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The Driscoll Gang John Pemberton Oregon High School, Oregon In the early nineteenth century many gangs of outlaws prowled the northern Illinois area. Probably the most famous of these was the Driscoll Gang, which terrorized northern Illinois in the 1830s and 1840s. The Ogle County area was a very lawless place in the early nineteenth century. Law enforcement was weak, and it was not until 1841 that Ogle County had its first legal system. On March 22, 1841, the first, courthouse in Ogle County was scheduled to open in Oregon. However on the eve of the opening, members of the banditti (another name for the outlaws) burned the courthouse to the ground. The new courthouse that was scheduled to open on March 22, 1841, in Ogle County was burned to the ground by the Driscoll Gang. This courthouse was constructed to replace it.
36 ILLINOIS HISTORY / FEBRUARY 2001 The Driscoll Gang committed the crime in an attempt to free several of the gang's imprisoned members. They also thought that by burning the courthouse they would destroy all of the legal records that had anything against the Driscolls. However, the clerk of the circuit court had taken all of the evidence home with him that night. The gang members who were in jail were sentenced to a year in prison, but they soon escaped. According to an article by one historian, the Driscoll Gang committed crimes from Texas all the way north to Wisconsin, east to Ohio, and west to Iowa. John Driscoll was the leader of the gang. Other members were Pierce Driscoll, John's two sons William and David Driscoll, John Brodie, his three sons, and many more. They controlled the area by terrorizing the people who lived there. Since the existing legal system could not control the outlaws, several of the local people created a group known as the Regulators. John Long, the first captain of the Regulators, wanted to bring law and order back to Ogle County and stop the banditti. The Regulators first caught some of the members of the Driscoll Gang and beat them up to try to send a message to the other members. The gang responded by burning down John Long's sawmill. After feeling threatened for his life by the gang, Long quit the Regulators. The next head was Phineas Cheney, who also quit because he received threatening letters from what he presumed to be the banditti. The last leader was John Campbell. William Driscoll sent a letter to John Campbell challenging him to a fight. John Campbell then showed up at William's house in DeKalb County on June 22, 1841, with 196 Regulators. There was a short standoff until the sherriff of DeKalb County showed up with John Driscoll. When asked why 196 Ogle County Regulators were in DeKalb County, John Campbell told the sheriff about the letter. In the end, an agreement was reached, and the Driscolls promised to leave the state in twenty days. Soon after, several of the gang members decided that the only way to stop the Regulators was to murder their leader. On June 27, 1841, three members of the banditti went to John Campbell's house and murdered him. Mrs. Campbell came running out the door yelling, "Driscolls, you have murdered John Campbell." A neighbor who supposedly saw three men on horses leaving the Campbell house, reported them to be David Driscoll, Taylor Driscoll, and Hugh Brodie. On the following Monday the Ogle County Sheriff arrested John Driscoll and also took William and Pierce into custody. William and Pierce were taken to John Campbell's home, where Campbell's wife identified them as not being there at the time of her husbands death.
On Tuesday morning a group of Regulators broke into the Ogle County Jail and took John Driscoll out with the purpose of a having trial. They took him across the river to Daysville and finally to Washington Grove where William and Pierce were. A crowd of more than five hundred people, who had previously been drinking at a nearby grist mill, gathered to see the trial. The judge selected 120 people to be the jury for the trial, which many witnesses described as a "mob trial." People from all around testified against the Driscolls for all sorts of crimes, including horse theft, counterfeit money, and murder. John Driscoll admitted to stealing more than fifty horses. The jury decided that they did not want the members to get away, so they found the three men guilty. However, Pierce was freed because of his young age. John and William were then taken out before a firing squad of 111 men split into two groups, and the two men were executed at Washington Grove on June 29, 1841. The death of John and William Driscoll put an end to the banditti and all other outlaw gangs in the Ogle County area. The historical marker of where the Driscolls were shot outside of Chana, Illinois, reads "Doctors and scholars, ministers and deacons regarded this terrible example of lynch law as a public necessity."—[From the Book Committee of the American Revolution of the Bicentennial Commission of Ogle County, ed., The Bicentennial History of Ogle County; The History of Ogle County; Barbara Weng, The Story of Oregon.] 37 ILLINOIS HISTORY / FEBRUARY 2001 |
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