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Gallows history: Author Diane L. Goeres-Gardner at her home in Tyee last week. Diane is the author of ‘Necktie Parties: The History of Legal Executions in Oregon, 1851-1905.’
Dead men do tell tales.
Diane Goeres-Gardner of Tyee knows this because she spent five years digging through dusty files, newspapers and archives learning about the stories of some of Oregon’s biggest historic rogues, murderers and malcontents — and their untimely ends.
The end result is her book “Necktie Parties: Legal Executions in Oregon 1851-1905,” a sprawling study of hangings in the state’s early days.
Long before reality TV shows, public hangings were considered fine entertainment for the whole family — even children.
“Thousands of people came to watch these,” Goeres-Gardner said.
“We find that hard to believe today.”
Published by Idaho’s Caxton Press, “Necktie Parties” offers anecdote-packed summaries of more than 50 men’s lives, deeds and deaths at the end of the rope.
It all began when Goeres-Gardner, a retired teacher, was doing genealogical research at the University of Oregon library several years ago. Reading old newspapers on microfilm, she kept coming across stories about criminals who were hanged.
“I got to wondering, who were these people, why were they hanged?” she said. She brought interesting tales she discovered home to show her husband, Mike. The couple have lived in the Tyee area for 10 years.
Goeres-Gardner was intrigued by the subject, and began researching, only to learn that nobody had ever written a comprehensive study of legal hangings in Oregon.
She decided to tackle the job, becoming a “historical detective.”
“It was a long, long process,” she said. “I spent hours, days, weeks, probably years in front of a microfilm reader reading Oregon newspapers.”
She kept away from lynchings, “mob justice” meted outside of a court of law, and stuck to the period between 1851 and 1905, when the last county hanging took place.
Even narrowing her focus, though, the size of her book kept growing.
She went from an estimated 30 hangings to more than 50, and she’s “ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure” she found all of the state’s hangings in her research.
One of Goeres-Gardner’s admirers is Salem attorney and professor William R. Long of Willamette University, author of “A Tortured History: The Story of Capital Punishment in Oregon.”
Long helped edit the final manuscript and offered advice on the legal details.
“I think that what she did in doing this work was pretty extraordinary,” Long said. “This stuff just had not been tracked down.”
The pages of yellowing newspapers and documents would often tell grim stories, such as robberies turned into slayings, men murdering their wives while their children looked on, and more. The harsh tales didn’t faze Goeres-Gardner.
“It’s so long ago that to me it simply became part of the detective work,” she said.
Goeres-Gardner estimates only “25 percent” of her research made it into “Necktie Parties.” She did studies of many areas of Oregon’s history, wanting her work to summon up the feeling of a long-gone era.
Her research involved travels all over Oregon, to county courthouses, libraries and historical societies, and the State Archives in Salem. She read thousands of documents, newspapers and books, all meticulously documented and footnoted in the final product. The older the stories, particularly those before Oregon statehood in 1859, the harder the research.
She also labored to ensure the accounts, while historically accurate, were also entertaining.
“I wanted the stories to be stories,” she said.
Goeres-Gardner said many stories nearly wrote themselves, such as the tale of Charles Feister, a Grants Pass man who murdered his wife in 1895 but then feigned a catatonic state in prison for 515 days to avoid the death penalty —unsuccessfully, as it turned out.
“You can’t make up stories like that,” she said.
Surprisingly, considering Douglas County’s long history and pioneer settlements, Goeres-Gardner didn’t find any evidence of legal hangings here.
Goeres-Gardner found a couple of “near-hangings” in her research, including an Oakland convicted murderer who escaped and disappeared, and a county transient whose sentence was commuted by the governor.
Next on Goeres-Gardner’s plate is telling the women’s side of the story in a book tentatively titled “Murderesses.”
“Women were treated so differently than men were,” she said. No women served on juries until modern times. Goeres-Gardner has written about six chapters of her follow-up history.
She’s hopeful it won’t involve another five years of research like “Necktie Parties.”
In “Necktie Parties” Goeres-Gardner was careful not to draw conclusions about the death penalty.
“I really can’t say that I’m pro or con for the death penalty,” she admitted. “I think in some of the cases the death penalty was unwarranted … in some of them it was probably warranted.”
Goeres-Gardner did want to invite comparisons between modern justice and frontier justice, noting that public executions are no longer considered acceptable.
“Only by looking at our past, only by looking at our history and examining it, can we decide if it’s changed for the better,” she said.
• You can reach Features Editor/Assistant City Editor Nik Dirga at 957-4210 or via e-mail at ndirga@newsreview.info.
Diane Goeres-Gardner of Tyee knows this because she spent five years digging through dusty files, newspapers and archives learning about the stories of some of Oregon’s biggest historic rogues, murderers and malcontents — and their untimely ends.
The end result is her book “Necktie Parties: Legal Executions in Oregon 1851-1905,” a sprawling study of hangings in the state’s early days.
Long before reality TV shows, public hangings were considered fine entertainment for the whole family — even children.
“Thousands of people came to watch these,” Goeres-Gardner said.
“We find that hard to believe today.”
Published by Idaho’s Caxton Press, “Necktie Parties” offers anecdote-packed summaries of more than 50 men’s lives, deeds and deaths at the end of the rope.
It all began when Goeres-Gardner, a retired teacher, was doing genealogical research at the University of Oregon library several years ago. Reading old newspapers on microfilm, she kept coming across stories about criminals who were hanged.
“I got to wondering, who were these people, why were they hanged?” she said. She brought interesting tales she discovered home to show her husband, Mike. The couple have lived in the Tyee area for 10 years.
Goeres-Gardner was intrigued by the subject, and began researching, only to learn that nobody had ever written a comprehensive study of legal hangings in Oregon.
She decided to tackle the job, becoming a “historical detective.”
“It was a long, long process,” she said. “I spent hours, days, weeks, probably years in front of a microfilm reader reading Oregon newspapers.”
She kept away from lynchings, “mob justice” meted outside of a court of law, and stuck to the period between 1851 and 1905, when the last county hanging took place.
Even narrowing her focus, though, the size of her book kept growing.
She went from an estimated 30 hangings to more than 50, and she’s “ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure” she found all of the state’s hangings in her research.
One of Goeres-Gardner’s admirers is Salem attorney and professor William R. Long of Willamette University, author of “A Tortured History: The Story of Capital Punishment in Oregon.”
Long helped edit the final manuscript and offered advice on the legal details.
“I think that what she did in doing this work was pretty extraordinary,” Long said. “This stuff just had not been tracked down.”
The pages of yellowing newspapers and documents would often tell grim stories, such as robberies turned into slayings, men murdering their wives while their children looked on, and more. The harsh tales didn’t faze Goeres-Gardner.
“It’s so long ago that to me it simply became part of the detective work,” she said.
Goeres-Gardner estimates only “25 percent” of her research made it into “Necktie Parties.” She did studies of many areas of Oregon’s history, wanting her work to summon up the feeling of a long-gone era.
Her research involved travels all over Oregon, to county courthouses, libraries and historical societies, and the State Archives in Salem. She read thousands of documents, newspapers and books, all meticulously documented and footnoted in the final product. The older the stories, particularly those before Oregon statehood in 1859, the harder the research.
She also labored to ensure the accounts, while historically accurate, were also entertaining.
“I wanted the stories to be stories,” she said.
Goeres-Gardner said many stories nearly wrote themselves, such as the tale of Charles Feister, a Grants Pass man who murdered his wife in 1895 but then feigned a catatonic state in prison for 515 days to avoid the death penalty —unsuccessfully, as it turned out.
“You can’t make up stories like that,” she said.
Surprisingly, considering Douglas County’s long history and pioneer settlements, Goeres-Gardner didn’t find any evidence of legal hangings here.
Goeres-Gardner found a couple of “near-hangings” in her research, including an Oakland convicted murderer who escaped and disappeared, and a county transient whose sentence was commuted by the governor.
Next on Goeres-Gardner’s plate is telling the women’s side of the story in a book tentatively titled “Murderesses.”
“Women were treated so differently than men were,” she said. No women served on juries until modern times. Goeres-Gardner has written about six chapters of her follow-up history.
She’s hopeful it won’t involve another five years of research like “Necktie Parties.”
In “Necktie Parties” Goeres-Gardner was careful not to draw conclusions about the death penalty.
“I really can’t say that I’m pro or con for the death penalty,” she admitted. “I think in some of the cases the death penalty was unwarranted … in some of them it was probably warranted.”
Goeres-Gardner did want to invite comparisons between modern justice and frontier justice, noting that public executions are no longer considered acceptable.
“Only by looking at our past, only by looking at our history and examining it, can we decide if it’s changed for the better,” she said.
• You can reach Features Editor/Assistant City Editor Nik Dirga at 957-4210 or via e-mail at ndirga@newsreview.info.
