By Linda Jones
When George Harrison ambushed Charley Switz, the jury acquitted him because the victim was “a noted bruiser.” It was the summer of 1863 in Central City, Colorado Territory, and the two had a long-standing feud; they had agreed the next time they saw each other they would draw and shoot on sight. Harrison emptied the contents of a double-barreled shotgun into Switz’ stomach and the jury quickly agreed the world was better off without Switz.
John Gregory
Such swift action is appealing to us today, but the reason for the simplicity of frontier justice was the frontier outran complicated justice. Gilpin County in 1859 was not a lawless outpost, however; the miners wanted law and order to protect their valuable gold-mine claims. In the absence of courts and authorities, they met together and adopted their own laws. John Gregory’s rich strike in present-day Black Hawk was made on May 6, 1859, and the next month the miners were called together in a mass meeting and there they adopted the Gregory District Code of Laws. In that first meeting the miners elected a president, a secretary of claims and a sheriff. If a dispute arose under these laws a mass meeting was called by the president and the summons was passed by word of mouth from camp to camp to meet at Gregory Point, where Lawrence and Gregory Streets now meet. The miners came trooping down the hillsides by the thousands for the meeting at the appointed time.
Those mass meetings considered every offense “against the peace and order of the community” – larceny, murder, theft, claim jumping. There were no attorneys. The disagreeing parties explained their positions and the matter was decided by a popular vote. There was no appeal. In the case of a convicted murderer, the man was given time to make his peace with his Maker and then hung. Petty thieves were tied to stakes, publicly flogged with a black snake, had their heads shaved on one side only as a visible warning to everyone they met and then banished from the district.
Drunks were dealt with leniently as long as they behaved within reasonable limits. “Fighting whiskey” was common in the District and imbibers were expected to enjoy themselves, but if they got out of line they were quietly knocked out and dragged out of the way to sleep it off. There was very little law breaking in the District, although “every man carried from one to three navy revolvers and bristled with bowie knives and many were half or wholly intoxicated from day to day.” Contemporaries gave two reasons for the good behavior: If a man behaved badly every man in the District knew because the entire group would sit in judgment and punishment was certain, swift and severe.
The population grew by several thousand in summer 1860 and other towns in and close to Gregory Gulch were established. By common consent Gregory District was then divided into many districts, which followed the boundaries of the settlements. Each of these local districts had officers and miners court, and the latter superseded the mass meetings. By 1860 lawyers had arrived in the area, but they weren’t universally popular.
In 1860 in Nevada District, the present Nevadaville, a trial was held in the courtroom of Judge Jones. The courtroom was a tiny dirt-floored log cabin and the roof was pine saplings covered with boughs overlaid with a thick coating of dirt. The furniture consisted of a pine table and a pine twig chair for the judge, two rough stools for the attorneys and a pole bunk on one side. The C. F. Clark Co. had brought a suit against Alexander & Co. for the purchase price of a millsite under Dostal’s Block in Central City. The trial actually lasted three days, and when the jury rendered their verdict for the plaintiffs, the next question was naturally what the judgment amount should be.
The defense attorney brought in large armfuls of legal books to sustain his argument and began to read them, when Judge Jones cut him off. “Mister Morse, I’ll have you to understand sir, that this here court don’t go anything on them doggoned leather-covered books. This here court goes on its own head, sir, and the court’s head is decidedly against that objection!” The judge then proceeded to give the plaintiffs much more than they had sued for.
Compassion was not foreign to frontiersmen. Jack Kehler was elected the first sheriff by a vote of all the settlements then established in Arapahoe County, Kansas Territory. Jack could shoot a criminal without the slightest compunction, but he found flogging a man repulsive. When Buckskin Bill was convicted of stealing sardines and fancy groceries from a grocery store in Lake Gulch and sentenced to public flogging, Jack couldn’t bring himself to flog the man. He concocted a plan for Buckskin to escape. Buckskin agreed to run as fast as anyone could run, and when the crowd of miners gathered to witness the whipping, Buckskin “got away.” No one ever caught the fleeing criminal and the crowd was appeased when Jack treated everyone at his bar.
A twisted story of compassion concerns Pennsyl-Tuck in 1860. After the miners court pronounced him guilty, he drew on the sheriff, but Kehler was faster and wounded Pennsyl-Tuck. An old German doctor begged permission to take the wounded man to his own cabin and care for him. Permission granted. When the condemned man’s wounds healed and he felt like walking around the doctor’s cabin, the locals formed a vigilance committee. At midnight the committee hung him.
