As the second half of the nineteenth-century rolled along, highwaymen in the Wild West
had been robbing stagecoaches for over fifty years.
There had been over five-thousand cases of stagecoach robberies reported during this
century, and they mainly occurred around the area where gold-shipments crossed trading
routes.
In my previous video about the Wild West we touched upon Black Bart, who held up at least
twenty-eight stagecoaches in Northern California.
Sheriff Henry Plummer led a double life: he was not only a sheriff, the protector of his
town, but the leader of his gang of road agents called the ‘Innocents’ as well, and Plummer
used intelligence he’d receive as sheriff to pick out the right stagecoaches to rob
near the goldmines of Montana.
-intro-
Henry Plummer wasn’t really a person that fit the criteria of an outlaw.
He was born in Maine and at the age of nineteen, during the California Gold Rush, he traveled
to the goldfields of California in order to acquire his own small fortune.
Settling in the small town of Nevada City, there were lots of men passing town, seeking
their own fortune and riches.
Here he met another man, with whom he established the Empire Bakery of Nevada City.
Through his bakery, Henry Plummer actually did acquire a bit of gold and managed to purchase
his own ranch and mine.
And after three years of operating the bakery and becoming a well-known figure of the town,
he was elected as its marshal.
During his time as a marshal, he became infatuated with a married woman, Lucy Vedder, and he
didn’t hide it.
Her husband, John Vedder, went looking for Plummer to clear things up.
When Vedder came across Plummer, the latter shot him on sight.
Plummer was subsequently arrested and charged with murder, while Plummer claimed self-defence,
he was sentenced to ten years in San Quentin, but was released four years later, after friends
and supporters of his managed to get him a pardon due to the claim that he suffered from
consumption, particularly from tuberculosis, and did not have long to live.
The next time Plummer came to attention was near Washoe, Nevada, after he joined a gang
of bandits that preoccupied themselves with holding up Wells Fargo stagecoaches.
One of those holdups didn’t go so well for Plummer, though, as the barrel of his gun
fell off during the holdup.
The driver of the stagecoach managed to escape and could identify Plummer to the authorities,
though they lacked evidence to convict him.
He returned to Nevada, where he killed a man in a dispute over a prostitute and was once
again jailed, but this time he escaped.
He went on the run and traveled up north, to the border between Washington and Idaho,
and settled in Lewiston where he organized a small gang of highwaymen around him.
The next year and a half, the bandits terrorized the surrounding trade routes, until they were
driven out by a gang of vigilantes.
Around that time, we’re talking eighteen-sixty-three, gold was found near Bannack, Montana.
Thousands of fortune-seekers, miners and whatever have you traveled towards Bannack and its
surrounding towns, and as you can guess, Plummer decided to try his luck and traveled eastward.
It was in Bannack that he formed the gang of highwaymen he called ‘the Innocents’.
It happened to be that this move was ideal for the gang's finances.
Surrounding cities of Bannack were rich and stagecoaches filled with gold and other valuables
often traveled over the trading routes close-by.
Now, Plummer got in a fight with a friend over a mutual love and killed him in a crowded
saloon.
While he was arrested, he was acquitted as the townsfolk of Bannock testified as witnesses
that Plummer acted in self-defence.
Using his charm and wits, Plummer quickly managed to capture the trust of the inhabitants
and it didn’t take long for him to be elected as sheriff once again.
As the sheriff, Plummer was kept up-to-date of the stagecoaches travel schedule, and the
contents.
He would use passwords, signals and other secret ways of communicating to his cronies
in order to get the innocents to rob these stagecoaches, and highwayman-activity increased
rapidly after Plummer got elected as sheriff.
Some witnesses identified Plummer as part of the gang and, though more and more people
started to suspect that Plummer was involved with the gang of bandits, little did they
know he was actually their leader.
In December eighteen-sixty-three a mob of three-hundred men captured George Ives, an
Innocent member, and after a quick trial he was hanged.
Two days later a vigilante committee was formed and in January two more men were hanged.
More and more people came forward talking about who they thought were members of the
Innocent gang and while Plummer wasn’t mentioned that much at first, more people started to
realize Plummer wasn’t the protective sheriff they thought he was.
On the tenth of January eighteen-sixty-four, a group of vigilantes captured Henry Plummer
together with two of his top lieutenants and deputy sheriffs: Buck Stinson and Ned Ray.
That same day, all three men were hanging from the beams of an unfinished building.
It would take less than a month for the vigilanties to finish their job: by February thirty men
had been hung and only a few had fled as quick as they could in order to evade capture.
Henry Plummer and his gang of innocents are definitely among the great tales of the Wild
West.
There are many more stories of outlaws and highwaymen that became folk heroes or villains
of the wild west, but I’ll leave those for another time.
Thank you for watching this video and is there a person or event from the Wild West that
you would like to know more about, and perhaps see a video of?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments and if you enjoyed the video, consider subscribing
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See you next time.