YUBA  COUNTY

Crimes & Criminals

(pre 1924)

HOP-FIELD RIOTS

(Edward T. Manwell & Thomas Riordan)

            On Sunday evening, August 3, 1913, the people of Marysville were startled by news from Wheatland, twelve miles south, that Edward T. Manwell, district attorney of Yuba County, had lost his life, that Sheriff George H. Voss had been mortally wounded and that a deputy sheriff named Thomas Riordan had been killed, as the result of an I. W. W. agitation in the camp of the hop-pickers on the Durst Brothers’ place, which adjoined Wheatland.  Citizens, aided by the police, at once formed relief parties, and these parties hastened, armed, to the scene.  Coroner J. K. Kelly and his deputies, with City Marshal C. J. McCoy, now sheriff, were among the first to arrive at Wheatland, where they found the residents terrorized by the awful events of the afternoon.

            Investigation proved that the trouble in the hop-fields had been brewing for several days.  Agents of the I. W. W. had worked, in their usual way, to cause the men and women employed by Durst Brothers to become dissatisfied with their wage and with camp conditions as regarded sanitation and other matters.  On the day prior to the murder of the district attorney and the attack upon the sheriff, a committee headed by the leaders of the I. W. W.  contingent had waited upon R. H. Durst of Durst Brothers with a written demand for an increase in the pickers’ rates, for movable toilets in the field, for separate toilets for the women, for “high-pole” men, for lemonade made from lemons instead of acid, for the delivery of drinking water in the field twice a day, and for a committee from the pickers to inspect the hops and pass on them.  Early in the morning of the fatal day, a second visit was paid Durst by the committee.  Durst accepted some of the terms and vetoed others, chiefly the demand for increased pay, saying he would continue to pay the wages generally paid in California by growers of hops.

            Durst visited Wheatland, and without swearing to a complaint, demanded that Constable Lee Anderson arrest the leader of the strikers.  Complying with Durst’s request, Anderson went to the field and attempted to arrest the man pointed out by Durst.  The reception given Anderson was a rough one, Anderson having confessed that he did not have a warrant of arrest.  Returning to Wheatland, he had a complaint drawn.  Armed with a warrant, he now made another attempt to arrest the leader.  This time he received a reception even warmer than the first.  In the scrimmage, in which women pickers as well as men participated, Anderson was wounded in the arm, and was fortunate to escape with his life.

            Again repairing to Wheatland, Anderson notified Sheriff G. H. Voss over the phone of the conditions, and advised immediate action.  The sheriff assembled several deputies in Marysville, among them the man Riordan, whom he knew to be fearless, and proceeded to Wheatland.  Arriving there, he was met by District Attorney Manwell, who had spent the day in Wheatland on legal business.   Manwell volunteered to accompany  the posse to the scene of the trouble.

            On their arrival at the hop-fields, the officers found that an indignation meeting was in progress, with one man perched on a box in the center of a dance platform, making a speech of an incendiary character.  Making his way through the crowd, Manwell sought the cause for the gathering. As he did so the strikers surged around him, and about the sheriff and his deputies.  In the excitement, a portion of the platform broke down, as did the box the speaker was standing upon. This seemed to intensify the bad blood among the rioters.  As Manwell stood with his arm upraised, and with cigar in hand, appealing to the strikers to “keep the peace,” he was shot down, and died almost instantly.

            The rioters then turned their attention to the other “Scissorsville officers,” this being the term by which the leader had referred to the sheriff and others in his speech before their arrival.  Sheriff Voss was next attacked.  A large Porto Rican among the strikers secured the sheriff’s club, and was beating him over the head with it when Deputy Sheriff Henry Daken, a resident of Wheatland, unloaded one barrel of his shotgun into the back of Voss’ assailant, killing him instantly.  Just who shot the man Riordan was never learned with certainty.

            After killing the Porto Rican, Deputy Sheriff Daken was compelled to shoot another man, a Mexican, in the hand.  His gun was then empty, and he was forced to flee the mob.  He arrived at the store building pursued by about twenty of the rioters.  Taking a position behind the counter, after the doors were locked, he exchanged his clothing for other garments provided him, and shaved off his moustache.  Thus disguised, he was able peaceably to retreat from the building toward evening, after the mob had threatened to burn the place.  Daken was later the principal witness at the trial of the murderers of District Attorney Manwell.  But for the work of Daken, the horde probably would have murdered every one of the sheriff’s deputies.

            The unfortunate district attorney was a member of the Wheatland branch of Odd Fellows.  Members of the lodge, as soon as they learned of the murder, formed a committee to go to the scene of the crime and recover the body.  At risk of being treated roughly, the committee well performed their disagreeable task.  They met some faint opposition, but finally, on proving that their mission was a peaceable and sacred one, were able to remove the remains to their hall, to rest there till the arrival of the coroner.

            Several suspects were arrested by City Marshal C. J. McCoy and taken to the County Jail in Marysville.  On the following morning, Adjt.-Gen. E. A. Forbes, close friend of Manwell and former resident of Yuba County, ordered Company I, of Oroville, and Company G, of Sacramento, together with Troop B of the latter place, to Wheatland, where martial law reigned for several days.

            Sheriff Voss was removed to a Marysville hospital, where he was forced to remain until well into September before reporting at his office.  For a time his life was despaired of; and while he lived for several years after this experience, his friends contended that his life was cut short by the treatment he received on “bloody Sunday” at Wheatland.

            Through arrests made, and through further investigation, E. B. Stanwood, who was appointed by the supervisors to succeed E. T. Manwell as district attorney, learned with the aid of other officers that “Blackie” Ford and Herman D. Suhr were the ringleaders among the I. W. W. rioters.  Ford was traced to Winnemucca, Nev., and returned on August 18 to Marysville, where he was recognized as a man who previously had preached I. W. W. doctrine in the county-seat.  Suhr was taken in Prescott, Ariz.

            The trial of Ford and Suhr, together with that of several suspects indicted by the grand jury for the murder of Manwell, began on January 12, 1914.  In the court-room appeared a number of “sob-sisters,” some representing a San Francisco journal, and some others, members of organizations allied with the I. W. W.  The latter organization rented a house across from the courthouse and established headquarters there, sending out literature intended to create sympathy for the men on trial.  The jurors chosen to hear the evidence were A. F. Folsom, Browns Valley; W. H. Finch, eastern Yuba County; A. J. McCarty, Hammonton; C. E. Stephenson and Frank Platte, Marysville; Emile Picard, who later was one of the victims, with his wife, in a double murder, mentioned in this chapter; C. E. Shogren, August Erickson, and Edward Carlson, all of Arboga; R. L. Alderman, of Waldo; John J. Norton, of Marigold; and W. Bainbridge, of Rackerby.  A. C. Allread, a Marysville blacksmith, was selected by agreement as an alternate juror, to take part in the verdict in the event of sickness or death of any member of the jury.  Daily attendants at the trial were men well known as active in I. W. W. ranks.  Such as were suspected of being present for ulterior purposes were closely watched by the officers.

            District Attorney Stanwood was assisted in the prosecution of the defendants by W. H. Carlin, well-known Marysville attorney, who bore a State-wide reputation as a criminal lawyer, but who always preferred to be on the side of the defense.  It was proven by the prosecution that Suhr had, during the agitation at Wheatland, sent a telegram to I. W. W. headquarters at San Francisco, ordering that “more wobblies be sent to Wheatland.”  A verdict of conviction was returned against both Ford and Suhr, and they were given life sentences.  Several unsuccessful attempts have been made to secure their parole, but to no avail.  Judge E. P. McDaniel, who presided at their trial, would never take a part in any movement toward commutation of sentence of parole.

In Memoriam

            Edward Tecumseh Manwell was a native of Wheatland.  He taught school a number of years in his native county, at the same time studying law.  His first political office was that of Assemblyman; and he served two terms as a representative from this district, then known as the Eighth Assembly District.   He next was chosen county superintendent of schools, holding the office from 1906 to 1910.  In 1910, he succeeded Fred H. Greely, present county auditor and recorder, as district attorney, filling the office until his death.  He was a member of the Masonic fraternity, as well as of the Odd Fellows, and had served as a member of the National Guard.

            Manwell was survived by his widow and eight children, the oldest being Ray Manwell, who at the time this is written is himself filling the office of district attorney.  The remains of Edward T. Manwell rest in the family plot at Wheatland.  The funeral procession that proceeded from Wheatland, where the services were held, to the grave, was attended by people from all walks of life in Yuba and the surrounding counties.

            The conviction of Ford and Suhr has for years caused the I. W. W.’s to give this section a wide berth.  The Wheatland tragedy, it should be added, had the effect of arousing the people of the State to legislation providing more definite rules for camps where workers are employed, particularly as to sanitary conditions, proper housing, water supply, etc.

History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles

EMILE & ELLEN PICARD

            The only double murder recorded in the annals of Yuba County took place on the night of April 29, 1915, at the “Bit House,” a roadside place on the Marysville-Oroville highway, seven miles north of Marysville.  The victims were Emile Picard, an aged Frenchman, and his wife, Ellen Picard, who was considerably younger.  Connected with the place was a bar, through which an entrance could be gained to their living-rooms.

            The dastardly crime was discovered by Harvey Smullin, clerk for his father, S. N. D. Smullin, a grocer at Honcut.  Young Smullin, early in the morning, entered the Picard kitchen with an order of groceries, and was surprised not to find Mrs. Picard there to greet him.  Going to the dining-room, he came upon the kneeling form of Mrs. Picard, her hands joined as if in prayer, and her head upturned as if pleading with her murderer to spare her life.  Mrs. Picard was dead from two bullet wounds, one entering between the mouth and ear, and the other entering the neck and terminating in the spinal cord, as the post-mortem examination afterward showed.  The remains of Picard were found in the barn on the place.  Smullin rushed to the home of J. E. Strain and told of his discovery.  Strain at once telephoned the news to Sheriff C. J. McCoy, who with his deputies and the newspaper men was soon at the scene of the crime.  The first theory was that the couple were robbed of their money and killed because they recognized the operators.  But when two purses were found on the premises – one in the bar and the other in Mrs. Picard’s lodgings – with $140 in coin in them, the officers were puzzled, but for a short time only.

            Behind an old clock in the barroom, Sheriff McCoy came upon a business card bearing the name and address of William Shannon, cobbler of Honcut, who was recognized by the neighbors of the Picards as a drinking man who frequently visited their place.  Later in the day, Sheriff McCoy met a farm hand who said he observed a man answering Shannon’s description walking along the road between Ramirez Station on the Western Pacific Railroad and the Picard place.  That was about six o’clock in the evening; and the coroner’s office had reported to the officers that the Picards, according to  their observations of the bodies, had been killed about that hour.  Two days later a man serving time on the chain-gang in Marysville, for drunkenness, told the police that he had seen a man burning a pair of overalls in a heating stove at the rear of the Chicago Saloon.  In the stove the officers found the buttons from the overalls and a patent mark, all of which corresponded with those on the brand of overalls William Shannon always wore.

            Shannon was arrested at the Western Pacific depot as he was about to board a train for Honcut.  The wife of Shannon, when visited at Honcut a few days before, told Sheriff McCoy that her husband had left home on the night the murder was committed and had not returned.  She said she thought he had gone to Marysville for a spree.

            Although he weakened after placed in jail, and made remarks in the hearing of his fellow prisoners indicating a troubled conscience, Shannon never confessed.  He went to trial and was convicted.  Certain peculiarities on the soles of his boots corresponding to tracks found on the Picard premises helped the jury to agree that the defendant was the murderer.  One juryman, however, saved him from the gallows, and he was given a life term.  He now is endeavoring to secure a parole.

            Picard was a man of education, and when young was employed as buyer of silks for a wholesale house in New York.  His remains, with those of his wife, rest in the Marysville Cemetery.

History of Yuba and Sutter Counties, Historic Record Company, Los Angeles

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