THE BITTER END OF LLOYD MAGRUDER

 

Lloyd Magruder, Jr.

The key ancestor on my Read family tree is Lloyd Magruder Jr., 1825-1863.  He was my great-great grandfather, whose daughter Sallie Magruder Read’s son was Lloyd Magruder Read, my grandfather.  By virtue of Lloyd Jr.’s gruesome and sensational murder in 1863, while returning from a successful provisioning expedition to the gold strikes deep in the Washington Territory, he entered history and became the subject of many books and articles.  As a result his life story and his forebears in Maryland and Scotland became known to our Read cousins and my mother, Julia Read O’Hara, essentially tying with a bow extensive genealogy spanning 400 years and central themes of this country’s adventurous origins and dreadful legacies. 

As described in my first post, Magruder Country:  Scotland's Perthshire (2013), Lloyd’s great-great-great grandfather, Alexander, born in 1610, came to Maryland in 1653 as a prisoner of war, having fought on the losing side of England’s Civil War.  But Alexander came from privilege.  His father and grandfather were employed by the Drummonds, Earls of Perth who still maintain a castle and gardens there.  It seems likely that Alexander had backing from home that helped him quickly pay off his indenture and begin to amass land along the Patuxent River in Maryland.  He prospered under the slave economy, owning tobacco plantations and river-based means of distribution that remained active into the American Civil War. 



Locust Grove, Bethesda, MD

Three generations later his great-great-great grandson was born at Magruder’s Discovery, a tobacco plantation in Montgomery County, Maryland, where his grandson Samuel Wade Magruder had, ca. 1780, built a large brick house known as Locust Grove, where two more generations would continue the plantation tradition.  Lloyd was born there July 7, 1825, but would be orphaned at 11, and because of his father’s indebtedness would have no Maryland property to inherit.  More than 230 years old, the house where Lloyd was born still stands.  Recently restored and used as a bank branch, at this writing it is offered for sale.




Caroline Pelham Magruder

At 20, Lloyd left Maryland for the frontiers of Arkansas where his brother had married and settled in Batesville.  But Lloyd seems to have been restless for a new way of life. He learned surveying and studied the law; he was a soldier in the Mexican War.  He married Caroline Pelham, the daughter of a well-to-do retired Colonel and could have led a comfortable existence, but ambition and the siren song of the Gold Rush sent Lloyd off to seek his fortune in California in 1849. 

After unsuccessfully trying his hand at panning for gold, he sent for Caroline (and their first born, my great grandmother Sallie) and settled in Marysville, where Lloyd made and lost several fortunes and the family grew with two boys and another girl.  He had a store (it burned down), published a newspaper, practiced law, was Yuba county marshal, clerk of Yuba county, justice of the peace and was nominated and elected by the pro-slavery wing of the Democratic Party to the State Assembly in Sacramento, where he was an active member, frequently introducing bills and resolutions and participating in debates.  He voted against California’s seceding from the Union, although his views on Abraham Lincoln and abolition were virulent. 




That said, Lloyd was a likable guy—well educated, well spoken, according to one writer, “a man of unimpeachable reputation and a packer of intrepidity.”  Having learned how to handle mules in the Army, he was able to organize pack trains of up to 75 mules and horses to transport goods to gold miners as new strikes established makeshift communities in the wilderness.  He was credited as the first trail maker into many famous mining regions of the Northwest. 



Sallie Magruder Read

Again adventurous, he and Caroline left Sallie behind in Marysville to continue school, and with their three younger children set up a base in Lewiston, Idaho, in closer range to the profits to be made in the territory.

In the summer of 1863, his future bright, nominated as an Independent Democrat (back then the Republicans were the liberals) to run for Congress, Lloyd took a large pack train laden with merchandise to Virginia City in now Montana, crossing the Bitterroot Mountains along the South Nez Perce trail.  Having sold his goods, Lloyd prepared to head back to Lewiston with 1,500 ounces of gold dust and more than $2,000 in Union greenbacks – a small fortune of $30,000.  He traveled with four trustworthy companions and four cutthroats who hatched a plan to kill him and his party and make off with the money. 

At ten o’clock on Sunday night, October 11, 1863, as Lloyd lit his pipe while on watch, one of the killers cleaved Lloyd’s skull from behind with an axe.  Four others were attacked and killed in their sleep.  The bodies were rolled off a cliff into a deep canyon, along with camp equipment.  Some of the evidence was burned in a campfire.  All the animals save eight horses were led to the canyon and shot.  Snow soon fell in the mountains, covering the evidence and leaving the carnage for the wolves. 

The killers made it to San Francisco where they were caught, thanks to Lloyd’s good friend Hill Beachy.  Legend has it Beachy dreamed of Lloyd’s death and when he was late to return from the trip, Beachy noticed the suspicious foursome attempting a sloppy getaway by stagecoach from Lewiston and convinced authorities throughout California and the Washington Territory to assist in their capture and return to Lewiston for trial.  History was made because the trial was the first effort at formal court proceedings in the new Idaho Territory, sparing the killers from vigilante justice but condemning them to hang.  The trial and execution drew crowds of spectators, and newspaper reports reached Marysville, where Sallie no doubt felt the keen loss.  Caroline and the other children endured the spectacle there in Lewiston.  One of the criminals escaped hanging by turning state’s evidence.  He recounted the murder details during the trial and in the spring led Beachy and others to the murder site where they collected bits of metal and clothing and remnants of Lloyd’s crushed skull.   

Metal fragments recovered from the murder site

That and a portion of the money were given to Caroline, but her family never gained secure financial footing.  Caroline remarried and died at 69 in 1900, survived by her three children who came with her to Oregon.  Sallie stayed in California, marrying a miner and carpenter, James Peter Read.  They had four children, two of whom survived--Carrie and Lloyd, who turned 12 the day after Sallie died at 28 in 1885.

Of all the tellings of the massacre, I think The Magruder Murders by Julia Conway Welch is the best.  In her preface she describes taking the difficult road from Elk City, Idaho to the Montana border of the Bitterroot National Forest.  The road was built in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps and has not changed much since then.  In places it follows the Nez Perce trail made by the native peoples who eventually guided the explorers, gold seekers and drovers trying to tame the then territory comprising today’s Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Montana.  Much of the current road remains unpaved.
 
There are seven steep ascents and seven steep descents, and the roughly 65 miles, one-way, is about an eight hour drive—and a four-wheel drive, high-axel vehicle is a good idea.  Welch made the drive with her daughter to see the terrain for herself, describing the wilderness magnificence and imagining the events that took place there in October 1863. 

Of course I wanted to go, too, and see deep forests and unspoiled vistas through the windshield of a rented Jeep, but even more, to hike the trail that leads to what is the best guess location of the massacre.  I made my plans to visit in September 2013, just shy of the 150^th anniversary. That summer there were forest fires raging in Idaho’s Bitterroot National Forest, where the Gold Pan Fire had gotten under control mere weeks before my visit.  Ignited by lightning on July 16, it was gotten 100% under control on October 3.  Calls to the Darby Ranger Station had been vaguely reassuring, although smoking ash was still spotted throughout the 43,429 burn area in Idaho and Montana.

My small party traced his final outbound journey from Elk City, Idaho, along the Magruder Corridor Road to the Magruder Ranger Station about 20 miles from the Magruder murder site.  Rather than deep green forest there was scorched ground and burnt trees as far as the eye could see.  Efforts to find stark beauty in the silent lunar landscape, or to imagine the regeneration that the fire would later cause, failed to cheer me up.  I had Norman along for company and the difficult driving and Claggett for moral support, but Lloyd’s ghost was a mournful presence. 

Scorched ground or no, the job of driving pack mules and their burden over a rough trail, from Lewiston, Idaho to Virginia City, Montana--415 Google miles--took guts and fortitude and is one of those sad reminders of how soft we as a people have become in our rented SUVs with navigation devices.  After eight hours on the road we were exhausted and relieved to reach the ranger station where lush meadows and the Selway River were a welcome sight.  

The lovely log cabin that bears Lloyd’s name was once the home of the district ranger.  Just weeks earlier it had been the headquarters for the firefighters battling the Gold Pan.  The cabin guestbook carried entries of a well-fought battle, and that the cabin wasn’t destroyed is testament to their fight.  The fire came within a quarter mile of the ranger station.  Yikes. 

We set out the next morning to find the murder site.  Once on the trail we missed a fork and lost a few hours backtracking to the trail marker. It was afternoon by the time we reached the ridge of Magruder Mountain and a soft snow was starting to fall.  With daylight fading, we made the correct call to chicken out and head back.  I have talked with a few people who’ve come upon the murder site, but I believe my search that day would have been in vain.

Tracing Lloyd’s journey all the way to Virginia City wasn’t on the itinerary, but we did press on to the ghost town of Bannack, Montana, founded in 1862 when gold was discovered at nearby Grasshopper Creek. 

It was in Skinner’s Saloon on the return trip that Lloyd met and hired William Page, the fourth bad guy who was a good trail guide but a weak character.  Page was the one who escaped the noose by turning state’s evidence against the other three, then led Beachy’s retrieval party when the snow had melted the following spring.  He himself wasn't a killer in the murder spree, but he was an outcast thenceforth and was shot dead over a woman a couple of years later.

I also visited the Idaho State Museum in Boise, where some artifacts of Lloyd’s fateful journey are part of the collection.  In fact, his gold scales were on display as part of the 150^th anniversary of the territory, focusing on 150 celebrated events, people, places including the Magruder murders.  Apparently the scales and weights, in a wooden box with his pencil marks, were with Lloyd when he died.  His horse was one of the animals spared and used for the getaway, so perhaps the items were stowed in the saddle.  Lloyd’s granddaughter, Ella Braun, donated the items to the museum.

I remain fascinated by this story and find it hard to believe I am related to it.  Despite the Magruders’ 200 year plus of slave ownership; Lloyd’s pro-slavery views that followed him to California; his profiting from western expansion brought about by the Mexican War in which he fought and which took wild lands from native peoples--that long list of European settlers' wrongs--Lloyd left the South to make a new life for himself and his family, one of adventure, integrity and hard work.  From his letters it is clear he was a loving father and husband. His friend Hill Beachy was so loyal he went to the ends of the earth to bring his killers to justice.  Did he leave a proud legacy?  His wife and three children remained poor.  His eldest daughter was left to fend for herself, alone, in California.  He missed the satisfaction of returning home a wealthy congressman.  Still, in the Bitterroot wilderness, there’s a road, a ranger station and a mountain that bear his name, plus a true frontier story that has earned a place in history.  That’s not a bad legacy at all. 

The photo of the smoke column behind the ranger station taken by Leah Moak on July 27, 2013 is used with permission, as is the photo of the scales and weights courtesy of the Idaho State Museum.

Claggett and I on Magruder Mountain

Recommended:

Early Magruders:  Susan Tichy's blog www.magruderslanding.com.  Her new book about the immigrant Alexander is titled Trafficke. 

The Magruder Murders:  Coping with Violence on the Idaho Frontier, by Julia Conway Welch

The Magruder House aka Locust Grove

Staying at the cabin:  Magruder Rangers House

Bitterroot National Forest:  www.fs.usda.gov/bitterroot

Bannack State Park