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MEMOIRS OF MY GREAT-GREAT GRANDMOTHER,
ELEANOR HOWARD (THOMAS) BRITTAIN KNOWLTON
November 1834 – August 1908

Eleanor resents the men’s secrets. A secret job? She is told two Vigilant Committees would be meeting in her house. Murder at Honey Lake. Guns and clubs. Convicted of murder at a vigilance trial. A scaffold is built.

Mrs. Davy was very thankful for her new stove. I never again saw or heard of the woman who took it. Goodenough had a saloon and gambling place about a mile from our hose and he kept straight after that. Well, until my new stove came I had to resort to the damp fire to do my cooking. I did not take this as a hardship for I remembered how I had cooked over a camp fire on the plains and I still considered this as part of that trip for I had not yet reached my goal which was California.

There have been a good many bad deeds committed by thieves and murderers during my sojourn here, and now we have a Vigilant Committee to see that justice is done. The teamsters have been home for a few days and have brought lots of groceries. My new stove had arrived and my husband told me to parch lots of coffee. I parched quite a pan full and he said it was not enough. I then asked all of them what they wanted with so much coffee and none of them would tell me. Then I asked if they were expecting trouble with the Indians. My husband said, “Parch coffee until I tell you to quit.” I then said that I would not parch another grain and I did not although my brother and John Hale tried their best to get me to. When I think that I am being imposed upon I can show considerable obstinacy. The men parched their own coffee.

I was kept in suspense for a week. During that time I noticed that the men acted queerly but I said nothing. One morning I went out to the spring which was covered with clapboards. I saw Mr. Brittain on the roof and asked him what he was doing up there and he said he was going to fix it. From the roof you could see all over the valley. Suddenly Mr. Brittain jumped off the roof and said “There goes a man!” and ran to head him off and find out who he was.

The fellow said, “It is none of your business.” My husband told him he thought he knew him and the man then said my father was too poor to give me a name. It was a good joke on my husband. When Mr. Brittain came back he did not come running, for he had sprained his ankle when he jumped off the roof. Everything was quiet for the rest of the day but I was convinced that the men were working on some secret job. I concluded that I would be as perverse as they were sly.

The next day they all went away leaving me and the children alone. They told me to tell anyone that came to the house that they were all at the corral. They had not been gone long when a man and a little boy came, knocked on the door and asked if the landlord was at home. I told him that the men were at the corral. He then asked if he could come in and wait until the boss comes. I gave him a chair, really a stool as chairs were scarce with us emigrants. I told him that I thought he would find it more comfortable on the porch but he seemed not to pay any attention to what I said but walked across the room to one of several small rooms that happed to be my bedroom, turned the knob and opened the door and turning to me said, “Can I wait in here until the landlord comes?” I said, “No, that is my bed room and what will my husband say to your being there?” Nevertheless he and the little boy went in and I shut and locked the door on them. I did not think he was a thief but thought that he was in insane and how very fortunate I was that the door was of good strong planking and had a lock on it instead of a wooden button as on one occasion that I have mentioned. My prisoners were very still.

When my husband Mr. Brittain came in after they had been locked in for about two hours. The first thing he said was, “Has any one been here?” I asked why. “Oh nothing, only I just wanted to know.” When I told him about a man and a little boy calling, he asked where they had gone and seemed disappointed. I then told him they were in the bedroom and he tried to open the door and the man and boy inside never uttered a word. He then asked me if the door was locked on the inside and I gave him the key and he then went inside the room and stayed there a long while seemingly discussing something very confidential. Like any other woman in a similar position I tried my best to hear what they were saying but I could not get a single thing. Finally they all came out, the men looking as guilty as if they had committed a crime and my prisoner said, “Brittain, I think we should take your wife into our confidence, for a woman with the iron nerve that she has can be trusted.”

Then it all came out that the Vigilant Committees of Honey Lake and Carson City were to meet at our house the next day. That was why they wanted enough coffee ground for sixty men. Everything was gotten in readiness for their coming. There was a long table in the room with lots of milk and coffee. The men had no time to eat. They were going after LUCKY BILL THORNTON and a man by the name of EDWARDS who had killed a Frenchman at Honey Lake early in the Spring. The men had written out a bill of sale of his cattle to themselves and told every one that the Frenchman had sold out and gone back home. This Frenchman was an honorable and hard working man and his neighbors thought well of him. He had a drove of fine cattle which he had picked up from the emigrants when the cattle were found to be too poor to cross the Sierras. When the water lowered in Honey Lake the body was found and word was immediately sent to the vigilants at Carson City. My husband knowing of this was anxious to know about the man whose father was too poor to give him a name. The man who I had locked in was THEODORE WINTERS, head of the Carson City Vigilante and Mr. Brittain next in line.

When they started out Mr. Winters said if he got killed I was to have his boy as his mother was dead. Mr. Brittain bade me goodbye and he and Winters and WILLIAM SUBLET and the rest of our men left. My brother and JOHN HALE stayed with me.

They first went to Genoah to Thornton’s house. He had a wife and son but he was seldom at home. He had a woman across the Carson River with whom he lived. Mrs. Thornton was insane at the time on account of her husband’s conduct. When Winters and my husband went in the house they asked for Thornton and when she said he was not there they told her son JEROME must lead them to his father’s camp across the river. Mrs. Thornton said that she did not care what they did to Bill Thornton but to have compassion on her son who had been made to hold the pan to catch the blood of his father’s victims more than once but was innocent of any crime himself. My husband promised the boy should not come to any harm but that he must lead the way.

The Vigilants were all well armed for they did not know what they were getting into but they did know that there was a band of robbers in the valley. They went to the camp where the woman met them and said that Bill was not there. They then entered the house with their guns and clubs handy and took both Thornton and Edwards with out much trouble.

They brought their men back by my house to a place along the road about two miles away and there gave them a vigilance trial and convicted them of the murder of the Frenchman and the robbery of his cattle. They erected a scaffold to hand Lucky Bill Thornton and just as they were about to put the rope about his neck he said, “Boys, give me that rope.” And they gave it to him and he put it around his own neck and stepped off the scaffold and broke his own neck. Thornton had made quite a bit out of his robberies but his wife had little of it. The woman across the river had profited by most of it.

Previous entries, starting from the beginning.

Crossing the Plains from Missouri to Nevada in 1857, May 21, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: On to Missouri, May 25, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: Setting Out, May 27, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: Nebraska to Wyoming, June 5, 2024

Gublet’s cutoff, quicksand, and gravesites, June 15, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: Reaching the Rockies, June 20, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: Anticipating attacks, Ellen arms herself and prepares to fight, June 27, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: Lawson’s Meadows to the Truckee, July 4, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: Snow storm forces the train to return to Nevada, July 13, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: After an attempted robbery, a “vigilance committee” is formed to enforce law and order, July 22, 2024

Eleanor Knowlton’s Memoirs: April 1858, July 29, 2024