shipments traveling the roads from the mines. Somewhere along the way, Plummer abandoned his mistress, a woman with three children who was forced to resort to prostitution to support herself and her family. Plummer would eventually die an alcoholic in one of the town’s seedier brothels.

Plummer began to roam the area between Elk City, Florence, and Lewiston. In Orofino, Idaho, he killed a saloon keeper named Patrick Ford. When Ford kicked Plummer and some of his friends out of the saloon, Ford followed them to the stable, where he fired upon them. Plummer returned fire, killing Ford. When some of Ford’s friends began to form a lynch mob, Plummer fled east to Montana.

By September 1862, Plummer began to experience the worsening effects of his tuberculosis and desired to return home. He traveled from Idaho across the Bitterroot Mountains to Fort Benton, intending to travel back east. Unfortunately, the upper Missouri River at Fort Benton was frozen and closed to Riverboat traffic. Planning to wait out the winter, Plummer took a job as a ranch hand at the Sun River Farm, a government ranch and Indian Agency, in October.

Plummer soon became enamored with Indian Agent James Vail’s beautiful sister-in-law, Electa Bryan. Henry and Electa spent about two months together and were quickly engaged to be married.

A former cohort of Plummer’s named Jack Cleveland was also vying for Electa’s attention, which incensed Henry. Nevertheless, both men headed to Bannack, Montana, the most recent site of gold rush fever, in January 1863.

Hastily built to accommodate the many miners flooding the area, Bannack was home to all manner of transient men, including Civil War deserters from both sides, river pirates, professional gamblers, outlaws, and villains. Lawlessness ran rampant as holdups occurred daily, and killings were just as frequent.

Henry soon gathered another gang, calling themselves the Innocents, and began to relieve the gold-laden travelers from the Montana camps of their valuables. The Innocents grew quickly and became so large that secret handshakes and code words were instituted so one "Innocent" could recognize another.

One night while Henry was drinking in Bannack’s Goodrich Saloon, Jack Cleveland, his old nemesis, began to taunt him by referencing Plummer’s outlaw activities. When Henry warned him to stop, Cleveland continued to spout his accusations, and Plummer fired a warning shot. Cleveland then pulled his six-gun, but Henry was faster, and soon Cleveland lay on the floor, mortally wounded.

Not yet dead, Cleveland was taken to the home of a butcher named Hank Crawford, two doors down from the saloon. Crawford heard Cleveland’s last words as he continued to extol the tale of Plummer’s deceit and corruption. Three hours later, Cleveland was dead, and Plummer was arrested. However, Plummer received yet another reprieve when he was acquitted based on witness testimony that Cleveland had threatened him.

By late spring 1863, more than 10,000 men were hunting for gold along Grasshopper Creek, and the lawlessness in Bannack had reached epidemic proportions. The frightened citizens of the settlement decided that the outlaws had to be stopped and advertised for a sheriff. Two men, vowing to corral the outlaws, stepped up to the plate – Plummer and a butcher named Hank Crawford.

Plummer lost the election to the popular butcher, an event that fired his reckless temper, and he went after the new sheriff with a shotgun. However, a friend warned Crawford, who shot Plummer in his right arm, temporarily ruining his gunfighting abilities. Undaunted, Plummer immediately practiced shooting with his left hand until his accuracy was just as deadly. When Hank Crawford caught wind of this, he turned in his badge and left Bannack, never to return.

In the new election for sheriff, Plummer became the leading lawman on May 24, 1863. Plummer quickly appointed two of his henchmen, Buck Stinson and Ned Ray, as deputies. Unknown to the people of Bannack, Plummer’s group of Innocents had now reached over 100. Having the opposite desired effect for the citizens of Bannack, crime in the town increased dramatically after Plummer was elected. In the next few months, more than 100 citizens were murdered.

On June 20, 1863, Henry and Electa were married and soon settled into their log home in Bannack. However, Electa did not stay long. Less than three months later, she left for her parent’s home in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. She would never see Henry again.

The Innocents stepped up their efforts to rob the gold-laden travelers from the Montana camps and helped the Sheriff punish the "villains" of the community on a gallows that Plummer had erected. However, the few hanged on it by Plummer and his men were not members of the Innocents. The Innocents were well organized and said to have killed anyone who might witness their crimes, most of which were quickly covered up. Blatant killings went unpunished. Residents who suspected anything feared for their lives and kept their mouths closed. The ambitious sheriff soon extended his operations to Virginia City when he was appointed Deputy U.S. Marshal for the region of Idaho Territory east of the mountains in August 1863.

By December 1863, the citizens of Bannack and Virginia City had had enough. Men from Bannack, Virginia City, and nearby Nevada City met secretly and organized the Montana Vigilantes. Masked men began to visit suspected outlaws in the middle of the night, issuing warnings and tacking up posters featuring skull-and-crossbones or the "mystic" numbers "3-7-77." While the meaning of these numbers remains elusive, the Montana State Highway patrolmen wear the emblem "3-7-77" on their shoulder patches today.

The vigilantes dispensed rough justice by hanging about twenty-four men. When one such man, Erastus "Red" Yager, who was about to be hanged, pointed the finger at Henry Plummer as the gang’s ring leader. The residents were divided on whether or not Henry was part of the murderous gang.

On January 10, 1864, fifty to seventy-five men gathered up Plummer and his two main deputies, Buck Stinson and Ned Ray. The three were marched to those very same gallows that Plummer had built. Ned Ray was the first hanged, followed by Buck Stinson–both men spewing epithets every step of the way. According to one legend, Plummer promised to tell the vigilantes where $100,000 of gold was buried if they would let him live. However, the vigilantes ignored this as they gradually hoisted him up by the neck.

After the execution, armed guards stood by the gallows for about an hour. The three bodies were left hanging until the following day. Plummer’s was the only body placed in a wooden coffin, and none were buried in the cemetery, but instead, all three were buried in shallow graves in Hangman’s Gulch about a hundred yards up from the gallows.

The vigilantes went on to hang the rest of the Road Agents that they could locate in such locations as Hellgate (Missoula), Cottonwood (Deer Lodge), Fort Owen, and Virginia City.

Vulnerable to vandalism, legend has it that the grave was broken into on two occasions. The first time, allegedly by the local doctor, who, out of curiosity, severed the right arm from the body to search for the bullet that had hit Plummer when he went after Hank Crawford. Reportedly, the doctor found the bullet "worn smooth and polished by the bones turning upon it." The second time it was broken into was reportedly by two men around the turn of the century who decided to dig up the grave after spending several hours in a local bar. To prove they had done it, they severed the head and carried it back to the Bank Exchange Saloon, where it remained on the back bar for several years until the building burned, along with all its contents. Yet, another legend states that the skull found its way into the hands of an unnamed doctor who sent the specimen back east to a scientific institution to try to figure out why Plummer was so evil.

Electa learned of her husband’s death in a letter, and she always maintained that he was innocent. In fact, in the past several decades, many historians, researchers, and authors have also questioned whether the tale of Henry Plummer was rightfully told.

Many believe that the whole thing is all a fraud, a story fabricated to cover up the real lawlessness in the Montana Territory – the vigilantes themselves. Many of the early stories on which the outlaw tale is based were written by the editor of the Virginia City Newspaper, who was a member of the vigilantes himself.

Further testimony to support the theory is that the robberies did not cease after the twenty-one men were hanged in January and February 1864. 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.

Having taken control, the vigilantes were ruthless. On one such occasion, in attempting to get the names of the road agents, they looped a noose around the neck of a suspect named "Long John" Franck and repeatedly hoisted him until the poor man gasped out the answers the vigilantes wanted to hear. They did the same to Erastus "Red" Yager, who pointed the finger at Henry Plummer as the gang’s leader.

Further, the vigilantes brooked no criticism of their methods. When a preacher’s son named Bill Hunter expressed his outrage by shouting on a mining camp street that pro-vigilantes were "stranglers," his frozen corpse was found three weeks later dangling from the limb of a cottonwood tree.

There is little evidence connecting Plummer with any crime committed in the Bannack area other than the "confession" of a criminal attempting to save his own life. Plummer’s activities as an outlaw band leader in Lewiston have also been disputed; when evidence was found that he was living in California.

Three years after Plummer was killed, the vigilantes virtually ruled the mining districts. Finally, leading citizens of Montana, including Territorial Governor Thomas Meagher, began to speak out against the ruthless group.

In March 1867, the miners issued their own warning that if the vigilantes hanged any more people, the "law-abiding citizens" would retaliate "five for one." Though a few more lynchings occurred, it was clear that the era of the vigilantes had passed.

As to what happened to Electa – she ultimately moved to Vermillion, South Dakota, where she married James Maxwell, a widower with two daughters. Electa and James had two sons of their own, Vernon and Clarence. Electa lived until May 5, 1912, and was buried at Wakonda, South Dakota.

The historical town of Bannack, Montana, was placed under the protection of Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks in 1954 and is now called the Bannack State Park.