The Mother Who Faced Down a Lynch Mob

When all the other women in Camp Paradise went away, old Mrs. Dill stayed on. She had been among the first comers to the camp, surviving as a laundress. As the camp's gold prospects faded and residents fled, the remaining thirty miners lived in a long, ramshackle log building, granting Mrs. Dill a room of her own. One snowy December night, a man arrived from a neighboring camp with news that a miner named Jed Judson had been killed, and the perpetrator—a man identified as Henry Hobbs—was to be hanged by a lynch mob. When the men of Camp Paradise began arming themselves to join the vigilantes, Mrs. Dill emerged from her room, pistol in hand, blocking the door. She revealed that Hobbs was her long-lost son. Her plea—that they bring him to her for a fair chance rather than execute him—hushed the room. The men left, returning at dawn with the shivering prisoner. After a brief reunion, mother and son departed the camp together. Years later, he became a man of wealth and influence in California, dutifully caring for his mother until her death.