Plumas County CA Archives History - Books .....Historical Reminiscences - NelsonCreek Vigilantes 1882
************************************************
Copyright.  All rights reserved.
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/copyright.htm
http://www.rootsweb.com/~usgenweb/ca/cafiles.htm
************************************************

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by:
Joy Fisher sdgenweb@yahoo.com January 4, 2006, 7:22 pm

Book Title: Illustrated History Of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties

NELSON-CREEK VIGILANTES.

   Regularly organized vigilance committees were not so numerous in Plumas as in
some of her sister counties in the early times. Miners' law was administered
everywhere, but by special courts organized for the occasion, and not by an
association of vigilantes, as was often the case in other places. One such
organization as this existed on Nelson creek in 1853-54, for the purpose of
protection against the rough characters that flooded the mines. In 1853 they
gave notices to leave to a great many of these undesirable citizens; but as the
warnings were considered salutary, and were quickly acted upon, no occasion
arose for the display of violence. At one time, in 1854, a man named Peter Taffe
was stabbed to death by John Baxter, under such circumstances that the vigilance
committee, after due trial of the case, acquitted the defendant. They went a
step farther than this, and aided the man who had but just been their prisoner
to elude the proper officers of the law and make good his escape. This latter
act failed to please the officials, who sought a means of punishing them. The
committee took occasion the following winter to clear their community of a few
objectionable characters, and in the course of their proceedings committed some
act that laid them open to a charge of robbery by J. J. Fegan, one of the men on
their black-list. This was the opportunity the officials desired. Indictments
for robbery were found in February, 1855, against James Sherwin, A. Hargrave,
Jonathan Meeker, Captain Hardy, James Woden, J. S. Root, L. Cross, Ed. Sterling,
M. H. Farley, M. Parker, Fred McDonald, and Sylas Aldrich, and the defendants
were arrested and incarcerated in the Quincy jail. They were all quickly bailed
out but Sherwin, who refused to give bonds. He lay in jail until April, when a
nolle prosequi was entered, and all were discharged from custody. At the same
time A. L. Page was also discharged, having been in "durance vile" on a charge
of obstructing the officers when serving the warrants of arrest upon the
vigilantes.


Additional Comments:
Extracted from:

Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties

San Francisco: Fariss & Smith
(1882)


File at: http://ftp.rootsweb.com/pub/usgenweb/ca/plumas/history/1882/illustra/historic99nms.txt

This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/cafiles/

File size: 2.9 Kb