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Gold Rush Vigilantes: J I M U G LY A N D Y A N K E E J I M BY M A R K M c L AU G H L I N
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eginning with the Gold Rush but lasting for decades, residents in many California and Nevada counties formed armed volunteer groups that lynched or shot suspected criminals without benefit of a legitimate court trial in front of a jury of their peers. Western vigilance committees in the second half of the 19th Century adopted names such as the Regulators or Moderators in a nod to keeping crime in check. In Reno and Virginia City, Nev., and Truckee, they were called the 601. It is thought that the moniker originated from: “6 feet under, zero trial, one bullet or one rope.” Supporters of this extrajudicial activity considered the intimidation and violence a purifying process that benefitted their community due to the lack of an established justice system or one that was perceived as weak or corrupt. These citizen activists operated outside of the law, but their actions were considered effective, especially when focused on egregious crimes committed by unrepentant outlaws. Vigilante groups strived to create a public perception of justice by conducting deliberate proceedings that convicted perpetrators with a veneer of legitimacy. This was done to differentiate themselves from mob rule where a thirst for killing overruled rational thought. It also placated
kee Jim fled his namesake town in Placer County after vigilantes hung Jim Ugly Edmonson. Although Yankee Jim considered his aborted San Diego crime a minor affair, on Aug. 18, he was tried before a San Diego Court of Sessions, comprised of a county judge and two justices of the peace. The local district attorney conducted the prosecution. After hearing court testimony, a jury of 12 men rendered a guilty verdict of grand larceny for stealing the dinghy with a recommended sentence of death by hanging. Among those on the jury were the owners of the rowboat. Robinson’s accom-
Read Mark’s series on Truckee’s 601 vigilantes at TheTahoeWeekly.com
doubt among its members that their actions were justifiable. One of the first vigilante committees in the mining districts was organized in Placer County to punish a notorious thug named James Edmonson, known locally as Jim Ugly.
THE HANGING OF JIM UGLY On March 20, 1852, Edmonson killed a popular bartender named Chamberlain, who tended bar at the Indian Queen House. Chamberlain refused to serve the ruffian liquor due to Edmonson’s obnoxious drunkenness. Armed with a large butcher knife, Ugly went behind the bar to take his own bottle and he stabbed the barkeep, who tried to stop him. Chamberlain lingered for five painful days before succumbing to his mortal wound. On April 9, the Sacramento Daily Union reported: “From all accounts we hear, Ugly bore an exceedingly bad character throughout the Northern mines. The physician who attended Chamberlain stated that he was the fourth patient that he had tried to save who had been stabbed by Ugly.” On the night of the coroner’s inquest, several hundred miners and citizens gathered to discuss Edmonson’s fate. After unanimous agreement, the murderer was taken to an oak tree and promptly hanged. The paper reported: “The inhabitants of Yankee Jims, after the hanging of Ugly, held a meeting and resolved that thereafter, in all like affairs, they themselves would be both judge and executioner. In other words, formed a Vigilance Committee on the California plan.”
YANKEE JIM’S FATAL CRIME
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Ironically, the town of Yankee Jim owes its name to another criminal. In 1851 California’s first governor, Peter Burnett, pressed the state Legislature to pass an act making any theft more than $100 grand larceny, a crime subject to the death penalty. In August 1852, a court in San Diego
Yankee Jim’s historic plaque. | Courtesy Wikimedia Commons
convicted James “Yankee Jim” Robinson of grand larceny. Along with two companions – James Grayson Loring and William Harris – Yankee Jim had stolen a rowboat with intent to hijack a commercial ship anchored in San Diego harbor. For some reason, the trio failed to follow through with their plan, but the dinghy they used in the plot was recovered by its owners on a beach a few miles down the coast.
Vigilante groups strived to create a public perception of justice by conducting deliberate proceedings that convicted perpetrators with a veneer of legitimacy. Robinson had a rough background. Rumors insinuated that he was formerly incarcerated at a British penal colony in Australia and became one of an estimated 14,000 released or escaped convicts who invaded San Francisco in the early 1850s. Known derisively as Sydney Ducks, these primarily Irish Catholic immigrants formed ruthless criminal gangs that motivated San Francisco’s first Vigilance committee in 1851. Yankee Jim was an unsavory character with a bad temper who had drifted into San Diego from the Placer County gold diggings. Exceptionally tall with a powerful physique, respectable citizens shunned the ruthless brute and gave him wide berth. Although he was never caught red-handed, Robinson was a horse thief who waylaid miners traveling alone by beating them and stealing their gold and valuables. Yan-
plices, Loring and Harris, turned state’s evidence for the prosecution. The judge ordered Yankee Jim taken into custody and remanded to the one-room adobe county jail until Sept. 18 when he would be executed. During his lockup, and even up to the hour he was to be hung, Yankee Jim didn’t believe he would be put to death. Attending Catholic priests encouraged the prisoner to make his peace, but Jim rebuked their ministrations. After all, there had been no crime other than the borrowing of a small rowboat and that had been returned undamaged. That may have been so, but as the Los Angeles Herald reported on Oct. 7, 1873: “It is a matter of history that the [American] pioneers of California were deliberate in making up their minds, but once made up, the decree was unchangeable. And thus, it proved in this case.” On Sept. 18, Yankee Jim was placed in a wagon and taken to the makeshift gallows: “Two beams planted in the ground with a heavy bar across the top.” The wagon was driven under the hangman’s noose swaying from the cross bar. The prisoner was allowed to plead his case one more time before the signal was given for the driver to whip the mules and send Yankee Jim to his fate. Just before his boots left the wagon, Robinson cried out, ‘Oh God! Do I have to die?’ “He kept his feet in the wagon bed as long as possible but was finally pulled off. He swung back and forth like a pendulum, until he strangled to death,” reported the Herald. The journalist added, “Subsequently, his accomplices in the grand larceny were tried by the same jury and sentenced to the State Prison for one year. They never returned to San Diego.” James Robinson did not die at the hands of vigilantes and may be forgotten today, but Yankee Jim lives on in Placer County, commemorated by California Historical Landmark 398 near Forest Hill and an historic suspension bridge over the North Fork of the American River. Residents retained the name because the feared criminal found gold at that location in 1850 while hiding stolen horses. Tahoe historian Mark McLaughlin is a nationally published author and professional speaker. His award-winning books are available at local stores or at thestormking.com. You may reach him at mark@thestormking.com.
