Gun play at Grand Forks

I originally wrote this post after reading a story about Bob Simpson, who came to Grand Forks in 1894. Some of his memories appeared in the Grand Forks Gazette of April 24, 1958 and were reprinted in the Boundary Historical Society’s 18th report. This part caught my eye:

He remembers the gun fight between policeman Harry Sheads and a fellow named O’Connor.

O’Connor was standing downstairs in the doorway and Sheads was upstairs in a window. Sheads would lean out and shoot towards O’Connor; and then O’Connor would lean out of the doorway and shoot towards Sheads.

“Neither of them got hit,” adds Bob, “but they sure shot a lot of holes in the hotel.”

The story was presented breezily, like a shootout downtown was no big deal in those days. Did it really happen? Yes — although my original assessment of the how it went down was completely wrong. I suggested Simpson misremembered the location and one of the names of the men involved. But turns out I was the one mistaken. In fact, Harry Sheads was involved in two different shootouts (at least!) less than six months apart and I was getting mixed up with the other one, which we’ll come back to at the end.

The backstory to the incident Simpson described was far more dramatic and complex than I ever imagined, for the guy Sheads traded bullets with was formerly a city councillor and special constable who once nearly killed someone with an axe. He had also just shot his own brother.

Grand Forks, ca. 1908-13. (Greg Nesteroff collection)

The Lanktree assault

Maurice O’Connor was a prospector from Ontario who owned a number of claims up the North Fork of the Kettle River. He seems to have been popular when sober but alcoholism and mental illness resulted in his repeated brushes with the law.

We first encounter him in late 1894, accused of vandalizing the boarding house at the War Eagle mine in Rossland. O’Connor was convicted in absentia and fined $10 or in default two months in jail. He was caught soon after and paid the fine.

Something far more serious occurred on Sept. 24, 1895. While early reports got several details wrong, the Spokane Chronicle explained that a self-described mining expert named Thomas Lanktree (or Langtree), 46, recently arrived in Rossland was looking for properties to invest in.

O’Connor, 27, told him he had some “fine prospects” on the Kettle River “that he would sell at a bargain.” The pair set out for the claims on the Dewdney Trail but it was a wobbly journey for O’Connor, who had been drinking heavily. Their destination was a cabin 15 miles along the trail where they planned to spend the night. They became separated and Lanktree arrived first at the cabin, where three other men and a boy were also staying.

Lanktree had gone to bed by the time O’Connor arrived, suffering from delusions. O’Connor thought men were chasing him and trying to kill him. As soon as he entered the cabin, he guarded the door with an axe in one hand and a pocket-knife in the other.

O’Connor was convinced to surrender the knife but wouldn’t give up the axe. Suddenly, he turned at the sleeping Lanktree. “You are the cause of all this,” he said and hit Langtree twice in the head. “The blows were terrific, as O’Connor was raving mad,” the Rossland Miner reported.

One of the other men, McDonald, grabbed the axe and following a “desperate struggle,” O’Connor ran into the woods. Though feared dead, Lanktree was still breathing. The others washed the blood from his face and made him comfortable. McDonald then set out for Rossland on foot, arriving about 3 a.m. Mining recorder Jack Kirkup went looking for O’Connor while Kirkup’s deputy and a Dr. McAlpine headed for the cabin to attend to Lanktree’s wounds.

Kirkup arrested O’Connor five miles from the cabin. A grand jury indicted him on a charge of assault with intent to kill and he was taken to Kamloops to await trial.

Meanwhile, a puzzling picture emerged about Lanktree. He was from Evanston, Wyoming and said to be married with two children but estranged from them. He was well known in Spokane, where he’d arrived the previous month from Portland.

He “always appeared dressed in good style.” During his few weeks in Spokane, he “spent considerable money” in the saloons and a few days before he left town, he cashed a few small cheques. But his claim to have money in the Trader’s Bank proved false. In fact, Lanktree left the bank with a memo saying he expected $1,300 from Wyoming, where his brother was a division superintendent of the Union Pacific railroad. The money hadn’t arrived, however, and his creditors were still holding his cheques.

An account in the Spokesman-Review said Lanktree had once been a “very prominent man in financial circles” in Wyoming, Colorado, and Utah. He’d made money in Salt Lake, Los Angeles, and San Diego, then went to Colorado where he invested in a bank in Park City that collapsed during the economic panic of 1893. He told a friend “matters had been going from bad to worse” for him lately and he had fallen from riches to relative rags. He blamed this partly on a lawsuit in Wyoming that cost him $40,000.

In Spokane, he “appeared a plain, unassuming man” who hung around the Hotel Spokane lobby many evenings playing cards. The last that was seen of him was in that hotel where, after dealing the cards, he asked to be excused. He never came back. He left town owing $30 in rent to the Cosmos Hotel. Friends were baffled. They heard nothing further about him until word came from Rossland that he had been attacked with an axe.

Eventually Lanktree recovered sufficiently to be moved from the cabin to a hospital in Rossland. While doctors wanted to operate on him to relieve pressure of his fractured skull, he wouldn’t let them. Lanktree was said to be “slowly gaining strength of body” but it was feared he had suffered brain damage. He was sent to Sacred Heart hospital in Spokane, where he refused to let anyone treat or even examine him. He was declared insane and sent to an asylum at Medical Lake, Wash.

The case came up for trial in Nelson in June 1896, where O’Connor’s lawyer claimed his client was also insane. Testifying was O’Connor’s mother, “an old Irish lady from Orillia, Ontario” who explained how mental illness was common in her husband’s family and several of her children (she had 11) were similarly afflicted, including Maurice. The jury agreed he was insane bur rather than being sent to a hospital, he was transferred to the penitentiary at New Westminster.

Not long after, Lanktree was declared cured and discharged from the asylum. He returned to Rossland and in 1897 reported of being in good health and holding “hopes of regaining, through mining, some of his losses of the past few years.” After that, we only have a few fleeting signs of him in Alaska before his death in 1923 at the Oregon State Hospital in Salem. He was predeceased by his ex-wife Lucretia in 1909 and survived by daughter Maud.

Family feud

While Maurice O’Connor was in jail, his widowed mother Julia, brother Patrick, and sister Maggie all moved to Grand Forks to look after Maurice’s mining interests. Patrick and Maggie were the youngest of Julia’s many children.

Although it reportedly “only took a short time to learn that Maurice was of sound mind,” it was nearly a year before he was released. By September 1897, he joined his family in Grand Forks and went to work with Patrick on his claims, including the Hummingbird and OK. (The name of the former survives in the Hummingbird Bridge, which crosses the Granby River.)

Maurice’s health had recovered and his reputation had been rehabilitated so completely that he was nominated for city council in 1898. However, he failed to fill out some paperwork, so his name was struck from the ballot. But after the legality of the election was contested, the results were voided and Maurice had another chance. Despite being considered a long shot, he topped the polls in the north ward, although only 22 ballots were cast. It doesn’t appear he sought re-election when his term expired at year’s end.

The O’Connor family kept the local courthouse busy. At the end of 1898, Patrick O’Connor sued mayor Jeff Davis for $10,000 in damages over a workplace accident. Patrick was helping build a chimney for Davis when he fell 20 feet from the roof and broke both his legs. In 1899, Patrick and Maurice were in turn sued by John Elliott, who had defended Maurice at his attempted murder trial, for $800 in legal fees. In neither case was the outcome reported, suggesting matters were settled out of court.

Maurice was also deputized at some point as a special provincial constable, although for what purpose isn’t known. A few months later, he got into a row on Bridge Street (now Market Avenue) with one Ed Shannon over a mining claim up the North Fork. While he no longer had the power to do so, Maurice tried to arrest Shannon, who refused to go. Maurice started to use force and brother Patrick joined in, also claiming to be a police officer.

“For a moment it looked like a rough and tumble fight,” said the Grand Forks Miner. But just then police chief Harry Sheads came along and told them to knock it off. Sheads had been chief since 1898 although he had no obvious law enforcement experience himself, having worked as a chemist and assayer.

Maurice swore out a warrant for Shannon’s arrest for assault but when the case came up in court, Maurice was nowhere to be seen, so the charge was dismissed. Maurice was ordered to pay $14 in costs.

Maurice’s disputes over mining claims up the North Fork also extended to family. He sold his interest in the Hummingbird for what was said to be a “handsome sum” but when it came time to sign the bill of sale, his mother, to whom the property had been transferred while Maurice was in prison, refused to recognize his interest. Patrick and Maggie agreed with Julia. Eventually they worked out a deal: Maurice would give the three $16,000 from the purchase price and 25,000 shares of Hummingbird stock.

They couldn’t agree on the terms for dividing up the other properties, however, so the matter went to arbitration. The ruling gave Maurice about a two-thirds interest and Patrick about one-third. Furious, Patrick, Julia, and Maggie threatened to sue to have the decision set aside.

Maurice showed up at the family home to talk things over. But Pat, who by one report had been drinking heavily, grabbed a gun. Maurice tried to wrench it from his brother as Julia and Maggie joined the fray. In the chaos that followed, Pat bit off part of Maurice’s ear. Pat fled across the border before a warrant could be sworn for his arrest.

“The general verdict here is that Maurice has been very badly treated in the matter,” said the Miner. “At all times he has shown a disposition to see that his mother, brother, and sister were well provided for and to think that they tried to rob him of his just right goes against the grain.”

Pat was now believed to be on his way to Michigan, while Maurice “carries the lower portion of his left ear in his vest pocket as a token of his brother’s farewell kiss.”

Their mother, however, placed the blame squarely on Maurice. She accused him of choking Pat “until his eyes and tongue protruded from his head” and said if she and Maggie hadn’t intervened, Maurice would have killed him. She insisted Pat had not been drinking, nor did he try to shoot Maurice, nor did he bite Maurice’s ear, which had been injured on a nail protruding from a window sill. Patrick fled not to escape punishment, she added, but to save Maurice trouble. She admitted Pat had gone after Maurice with an axe, but said it was because he knocked Maggie down and kicked her for pulling him off Pat. Ah, family.

A couple of months after falling out with his brother, Maurice was married in Simcoe, Ont. to Christina Vanessa (Nessie) Cuddahy. We know little about her and don’t know how they met but they would have four daughters over the next seven years. While Maurice continued to spend time in BC, neither Nessie nor their kids appear to have ever lived there.

Around the same time, Patrick opened a hotel in Grand Forks called the Orillia on Block 2, Lot 12 on the south side of Bridge Street. This is now part of the ServiceBC parking lot.

Shootout in the Windsor

At last we reach the event Bob Simpson described at the outset, which took place on the night of Feb. 10, 1900 in the Windsor Hotel, at the southeast corner of what is now Market Avenue and 2nd Street. (The hotel was renamed the Yale in 1908 after the first Yale Hotel, one block east, burned down.)

By this time tempers had cooled enough that Patrick O’Connor figured it was safe to return home. But given what occurred that night he would have been better off staying in Michigan.

The scene was so chaotic that it is no surprise news reports offered contradictory details and differing chronologies. I’ve taken this primarily from the Grand Forks Miner, which carried the most thorough account.

Maurice, with a belly full of whisky, entered the hotel “in a state bordering on delirium” and locked himself in an upstairs room. Proprietor C.S. Cox discovered him alternating between shouting “murder” and reciting the lord’s prayer. When Cox tried to get into the room, Maurice said he would shoot anyone who entered.

His sister Maggie came to calm him down, to no avail. Maurice then set his bedding on fire as Maggie frantically tried to coax him out. Finally he opened the door and fired a shot from a .45 Colt revolver. Maggie fled.

Patrick arrived and rushed up the stairs to try to take the gun away from Maurice, who responded by shooting him in the head two or three times. Maurice then started to come down the stairs. Police chief Harry Sheads and two officers, named Thornton and Mills, had arrived and were waiting at the bottom. Seeing them, Maurice tried to shoot again but his gun misfired. Sheads stepped into a doorway, drew his gun, and fired twice but Maurice dodged. Mills also fired and missed.

When Maurice reached the bottom of the stairs, Sheads grabbed his weapon. Maurice didn’t protest. “Take it, take it,” he said.

The Windsor Hotel, sometime prior to 1908. (Boundary Museum and Archives 1991-055-043)

In the meantime, Patrick “came staggering down the stairs with blood streaming from his face” and was assisted by officer Mills, who took him to the nearby Orillia Hotel and called a doctor. He had two wounds in his scalp and a third below his left eye. It wasn’t clear if he would survive. He remained conscious during surgery and told the doctor to remove the bullet even if it killed him. A priest delivered last rites and Pat made out his will, leaving everything to his mother, sister, and a nephew.

During the melee, Maggie also suffered a severe head injury but it wasn’t clear how. It may have been inflicted by the butt end of her brother’s gun or she may have run into a door. The fire department (of which Sheads was also chief) put out the blaze in Maurice’s bedroom before it caused much damage.

At the police station, another cartridge was found in Maurice’s pocket. “If I had know I had that,” he said, “you would not have got me.”

Maurice didn’t deny shooting Pat but claimed it was an accident when he tried to hit his brother with the gun. The following day Pat was moved to the family home to convalesce. He would recover from his wounds but retain a bad scar as a memento. Maggie was also said to be improving quickly.

Maurice was ordered to stand trial on charges of shooting with intent to kill, shooting with intent to do grievous bodily harm, and unlawful shooting. He was denied bail and Sheads took him to jail in Kamloops to await trial.

The hearing took place before a jury in Vernon in early May. The court heard Maurice was being treated by doctors for alcoholism and insomnia at the time of the shooting. Patrick testified that he put his hand on Maurice’s arm and was speaking to him quietly when he heard a shot and fell unconscious. Yet he didn’t think Maurice had anything to do with it, for “he was on the best of terms with his brother.” A missing ear lobe apparently notwithstanding.

Harry Sheads, 1897. The star denoted he was fire chief. He had not yet become police chief. (Boundary Museum and Archives 1987-002-365-07)

Had Patrick been shot at all? We aren’t told if the surgery resulted in a bullet’s removal but a Dr. Northrup testified Patrick had a scalp wound that could have been caused by a bullet, plus two minor bruises on his forehead, and a severe triangular wound over his left eye that penetrated his skull. It may have been caused by a sharp instrument such as the hammer of a heavy revolver, the doctor said. Maurice’s gun was produced for the court. When he was arrested, it had two empty shells, two loaded cartridges, and two empty chambers.

Justice Paulus Irving told the jury that in addition to the options of convicting or acquitting Maurice of the charges, they could convict him of the lesser offense of wounding without intent to kill or without intent to do grievous bodily harm. This they elected to do. After deliberating for an hour and a half, they found him guilty of the latter offense with a strong recommendation for mercy.

The judge agreed, for he was appalled with the actions of the Grand Forks police department. Though they had fired only three shots after Maurice fired first, Irving still described the event as “an indiscriminate fusillade he had never heard of. It sounded like a story of the Reign of Terror.”

Maurice, who blamed his actions on booze, “broke down and sobbed” as he awaited sentencing. Much to the surprise of the Grand Forks Miner, which expected a lengthy prison term, the judge gave Maurice a suspended sentence, warning that if he got into any more trouble, he would receive two years behind bars without trial. Which still seems pretty lenient.

The Miner took stock of Maurice’s chequered past, explaining how his family had gone to bat for him after the Lanktree affair. How he kept a promise to behave for some time after coming to Grand Forks. How he served on city council. How he sold his mining property up the North Fork “for a good figure” and went east to be married. And how prosperity “seemed to be too much for him,” resulting in the predicament he now faced. It was only by remarkable luck that Patrick was still alive, the newspaper added.

‘Erratic character’

Maurice was still in Grand Forks as of 1901 but sometime thereafter moved to his old home in Orillia, Ont. In 1905, it was reported he had been declared insane again and committed to an asylum at Hamilton. Yet when Patrick read about it in the newspaper, he sent a letter to the asylum and was told no one by his brother’s name had been admitted.

By August 1907, Maurice was back in Grand Forks and working at the Granby smelter. He was described as an “erratic character” and a man “well known throughout southern British Columbia” when he was arrested for disturbing the peace and “making a nuisance of himself generally.”

What led up to it: Maurice was sitting in front of the Province Hotel, apparently inebriated, when police chief A.E. Savage told him not to cause trouble. Infuriated, Maurice paraded up and down Bridge Street with a knife, yelling and threatening to kill anyone who tried to stop him. By one account he declared he was the Messiah and had been sent to earth to free Ireland.

Savage and a special constable, Smith, returned and ordered him to drop the knife and put up his hands or be shot. Maurice ignored the chief and made a stabbing motion. The special constable grabbed Maurice from behind and pinned his hands. Savage seized the knife and handcuffed Maurice, who was charged with assault in resisting the police. When he appeared before a jury in Nelson in October, Maurice testified that he got mad when Savage gave him 15 minutes to leave town.

This time the judge spoke highly of the police conduct, suggesting they had done their duty admirably and Smith acted courageously. However, the judge directed the jury to return a verdict of not guilty, letting Maurice off with another warning.

Maurice went back to Ontario, where in 1909 he and another man were remanded on drunkenness charges in Toronto, giving a doctor a chance to examine their sanity. He was committed again to an asylum at Hamilton and remained there as of the 1911 census.

The poet

The same issue of the Grand Forks Sun that related Maurice’s troubles in 1907 also carried this intriguing note: “Maurice J. O’Connor, the poet, warns the newspapers from reproducing any of his poems, as he has reserved all rights.”

The poet? Yes, indeed. It’s not hard to envision him taking up poetry as therapy or simply to fight boredom in the asylum.

Maurice submitted his verse to the Sault Star in Ontario, which printed one of his poems along with a review: “In some of Mr. O’Connor’s earlier efforts strength of verse was sometimes sacrificed to mere rhyme and metre, but happily in his later poems the more artistic insight prevails, and no fault can be found along the score mentioned. There is not among the younger poets in Canada anyone who writes just the same style of verse as Mr. O’Connor.”

This is the only example of his work I could find, with the idiosyncratic spellings and capitalizations intact.

A TRAVELLER’S BALLAD

My Hart and mind through France and Spane

Those people they do careless go

They do boast of the the Great Nepoleon

And memories of long ago

My Hart and mind through France and Spane

Its from those people I must go

They now can cerrish the Great Nepoleon

And memories of long ago

My Hart and mind through France and Spane

They would not stand their trial you know

I don’t forget the way they used me

In those places long ago

My Hart and mind through France and Spane

From the plains of Abreheam they will get another show

I will be the Great mountcalm

I’ll lead them to victory then you know

My Hart and mind through France and Spane

Then to Cuba next I’ll go

From there I’ll challenge the American Generals

From their I’ll give them another Show

Then I’ll Chalange any General

I’ll give them too the best of the show

And I will take the city from them

My time is up now I must go

My Hart and mind through France and Spane

And all around by the river poe

Through Gorden streames and river thames

And o’er the plains to Jerry Co.

When Patrick O’Connor got married in Vancouver in 1914, he was described in the Grand Forks Sun as “a pioneer of Grand Forks and a brother of Maurice O’Connor, the poet.”

That’s the last time I can find Maurice described as a poet and indeed, it’s the last newspaper mention I can find of him at all. By 1917 he was living in Toronto with his wife and three children while the 1921 census found him as a patient in Whitby, Ont., presumably at the psychiatric hospital there. He died at Whitby on July 6, 1937, age 72, survived by his wife and three of their four daughters. His last address was 528 Church Street in Toronto.

As for the rest of the family: Maurice’s mother died in 1916 in New Westminster, age 96. Maggie married Charles H. Dixon in Grand Forks in 1905 and died in Coquitlam in 1943, age 81, survived by a son. Patrick died in New Westminster in 1955, age 88, survived by his wife Mary Jane.

The Windsor Hotel where the shootout of 1900 occurred, later known as the Yale, burned down in 1950. Another Yale Hotel rose on the same site only to burn down in 1991. Now it’s the site of ServiceBC.

Harry Sheads, who exchanged gunfire with Maurice, served as police chief until about 1905. Later he became a realtor and insurance agent and, like Maurice, served on city council. He died in Grand Forks in 1930.

The other shootout

The Grand Forks shootout I initially confused with the one Maurice O’Connor was involved with occurred on Aug. 30, 1899 in the OK boarding house on Riverside Avenue. Like the O’Connor incident, this one also involved Harry Sheads, alcohol, a staircase, and a suspect with a surprising resume.

The boarding house was operated by Hannah Quinlivan, whose husband Michael, 26, was a CPR bridge carpenter. Mike reportedly went on a drinking spree at Cascade, leaving him in a “very nervous and irritable condition.” He waved a revolver around while threatening some boarders. “I will punch their meal tickets for them at noon,” he said. (I’m sure it sounded more menacing at the time.)

Mike Quinlivan at the reins of the Grand Forks fire department steam pumper, circa 1900s-1910s. He’s wearing a fire helmet. (Boundary Museum and Archives 1986-208-007-06)

Sheads arrived to convince Mike to give up the gun. Mike said it was upstairs and agreed to go with Sheads to get it. But as he reached the top of the stairs, Mike turned and whipped the revolver out of his pocket. Surprise!

Sheads stared Mike down as he retreated to the bottom, closed the door, and held it shut. But Mike broke through and the duel was on. Mike took a shot that missed. Sheads responded and hit the door. He tried again but his pistol jammed. Mike continued to shower Sheads with bullets and backed him into a nearby livery stable, where Sheads took another errant shot. Somehow no one had been hit.

Presumably out of ammunition, Mike returned to the boarding house and Sheads emerged and called two other officers for help. Mike surrendered. He was denied bail and once sober had little memory of what had occurred. He was charged with shooting with intent to kill.

When his jury trial opened in early November in Vernon, the defence argued that in addition to being drunk, Mike’s judgement was clouded by drugs administered by his wife to cure him of alcoholism. Further, he didn’t know Sheads was a police officer. The jury convicted him with a recommendation for mercy. He was sentenced to three years in prison.

“The lightness of the sentence occasioned some little surprise as nearly everyone had expected a much heavier penalty,” according to the Grand Forks Miner.

His actual time served was either less than four months or he received a conjugal visit, for a son was born to Mike and Hannah in Grand Forks in December 1900. In her husband’s absence, Hannah took over management of a new hotel, the Granby. Otherwise little was heard from the family for the next few years. They don’t show up on the 1901 census but sons were born to them in Grand Forks in 1903, 1905, and 1907.

In the latter year, Mike was jailed 30 days for assault. He was also hired as a city garbage collector. Later he added poundkeeper to his duties. Judging from the photo seen above, it appears he was also a member of the fire department. Then, unbelievably, in 1911 he was sworn in as a city police constable. Had council forgiven his criminal record? Or merely forgotten it?

Given that chief A.E. Savage ran Mike in for the aforementioned assault charge, forgiveness seems more likely but neither Grand Forks newspaper commented on the irony. What’s more, Mike was acting chief in Savage’s absence. It was in that capacity that he was called about a man reported to have stolen a gun and some shells from Manly’s hardware store.

When Mike arrived, the suspect, John Suszko, 29, pointed the gun at him. It was the same scenario Mike had faced in 1899, only this time he was in Harry Sheads’ shoes, on the side of the law. The outcome, however, was different.

Mike shot Suszko in the face. He was taken to hospital and died a few hours later. Suszko had worked for the Granby smelter for about a year but little else was known about him. Employees of the store where he did his shopping said he’d been acting strangely for a few weeks. A coroner’s jury declared Mike had fired in self-defence and was blameless.

Grand Forks Gazette, July 15, 1911

Mike later worked as the city’s dairy inspector. In 1918, further emphasizing his rehabilitated reputation, he was shortlisted for the position of police chief. However, he was passed over and moved with his family to Everett, Wash. and then Seattle, where he found work in his old profession as a bridge carpenter with the Great Northern railroad.

On April 27, 1930 his crew was working between Index and Baring, Wash. For some reason, he left the camp, walking down the middle of the track, when suddenly a train rounded a curve, leaving him no time or place to escape. Mike Quinlivan was struck and thrown from the tracks. He was found unconscious and taken to Skykomish, where he died, age 56. He was survived by his wife and four sons.

— With thanks to Sue Adrain

Updated on Sept. 24, 2024 to rewrite from scratch. Updated on Nov. 6, 2024 to add more details from the Grand Forks Miner of May 5, 1900 about Maurice O’Connor’s trial.