Mobile-Statewide County AlArchives News.....Bill Young Feud Victim October 12 1905 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/al/alfiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Jabe Fincher jabef@bellsouth.net August 21, 2004, 9:33 am Mobile Register,Oct.12, 1905; front page MOBILE REGISTER Mobile, Alabama, Thursday Morning, October 12, l905 Front Page BILL YOUNG FEUD VICTIM SHOT FROM AMBUSH ON HIS WAY TO WHEELERVILLE. ENMITY OF LONG STANDING.. SEVERAL ATTEMPTS ON YOUNG'S LIFE. ONCE SHOT THROUGH HEART and RECOVERED. The enemies of "Bill" Young after several attempts have at last accomplished his death. Young was a local character and a native of Wheelerville, a place thirteen miles west of Mobile, famed as the only feud center in Alabama, and as the home of "Bill" Young. For Young had a national reputation as far as the annals of American Surgery go he is the only man who ever survived a rifle ball through the heart. Young was shot from ambush about two o’clock yesterday afternoon at the point where the road to Wheelerville from Mobile crosses Eight Mile Creek. This has been a favorite spot for assassinations since Wheelerville developed the feud some for¬ty years ago, and was a stronghold for a gang of outlaws in the middle of the last century. Soon after two o'clock Thomas Long quarantine officer for the state in the western part of the county, and John Fincher were standing talking close the home of Fred Fincher, on the public road, when they saw a horse and buggy approaching, in which a man was so seated that they thought he was drunk. As the vehicle drew nearer they saw he was dead and the corpse being drawn home by the faithful horse was found to be that of "Bill" Young. He had three wounds in his head and one in his back supposed to have been made with rifle balls of a small calibre. Although the violent death of Young had been apprehended in Wheelerville for years the men who discovered him were hor¬rified and hastened to take the body home, using the dead man's buggy for that purpose, Young's home is some miles farther on, being two miles west of Wheelerville, and after five o'clock before the sheriff Powers was informed of the killing. This information was given the county officers by John Fincher, who rode to Spring Hill before he reached the nearest telephone. Sheriff Powers lost no time in pursuing the murder or murderers and within half an hour he was on his way to Wheelerville with Chief Deputy William Fasch, Cheery Mc.Carron, Green, and Murray and two blood hounds. This seemed a formidable force to make one arrest, but the sheriff knew from experiences of form¬er officers of the law that desperadoes of Wheelerville are as likely to ambush officers of the law as their own people and that once murder is started there no one knows where it will end. The fact that he was shot in several places is taken to indicate that more than one had a hand in the killing. In The City Yesterday The dead man was said undangerous to a remarkable degree and had built up a competency by hard years of hard labor, possessing at his death a home of ample proportions, though rou¬ghly built, some hundreds of acres of pasturage and land under cultivation, many head of stock, and several hundred head of sheep. In addition to stock and poultry raising and farming, he cut cord wood on his land and sold it to the city at a good profit. He was in Mobile yesterday morning taking orders for cord wood, and among the regular customers whom he visited was Dr. P.R, Tunstall on Dauphin St. He left the Dr. early and was seen at the court house. As Young was a great litigant his presence there was not commented on. It is said of him that he never felt happy unless he had a property dis¬pute before the Chancery Court or a case pending in one of the courts of the county. In this respect he had the character of Dickens put in the shade, though the litigation was seldom ex¬tended beyond the first court. Everybody at the court house saw Bill. All who saw him greeted him yesterday. He seem to be in good sprits then, or as in good spirits as a man can be who is under the constant fear of assassination and evidently knew not that his enemies were active. Young transacted his business in the city and must have to go home about noon, as he passed Goodmans Store at Springhill at one o'clock. He passed the time of day with Mr. Goodman and Mr. A. K. Powell and this was the last time he was seen aliye. Young must have had no chance for his life as he was a man absolutely without fear, and always went armed expecting the fate that finally overtook him. He would fight with or without weapon at the drop of a hat, was tough as a pine knot and with a temper equally inflammable, but, withal he was gentle -and courteous in the presence of a woman or children, big¬hearted and as hospitable as the Kentucky mountaineer, of whom he was a type in- every feature, and it is said of them by those with whom he had dealings that his integrity was unquestioned. Among others who speak of him in this respect are Dr. Claude Mastin and Frank R. Sherard. Only recently Young had trouble at a Wheelerville dance with a native named Thompson, because the latter persisted in using profane language in the presence of women and Bill would not permit it. It is suspected that the encounter hast¬ened his tragic end. Young leaves a father and mother, a brother Dan Young and a widow and four children, all of whom live within hailing distance at Wheelerville. The authorities are apprehensive that trouble will be experienced with Dan, as he is the counter¬part of the dead man and a firm believer in a life for a life. FEUD OF LONG STANDING. There is hardly a doubt that the general acceptance of this doctrine that vengeance by the old families of Wheeler¬ville is responsible for Young's death and to reach the beginning of the feud leading up to yesterday's tragedy the enquirer must go back forty years. Wheelerville was founded by Simeon Wheeler, who gave the precinct its name. Assassination had not become a fine art in Wheelerville in its early days and “Sim” Wheeler lived to be eighty years of age, but on reaching this advance age about the year 1868,, he was marked for the slaughter, being shot from ambush by Tom Fincher in identically the same place where Bill Young met death yesterday. Fincher was reported to be the son of Gale Wages, a member of the Copeland Gang of outlaws, who terrorized this sec¬tion in the early fifties. He was tried four times for the murder of Wheeler. The first time he was sentenced to be hanged, but the Supreme Court reversed the verdict; the second time he was given a life sentence, and this was also broken on appeal; the third time another flaw was found in the proceedings, and on the fourth trail the jury disagreed an and a mistrial was entered. In the meantime the witnesses died until there was none left and state abandoned the effort to convict Fincher. He had a friend named Allen who was appointed constable at Wheelerville for one of the justices of the peace in town and because of some offence against the law he had trouble with Allen and shot him down in cold blood, bringing the body to the Court House in an ox wagon a mock ceremony of deliver¬ing the prisoner, He pleaded resistance to the process and escaped for this murder. Some time afterwards Tom Fincher was shot from ambush and his slayer was never discovered. Among the interesting progeny left by the deceased was Mike Fincher who, on reaching man’s estate, continued the line of blood. He was con¬victed at the City Court House at Mobile for criminal assault and got ten years. Escaping from the Penitentiary he committed a murder and was returned to the Pen for life. He again made his escape and reaching Wheelerville, Kept close for some time, During the period of peace and while constantly armed and on the watch for officers trying to effect his arrest, he built a six room house, raised two crops and one child and one child and then commenced to terrorize the Wheelerville neighborhood. Phelan E.. Dorlan was sheriff of Mobile County at the time and he started plans for the capture of Fincher, who was as difficult to approach as a deer in the hills. A posse was formed to trap Fincher at Wheelerville. When Wesley Thomas a one- armed deputy in the employ of the sheriff ordinarily stat¬ioned at Whistler, walked in the courthouse one morning and announced that he had killed the desperado. It was known that Thomas had gone to Wheelerville to get Fincher, and Fincher was shot with a shotgun such as Thom¬as used with deadly aim, although one-armed, but among the people at Wheelerville and the officers who were in the sheriff's department at that time the belief was general that Bill Young killed Fincher, and as a re¬sult a deadly enmity sprang up between Fincher's family and the Young's. Wesley Thomas was killed some months afterwards by Gilbert Dease and John Ryan and their trial was the cause celebree of a year in the early nineties. Two years ago Wesley Thomas's son was accidentally killed in a boat at Whistler with the same gun his father claimed to have used to kill Fincher. WILLED BODY TO DOCTER. When Young got on his feet again, hearing of the interest among the medical profession in his case, he formally willed his body to Dr. Claude Mastin for postmortem examination. Dr. Claude Mastin left the city for Wheelerville last night to hold autopsy which will settle whether the rifle ball passed through Young's heart or not. H. was accompanied by Dr. Sherard. Knowing the country and the possibility of trouble with feudists as well as sheriff Powers knows it. Both doctors were armed. Before lea¬ving they stated another phenomenon in connection with the first shoot¬ing of Young. A male child was born to Young and his wife five months after he was shot and before its birth the mother stated to Dr. Mastin that she believed her baby would be marked. The doctor endeavored to overcome the mother's fear, and pooh- pooed the idea, but on the birth of the child it was marked on the breast and back in similar manner to the healed wounds of the father, and carries the marks to this day. The doctors consider this an extraordinary case of maternal impression. Fred Fincher, brother of Mike Fincher, and a man who settled in Wheelerville from Texas, named Robinson were tried and convicted on the charge of assault to murder on Young and were each sentenced to ten years in the penitentiary. Robinson died there but Fincher was pard¬oned by Gov. Joseph F. Johnson and returned to Wheelerville. With the return of Fred Fincher the authorities thought that the feud would die in Wheelerville. Violent features, but for some time all was quiet. In the fall of I900 " Bill" Young was rounding up cattle one morning when a rifle ball whizzed through the air and penetrated a soft felt hat he was wearing. He dropped to the ground between two rows where a crop had been planted and crawled to where he could look around without expecting another bullet, but he could see no one in any direction. After this Young was accustomed to go armed when at work in his fields. The attempt was reported to the sheriff, but discovery of the bushwhackers was found impossible. For fifteen years Young lived in constant fear of a violent death though no one would suspect it unless they knew him intimately as he did not allow the impression of danger to interfere with his work or pleasure. He told Dr. Sherard during a drive out to his home at one o'clock on a mor¬ning in August I904, when, the doctor was going to attend his daughter, Mrs. E. Pierce, that he expected to be killed just in the manner he was killed yesterday. SHERIFF'S SEARCH FRUITLESS. Sheriff Powers and his force returned to Mobile at two o’clock this morning without discovering the slayers of Young. Chief Deputy Powers states that John Williams and Fred Fincher were on the gallery of the lat¬ters house when Young was killed and the officers discovered nothing wh¬ich would justify them in making an arrest.. They are making an inquiry along a slender clue obtained at Wheelerville and after continuing it is in the city today it is possible that sufficient evidence will be obtained to justify the execution of a warrant for murder against a party in Wh¬eelerville. SHOT THROUGH THE HEART. “Bull" Baker a half brother of Fincher, was the next to meet with Wheelerville violence. He received & charge of buckshot in the back from an unknown source, and his death some time afterwards was attri¬buted to his wounds. There were minor affrays and charges and counter¬charges, involving City Court proceedings affecting the warring families for a period, and then came the sensational shooting of Bill Young with a rifle while he was gathering corn in one of his fields. Who ever shot him was concealed under a fence. Young was brought to the city in a wagon and was jolted on route in a manner sufficient to kill any ordinary man. He asked to be taken to the Court House to state his convictions that one of the Finchers had shot him, and this off his mind, he was removed to the home of his wife's sister, Mrs. French on Beauregard and Jackson St. Dr. Claude Mastin was called to attend him, and he earned the undying gratitude of Young, manifested on drivers occasions and in many ways when the wounded man recovered from his wounds. Careful observation by the attending surgeon and others, who were called to see the remarkable case, showed that Young must have been shot through the apex of the heart. When he recovered, his case was the subject of a report by the late Dr. Claude Mastin Sr. to the national organizations of surgeons at their Detroit meeting, and by Dr. Claude Mastin to the meeting of the Southern Asso¬ciation at Birmingham. It was also dealt with at great length in all the medical journals of the country, which published plates showing where the rifle balls had entered, and where it came out of Young’s back. In the whole medical fraternity of the United States no one questioned that Young had been shot through the heart, but all marveled that he lived. It was found impossible to use the dogs, because the fact of Young's being killed soon reached all parts west of the city and the assassin was concealed in a clump of bushes near the road which had been trampled over by hundreds of people before the sheriff’s force arrived. Deputy Powers states that the murder was evidently well planned and that he took the most unfrequented place on the public road' facing a dense thicket, for the commission of the crime. Young was shot at close range with a double barreled shotgun and both loads were discharged, his neck being broken. The County Coroner instructed Justice of the Peace John Fincher to hold an inquest, and this was done at Young's home, where the body lay. The following formed the Coroners jury; Thomas A. Long, Cheery Mc.Carron, Green, Murray, John Maples, Charles Jordan and Morgan Brooks. Their verdict was that deceased came to his death at the hands of an un¬known party. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/al/mobile/newspapers/gnw93billyoun.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.org/alfiles/ File size: 15.5 Kb