Necktie Parties

Diane Goeres-Gardner makes readers eyewitnesses to frontier justice in Necktie Parties. This is the story of the men who climbed the gallows steps and faced the hangman's noose during the early years of settlement in Oregon. Today, capital punishment is a controversial topic, in the United States and around the world. That wasn't the case during the 1800s on America's western frontier. Executions were public events drawing hundreds?sometimes thousands?of residents from miles around. The record of Oregon's hangings during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is a history of ordinary people who committed extraordinary acts. Goeres-Gardner also looks at the backgrounds of the condemned and their victims, the crimes and the investigations. The author uses trial records, witness testimony, newspaper reports and other historical records to bring to life each of the more than fifty cases included in Necktie Parties.