Plumas County CA Archives History - Books .....Historical Reminiscences -  Lynching Of Ross And Williams 1882
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Book Title: Illustrated History Of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties

LYNCHING OF ROSS AND WILLIAMS.

   The lynching of John Ross and Robert Williams, occurring as it did in the
year 1864, when the law's inefficiency could afford no extenuation for the
people's offense, and when the extent of the victims' crime was wholly
inadequate to the punishment inflicted, was truly a lamentable affair, and one
well calculated to inspire a horror of mob justice. In the early part of July
Ross and Williams had been arrested, taken before E. H. Metcalf, justice of the
peace at Spanish Ranch, and examined on a charge of sluice-robbing on Silver
creek. For want of evidence sufficient to implicate them, the accused men were
discharged. Sundry miners, not satisfied with this result, took them in charge,
marched them up to Silver creek, and extorted confessions from them by threats
of hanging. Men then came to Quincy and lodged a complaint with the district
attorney, and on the twelfth, of July, 1864, an indictment was found against
John Ross and Robert Williams for "willfully and maliciously entering a
dwelling-house with intent to steal." The case came to trial on the eighteenth,
in the county court, Judge A. P. Moore presiding. They were defended by J. D.
Goodwin, Esq., who succeeded in getting them cleared. The prisoners were in
charge of Sheriff E. H. Pierce, and when their freedom was secured they were
warned by their counsel not to take leave of the town during the day-time, as
the feeling against them was very strong in the breasts of the miners, and they
would endanger their lives by venturing forth. But this sound advice was
unheeded; they left the jail, where they would have been safe, and boldly walked
into the street. Immediately they were surrounded by a howling mob, blind to
reason, who hustled them out of town, proceeding several miles, when they hung
the unfortunate men to a tree. When the last sparks of life were extinguished,
the bodies were taken down and buried on what is known as the Island, near
Spanish Ranch. During all this time neither the sheriff nor any of his deputies
was to be found, they having prudently discovered pressing business elsewhere,
to avoid the necessity of interfering with a mob which they well knew would
accomplish what it undertook.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties

San Francisco: Fariss & Smith
(1882)


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