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 where 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 where 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 Mans farm where 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 the Museum 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"

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