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"Welcome to the world of frontier justice. Necktie Parties records, in chronological order, the individual stories of the men who climbed the gallows steps and faced the hangmans' noose. Oregon's history of hangings during the nineteenth century is a history of ordinary people who committed extraordinary acts. In many cases, the condemned enjoyed their notoriety, at least up to the moment the rope was tightened around their necks."
So begins the first page of Necktie Parties. The book contains fifty separate stories, separated into three sections: "Open to the public, 1851-1866", "Modern Inventions Improve Executions, 1896-1905", and "Sensational Journalism Takes Control 1896-1905". Each story includes the names of the individuals involved: judges, lawyers, jury members, witnesses and family members. Endnotes, references and an index are included in the book. There are 45 photographs/illustrations throughout the book including copies of six hanging invitations and seven rare photos of the condemned standing on the gallows.
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***THE ANSWER***
"On May 25, 1860 George mounted the scaffold and bravely faced from 1500 to 2000 spectators who had gathered to hear his dying speech. Just as he finished declaring his innocence in very broken English with a heavy German accent and stepped forward to face his death, Sheriff Sheldon B. Fargo made a surprise announcement. Governor John Whiteaker had refused to sign a petition commuting George's sentence to life imprisonment, but did grant him a thirty-day reprieve- enough time for his relatives to say their farewells. Unfortunately, the reprieve still needed to be signed by the Secretary of State, Lucien Heath, in Salem - a round trip of 65 miles from Corvallis, or six hours of hard horseback riding. Unwilling to make the decision on his own whether to honor the not-quite-legal reprieve or to ignore it and hang George anyway, the sheriff asked the audience to vote. It must have been an excruciating few minutes as the condemned man listened to people delaying his fate. Instead of going forward with the hanging, human compassion prevailed and George was taken back to jail."
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| "When Multnomah County Sheriff Ben Norden and his deputies led Ah Lee outside, the huge crowd shoved and jostled them. Printed invitations had been issued but the guards at the entrance of the stockade refused to intervene and the crowd rushed inside the small enclosure. Rude epitaphs and vulgar comments were hurled at the prisoner while his guards tried to push their way through the crowd. They finally reached the scaffold and took refuge on top. Above them the crowd was so thick on the balcony, the beams cracked and moaned."
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"Two weeks later, during a conversation with Peter Svensen, he described what happened that day. Svensen reported what Hansen told him. "there was a club lying there that was to change the calf in the pasture and he took that club and hit his wife in the head. He said she was standing there picking berries at the time. I asked him if he had any cause for it and he said he had no cause whatever, and he didn't know at that minute what he done it for, but he said he done it and he didn't hardly know how it happened himself at the time."
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| "The press' influence was felt all over Oregon. Another young man living near Beaver Creek in Benton County resided with his father, two sisters and a brother-in-law. After reading the accounts of Lloyd Montgomery's murders he told everyone that he agreed with Montgomery's actions and thought it was a great thing Lloyd had done. One day there was some trouble in the family and the youth jumped up from the dinner table, seized a Winchester rifle and threatened to kill the whole family. "I will make another Lloyd Montgomery affair,' he shouted with such emphasis that a stranger, who happened to be in the house at the time, became frightened and left."
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"The most learned professors on the west coast scientifically examined the dead men's brains. They believed that the development of the gray matter rather than its gross weight indicated the amount of intellectual ability. Dalton's brain weighed 46 ounces and Wade's brain weighed 53-3/4 ounces. The doctors explained that while Wade's brain was a few ounces over the average and Dalton's was considerably less, that did not mean that Wade was more intelligent. Both men were buried in the Multnomah County Poor Farm Cemetary."
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