Killing of Robert S. Maynard

Robert S. Maynard was a 21-year-old American man^[1] from Illinois who was lynched in Jacksonville, Oregon, in May 1852 as a result of his murder of J. C. Platt. As Maynard was extrajudicially killed by hanging, this was the first recorded hanging and first recorded lynching in Southern Oregon,^[2] where no courts had yet been appointed.^[3]

Background

Maynard used the aliases Jackson Maynard and "John Brown,"^[4][5] and multiple sources use solely Brown.^[6][7] He was described as a gambler,^[8][9] and as a man from Pike County, Illinois.^[10][11] Gold having been discovered late in 1851,^[12] Jacksonville was only founded the same year of the killing, and the area was known at the time as Rogue River.^[13][7]

Murder

Maynard shot J.C. Platt^[14] (also known as John D. Platt^[7] and as Samuel Potts^[6][15]) with a borrowed gun^[16] because Platt called him a liar;^[17][14] the shot man "made no attempt to assault."^[18]

Lynching

Maynard was executed by hanging^[8][14] by miners in what The Daily Alta California characterized as a "lynching."^[7] Maynard asked the onlookers that they point to his grave and "say there lies a man who would not be insulted".^[19]

As there were no organized courts of law at the time,^[20] the killing was called "mob law" and "necessary" by press in New York;^[21] likewise, the 1884 History of Southern Oregon described the extrajudicial killing as "a law higher, stronger, more effective than written codes [...] administered by the people's court."^[22]

Conversely, Herman F. Reinhart attested a few years later that «excited miners [...] worked up a prejudice against the gambler», as gamblers had become «very obnoxious to the miners, who had lost money» with them, Maynard being one of those, and as a consequence the «miners were for lynching» Maynard right away. The miners appointed «fifty men (Vigilantes)» to keep Maynard from escaping until the hanging.^[23]

Fifty years after the hanging, The Sunday Oregonian characterized the lynching as "swift and unerring justice of the miners."^[24]