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


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 just been their prisoner to 
elude the proper officials 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 upon 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 noelle 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.