Sierra County CA Archives History - Books .....Hanging Of Harlow 1882 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/ca/cafiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher sdgenweb@gmail.com January 20, 2006, 11:06 pm Book Title: Illustrated History Of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties HANGING OF HARLOW. Mordecai E. Harlow, for the murder of a man named Smith, committed October 12, 1854, at Rabbit Creek, now La Porte, was hung in Slug canon about eighteen months after. Harlow was known to be an utterly unscrupulous and a dangerous man, and withal a very cunning thief. In 1853 the good citizens of Goodyear's bar had proved a theft on him, and in addition to the administering of a severe castigation, he was branded with the letter "T" on his cheek, that, like Cain, he might bear the public record of his iniquity to the grave. Harlow and the wife of Smith, at Rabbit Creek, had formed an intimacy not altogether consistent with the laws of society, which improper connection is supposed to have led to the murder of Smith, for the purpose of getting him out of the way. On the day alluded to, Harlow and Smith were chopping trees in the woods, when the former split the latter's head open with an axe. The wife was suspected of conniving at the murder of her husband. Harlow escaped to Oregon, where he remained concealed for over a year. Finally he ventured to return to Sierra county, and was caught soon after. Harlow was arraigned on the twelfth of February, 1856, in the district Court, Judge Niles Searles presiding on the bench. He was defended by William S. Spear. The trial occupied only one day; on the evening of the thirteenth, the jury, of which William S. Kenney was foreman, found a verdict of guilty. Sentence of death was pronounced by Judge Searles February 27, limiting Harlow's lease of life to the eighteenth of April. The plea of the defense for acquittal was grounded on alleged insanity in the prisoner, Doctors Aiken and Carr having previously made an examination and discovered the necessary maniacal symptoms. But the feeling was so strong against Harlow that the jury had no difficulty in coming to an agreement. Sheriff Ford and his deputies performed the execution in Slug canon on the day appointed, in the presence of a vast concourse of excited witnesses, who covered the sides of the neighboring hills. The job was not performed very artistically. At the first drop the rope stretched so much that the victim's feet touched the ground. Immediately several strong hands grasped the rope and hauled the writhing burden to a more elevated position, where he died in a few moments. On the scaffold Harlow confessed to an additional crime of which he had not been suspected, and for which another and an innocent party had severely suffered. In 1854 a young man had been arrested for robbing a sluice-box in the Chicago diggings, and had been sentenced from a justice's court to imprisonment in the county jail six months, together with twenty-five lashes at the whipping-post. The punishment was administered in accordance with the law, though the man who wielded the lash laid them on as lightly as possible. The term of confinement had expired, and long prior to the hanging of Harlow the unfortunate youth had left the town with no great love for the place. The establishment of his innocence by the confession of Harlow produced a reversion of feeling in the minds of the people; and could the young man have been found at the time, he would have been liberally remunerated in a pecuniary way for his suffering and humiliation. Additional Comments: Extracted from: Illustrated History of Plumas, Lassen & Sierra Counties San Francisco: Fariss & Smith (1882) File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/ca/sierra/history/1882/illustra/hangingo304ms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/cafiles/ File size: 4.0 Kb