Background
Of his early life and antecedents nothing was known, and the etiquette of the time and place, apart from other considerations, forbade inquiry.
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Henry Plummer
Edit ProfileEducation
There is no information about his education.
Career
He was then, probably, about twenty-five years old and was joint proprietor of a bakery.
He was elected town marshal in 1856 and in the following year, but was an unsuccessful candidate for state assemblyman on the Democratic ticket. While he was still marshal of Nevada City he murdered a man named Vedder, with whose wife he was carrying on an intrigue. After two trials he was sent to the Yuba County, California, penitentiary to serve a ten-year sentence, but Gov. John P. Weller pardoned him on the assumption that he was dying of tuberculosis.
In the course of the next year or two Plummer established a reputation for seduction, brawling, murder, banditry, and jail-breaking but managed to escape punishment. In the spring of 1861 he left hurriedly for Washington Territory, stayed long enough in Walla Walla to send back to California newspapers a plausible account of his being lynched, and then proceeded, accompanied by the wife of a citizen of Walla Walla, to Lewiston, Idaho.
In Lewiston he posed as a gambler but devoted his main energies to organizing a gang of bandits who, in 1862, commanded the routes from Lewiston to Orofino and other mining camps, and murdered and robbed with impunity. In the fall of that year he crossed the Continental Divide into what is now Montana; tarried two months at Sun River, where he was the guest of J. A. Vail, superintendent of a government school for Blackfoot Indians; and became engaged to Vail's sister-in-law, Electa Bryan, of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Shortly before Christmas he arrived at Bannack.
On January 14, 1863, he killed his former confederate, Jack Cleveland, the one man in Bannack who knew his history and could have betrayed him. Plummer was tried and acquitted. He then hounded the sheriff, Henry Crawford, into leaving the Territory and on May 24 was elected to the vacant office.
A committee of Vigilantes was formed at Bannack and at Virginia City, with Wilbur Fisk Sanders, John S. Lott, John X. Biedler, and Capt. James Williams among its leaders, and the work of exterminating the outlaws was pushed vigorously. A complete list of Plummer's gang was obtained, and no halt was called until twenty-four were hanged and eight banished.
He was apprehended at Bannack January 10, 1864, and hanged on a gallows that he had erected in his capacity as sheriff.
Achievements
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Henry Plummer was the leader of a "road agent" gang of outlaws known as the "Innocents", who soon had all of southern Montana at their mercy. In the course of their activity 102 men were robbed or murdered, and the decent element of the population was compelled to take drastic measures for its own preservation. The discovery of Plummer's leadership was a complete surprise to all but a few of the Vigilantes: almost to the last he had played his double role successfully. In organizing the gang and maintaining his ascendency over it undisputed he displayed ability of a high order.
Personality
He was above medium height, slender, with mild blue eyes, regular features, and chestnut-brown hair. He was neat, even fastidious, in his dress and person, and his carefully modulated voice, correct English, good manners, and general suggestion of poise and power seemed to indicate a man of breeding.
Connections
On June 20, at Sun River, he married Electa Bryan, who on September 2 quietly departed for the East.
