Plumas County, CA History

Transcribed by Sally Kaleta Jul 2009

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Illustrated History of PLUMAS, LASSEN & SIERRA Counties
with CALIFORNIA from 1513 to 1850, Farriss & Smith , 1882, San Francisco.

Historical Reminiscences


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 victim's 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.