Williamson County Historical Commission
contact Wayne Ware (512)
863-2202
The Last hanging in Williamson County 1906
The Tom Young Hanging
On the 30 day of March in the year 1906 they hung him
high down on the poor folk’s farm.
Tom Young was a poor man that chopped cotton and did odd jobs for folks.
Tom and his wife had a 12 year old niece, Alma Reece with them while
they were camped out in a wagon while chopping cotton for Will Mullins
on his farm.
Will Mullins’s mother-in-law Mrs. Harrel found Tom had beat Alma and
poured salt and carbolic acid on her. Poor little Alma didn’t have
chance.
Tom lit out across the Cobb Ranch after Mrs. Harrel found out what he
had done. She had Will Ratliff and his gang (which were working on road
near the old Rattlesnake Inn up by Florence) see if they could stop him
if he came by there. Someone called the constable - old man Bauchman -
to see if he could catch him and old man Bauchman caught up with Tom and
his wife and found Alma dead in the back of the wagon. They took young
Alma to Florence but the city didn’t have an undertaker so Mr. Potts
said to take her to his restaurant to clean her up and find a dress for
her funeral. The city found a casket to bury her in and laid her to rest
in the Florence cemetery.
They arrested Tom and put him in jail – and almost a year later they
took him out on the old Hutto road by the Poor Man's farm were indigents
who didn’t have any money could live and farm. They pulled the trap door
and watched him swing in the wind back in 06.
God bless poor little Alma.
Narratives from the Georgetown's
Yesteryears Book
A special thanks to The Georgetown
Heritage Society and Martha Mitten Allen for letting us post these
wonderful first person stories.
see
Foreword and Preface
The Tom Young Hanging
"That
Infamous Hanging"
Berna Sillure Cooke - Interviewer:
Rodney K. Kaase
There was one
hanging of a person here. At that time we had what was called the poor
farm. It was where indigents, who did not have any money, lived and
farmed. This was a farm outside of town on Hutto Road. They lived out
there and farmed for the county and made enough for the upkeep of the
farm.
I must have been six or seven years old when this happened. The court
had convicted a man for death. I was across the street from my
grandparents at the Methodist Church and this long trail of people on
horseback and wagons went out east on University Avenue. And I didn't
know what any of it was. What they were doing, they were taking this man
out there, to the poor farm from the old Williamson County jail, to hang
him. They told me later. I can remember that—it is really imprinted on
my mind.
"Tom Young"
|
Alpha Teague Slawson
- |
|
I saw him hung. I was still single. My sister dressed
that little girl and helped put her in the casket. There was a man and a
woman, Tom Young and his wife, and they had their little niece, Alma
Reece, and they come down there and chop some cotton for Will Mullins.
That was one farm just below the Lewallen place. Lewallens lived there
but I wasn't married in the family at that time. They chopped cotton
there. And while he was there, Will Mullins lived in one house and his
mother-in-law, Mrs. Harrel, lived in the other house. She was a widow
woman and this was her son-in-law. And he had them chopping cotton down
there in the field. They was camped down there. And this little girl,
she was twelve years old, they tied her to the wagon and he beat her,
then poured salt and carbolic acid on her body. Mama saw the chain and a
little shirt, blouse, that she wore. Mrs. Harrel had it. When he killed
her, why, Tom Young started out across old Cobb Ranch. It joined the
Lewallen and Mullins ranches. Will Ratliff and a gang were working that
road over there where Rattlesnake Inn is and they camped in a little old
house there on the Old Cobb Ranch. Somebody went on down the road and
told them if he come out there to stop him. Somebody called up there and
Old Man Bauchman was constable and he met this wagon and this woman with
this little girl, course she's dead. He took her on to Florence and he
didn't know what to do with her. Didn't have no undertaker building back
then. So Mr. Potts says take her back there. His little old restaurant,
cafe, he had there, where he sold hot chili, and his house to the back
of it. Sister and a friend was visiting. They took her there and they
washed and dressed her. The city got a casket and put her in it. Then
they buried her in the Florence cemetery. There's a marker; I've been
there several times.
That was cotton chopping time, April, I guess. Then they arrested him
and brought him to put him in jail down here. That was in 1905. On the
30th day of March, 1906, they hung him. I went to see him while he was
in jail, there. Sister Lena and her husband came down to town shopping
and they wanted to go see him, so I went.
They hung him at the poor farm out on Hutto Road. They had a platform up
there. Had a rope out here where you couldn't get to it, you know. Had
people roped off, but we were just about as close as you could get to
it. We saw the guy who pulled the trap door. Big crowd. We saw them take
him down and his mother and daddy, I guess, put him in a casket and
carried him to Austin.
Then when we left there that night we went back to Mrs. Keller's; myself
and my sister and her husband and Ethel Keller, her mother's is where we
went. And Moses
Tom is 4th from the left