Murder!

The SW corner of 2nd & F Streets in 1938, over 80 years after the murderers may have been hung at this location.

                It was hardly the first murder in Humboldt County. After all, the indigenous people who lived here for millennia must have had some fatal disputes. And once Euro-Americans settled here in 1850, there were a number of murderous interactions between the tribes and the newcomers.

                But the first official murder within the new town of Eureka was recorded in March of 1853. It created quite a stir locally, and garbled versions even made it into the San Francisco newspapers.

                The accounts vary in detail pertaining to the exact locations and names of the participants. But the consensus reveals a tale of greed, violence, stupidity and rough-and-ready “frontier justice”.

                Here is what we know. In 1850, a Jewish merchant named Moses Sichell joined a flood of other hopeful pioneers sailing to the new town of Eureka. Bringing a load of merchandise on a steamer from San Francisco, he opened a shop selling largely clothing and shoes. It was located in a small unpainted wooden building behind Bean’s Saloon at First and D streets.

                Although referred in some accounts as “a kindly old Jewish gentleman” he was actually in his late twenties at the time and operated the store along with his teenaged nephew. After several successful years, the two decided to pull up stakes and relocate. They sold their remaining inventory and booked a Monday steamer back to San Francisco.

                However, the profit they had accumulated proved a great temptation to a group of conspirators who met and drank at Bean’s Saloon and there planned a robbery. After the bar closed at 11 pm on the Sunday night before the planned sailing, two or three men entered Sichell’s shop on the pretext of paying a bill.

                Here some details get murky. One man was named McDonald. He had begun work several months earlier at the Ryan-Duff mill on the Bayfront a few blocks to the west. The second man was named McCloskey, Canosky or Kanaska. The name of the third man, if there was one, is now lost.

                The enterprise was apparently planned as a robbery not a murder, but using an ax to attack Sichell in his office and then his nephew as he ran from his adjacent bedroom changed things. Apparently, McDonald grabbed up a sack of gold dust and another of gold and silver coins with the idea of dividing up the loot later. He fled to his mill worker’s rooming house and whether from drunkenness, exhaustion or remorse retired to his bunk after wrapping the booty in his coat and dropping it on the floor by the door.

                When a roommate tripped over the bundle and asked McDonald about it, the miscreant readily confessed and named one co-conspirator. Indignant workmates bundled him off to “the authorities” – which officially did not exist yet in this new town. He was confined under guard in an empty commercial space behind what is now the former Vance Hotel. Later the other assailant was tracked down and confined as well though he continued to plead his innocence.

                Meanwhile, the assault had been discovered and Dr. Jonathan Clark was hastily fetched from Fort Humboldt. The doctor operated on Sichell, inserting a silver plate into his cracked skull. The nephew, however, was deemed beyond hope and died a few days later. This was now a case of murder.

                The Vigilance Committee, made up of prominent citizens, called for a trial and appointed the judge and two attorneys from their ranks. At the time, what was to become Humboldt County had neither jail, nor sheriff nor courthouse so “justice” was rather ad hoc.

                The trial was to be held inside Bean’s Saloon, but the crowd drawn in from around the county was so large that the event was moved outside. The “jury” was comprised of all the males in attendance – of which there were now several hundred. Methodist minister Rev. Huestis pleaded for leniency, but when the jury was polled – by having all those deciding on “guilty” walk to one side of the street – the verdict was unanimous – Guilty. Hang them!

                 The sentence was carried out as the citizen jury now turned into executioners. Men roughly yanked on ropes hauling the two murderers into the branches of a tall pine. The location of this tree is variously reported as being at Fourth and F Streets, Second and F, and Fourth and B. The bodies were allowed to swing there into the night and buried at what was apparently the town’s first cemetery at Seventh and Pine Streets.

                After a long recuperation, Sichell recovered and returned to San Francisco to go again into merchandising. He died over three decades later. But his role in Humboldt’s first murder case and exercise of “frontier justice” remains a permanent mark in our history.