All in the family
Young family members were connected to two 19th-century homicide cases 50 years apart
It was a case of a murder that was, and a case of a murder that wasn’t.
And it was all in the same Young family — a half century apart.
Last month, I wrote about one of the province’s most sensational 19th-century murder cases. On Nov. 20, 1875, a farmer named Abel McDonald was robbed of $35 and beaten to death near Cayuga by a couple of hooligans named John Young and his nephew James William Young.
They were charged, tried and sentenced to be hanged. But the pair escaped and hid out in a barn in Ancaster for several weeks. After the cops found them, a shootout ensued with the Youngs finally being brought into custody. James was slightly injured by a gunshot.
Eventually, the uncle was hanged, and the nephew had his sentence commuted to life in prison. The solved case was credited to a famous provincial investigator named John Wilson Murray, who inspired the character of detective William Murdoch on the popular CBC Television series “Murdoch Mysteries.”
But get this: There was another homicide police investigation leading to murder charges against Young family members a generation before.
I learned about the connection from retired psychologist and amateur genealogist David Faux who recently contacted me. He is part of the Young family that traces its lineage to United Empire Loyalist settlers Daniel and Elizabeth Young and he has done a massive amount of family research over the years.
“All and all, a very tangled family,” he says.
John Young, the one who died on the gallows, had an uncle who was also named John. He, and at least one other family member, were charged with the murder of a farmhand named Jesse Masters in 1827.
But there was one key difference between the murder cases that were five decades apart: The homicide in 1827 never happened.
There is a plaque at a Young family cemetery on Upper Wellington Street near Stone Church Road that describes the case as “Hamilton’s first murder mystery.” It goes on to explain that Masters was allegedly killed in a coal pit kiln located near the cemetery. A neighbour claimed he witnessed the homicide. The Young family members — John and a Christopher Young, according to the plaque, along with a third relative James Young, according to Faux — were put on trial even though investigators could not find a body.
The family members were eventually found not guilty by the courts, but the court of public opinion was not as certain.
“The family later succeeded in finding Jesse Masters alive and living in New York state in 1830,” the plaque says. And Masters was brought back to the area to show he wasn’t dead, much less murdered.
So, as I say, I find it remarkable that members of the same family could be generationally connected to one of the most sensational homicide cases in Ontario and “Hamilton’s first murder mystery” a half century before. It’s like something out of the Wild West.
But there is one other bizarre story from the family’s history. And it is a mystery that lingers to this day — a ghost story.
Somehow a broken gravestone from the Young family cemetery ended up in a wall cavity of a supposedly haunted house four kilometres away on Upper Wellington.
The stone was discovered while the house was being demolished in 1983 to make way for a parking lot.
The stone was a memorial to two babies named Emma Grace Young who died in 1879 and Martha Louisa
young who died in 1886. Their remains are at the Young family cemetery on Upper Wellington.
Why was the gravestone removed and put in a wall cavity? Could it be somehow related to ghost sightings at the house in the 1970s that were featured in Hamilton Spectator articles?
No one seems to know.
I’ve written before about the Young family cemetery, the mystery of the gravestone in the supposedly haunted house, and most recently about the 1875 murder. But I was not able to connect the dots before talking to Faux.
So today, I thought I would share the latest information.
In the end, it is all a bunch of coincidences. And I, for one, don’t believe in ghosts. But the stories of the Young family certainly make my family history look rather dull in comparison. To be clear, this Young family is not related to the illustrious Young family from which Hamilton Tiger-Cat owner Bob Young descends.