Anderson
John Anderson was held in the jail at Lagrange, California, when a mob took him from his cell and hanged him from a tree near the jail on the night of May 25, 1858. Two accounts, printed in the Worcester Daily Spy and the Dollar Weekly Mirror, say about sixty disguised and armed men came from Knight's Ferry, broke open the jail, took him out and hanged him, and that they left in silence. A separate account in The Daily Dispatch places the killing in San Joaquin County rather than Stanislaus County, and describes forty or fifty men who seized a county clerk and a constable before reaching his cell, where they struck him on the head with a cold chisel and gagged him before hanging him. The accounts differ on the county and on how the attack was carried out.
Cause of death, as reported: Taken from custody and lynched. A mob of about forty to sixty men broke into the Lagrange jail, seized Anderson and hanged him from a tree, according to the accounts.
Reported by: California newspapers, as reprinted in the Dollar Weekly Mirror (reporters).