DESCENDANTS OF THE GREAT HANGING MEET AFTER 162 YEARS
Life sometimes offers a strange but pleasant serendipitous moment, and I was thrilled to receive it today.
I attended a wonderful, heartwarming luncheon for Eanes Independent School District teachers of the month and year. Our Westlake-Austin Rotary Club honors them monthly with a nice check and flowers to show our appreciation for their outstanding work, and we finish the year with a lovely luncheon at an upscale restaurant, where we recognize them along with their respective principals and superintendent, Dr. Jeff Arnett (also a Rotarian). After hearing what each teacher has accomplished to earn the award, you understand why Eanes ISD has been rated the top school district in the country. Plus, I am beyond proud that my grandchildren are students at Eanes Elementary. I felt fortunate to sit with the teacher of the month and principal from their school and was delighted to get to know them.
Sitting across from me at the table was Matt Beebe, the teacher of the month from one of the middle schools. His principal described him as a favorite of students and an innovative teacher who loved teaching history. Matt told me that after lunch, he would teach about the Great Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the deadliest disaster in history. I would love to hear him teach! After talking to him briefly, you knew his enthusiasm for life, history, and music was contagious.
Before Matt left for his class, I asked him if he had read Stephen Harrigan’s 2019 book, Big Wonderful Thing: A History of Texas. When he indicated that he had read the book, all 900+ pages, I asked if he remembered the “Great Hanging,” which he did.
I told him a little about my great x3 (or 4) grandfather, Colonel William Young, who moved from Tennessee to Red River County as a young man in 1837. I didn’t go into all the details of his life but limited it to Colonel Young’s participation in the “Great Hanging.”
The backstory is this: In 1844, Sam Houston appointed Young as the district attorney. Young also led expeditions against the Indians and served as a Colonel in the Mexican War. Beginning in 1851, he practiced law in Grayson County. The Texas Legislature honored his service by naming a new county after him in 1856. Jefferson Davis appointed him Commander of a unit charged with exterminating Indians in Oklahoma to secure Texas from future Indian invasions. Young became ill while chasing Indians and returned home, only to become involved in the Great Hanging in Gainesville.
There were Union loyalists in Texas, notably in the towns populated by Germans. 96% of the vote in Fredericksburg was against seceding from the Union. Most Germans were against slavery. Friedrich Schenck, a member of a utopian community of freethinkers called the Forty, frequently wrote to his mother in Germany. Many letters contained poetic words to describe the beauty of the Hill Country. Schenck wrote in another letter, "This happy picture of Texan farm life is also disturbed below by the curse of slavery…the feelings of the Germans bristle against such practice, as it is contrary to the holiest right of man – freedom!" A group of men formed the militant German Unionists. As they fled Texas and headed to Mexico, Confederate cavalry and state militia pursued and eventually killed most of them. A few survived and were able to find freedom in Mexico.
Texas Confederates feared Texans loyal to the Union would collaborate with Indians, Kansas abolitionists, or freed enslaved people against the Confederacy. Colonel Bourland, an old colleague of Young's, captured 150 men in North Texas suspected of being Union sympathizers. There were only a few enslavers in North Texas, and Colonel Young was one. Young handpicked a jury of enslavers to try seven of them in Gainesville. The suspected Unionists were condemned and hung one by one outside town in 1862. A mob formed during the proceedings stormed the courtroom and lynched fourteen more Union sympathizers.
Our family lore was that Indians had killed Colonel Young. According to Harrigan, he was probably bushwhacked and murdered by Union partisans the week following the trial. In all likelihood, Jim Young was in a vengeful mood. Colonel Young's son, Jim, presided over the trial of 19 more suspected Unionists.
All 19 were found guilty and hung at a steady rate of two per hour. Gravediggers buried the bodies in shallow graves and undoubtedly knew that rooting animals would likely disturb the graves. A girl recounted seeing a hog carrying something in its jaws down a Gainesville street. It was her stepfather's arm. A local minister remarked that "reason had left its throne" in what came to be known as the Great Hanging.
Young County was named after my great-grandfather Young in 1874, twelve years after his death. Our family was proud of this distinction, but I wasn’t after I learned what he did, although his participation was part of the times and his surroundings. Enslaving people is inexcusable, though.
One of the 19 Unionists was a man with the last name of Dye. He is the great-uncle (x4 or 5) of my lunch companion/teacher extraordinaire, Matt Beebe. His mother’s maiden name is Dye.
Young County was named after my great-grandfather (x4) Young in 1874, twelve years after his death. Our family was proud of this distinction, but I wasn’t after I learned what he did, although his participation was part of the times and his surroundings. Enslaving people is inexcusable, though. I would have been proud to be a descendant of Mr. Dye.
Serendipity: 162 years later, sitting across the table from each other was a descendant of a Unionist who was amongst the 19 who were hanged, and on the other side was the descendant of the man who hung him.
I apologized on behalf of my slave-owning, hanging Great x4 Grandfather! He accepted. We laughed.