I've been dragging my feet for the past month, trying to figure out how to end this installment of the Enoch Young Story....so let's wrap it up.
Enoch Young was not a blood relative of mine, however, he was by marriage. Enoch was the son-in-law of Frederick and Ursula Houseworth, and brother-in-law of my Great Grandmother Mary Ann Houseworth....married to her younger sister Maria Houseworth, until he was shipped off to the Ohio State Pen in Columbus, for the murder of Israel Bensley in Waldo, Ohio. For the first several years of my research, I had been informed(can't even remember by whom or when) that Enoch died in Prison in 1893, and that he and Maria had 2 Children, Perry and Daisy, together. It turns out the story was much more interesting than that....Enoch's daughters(2 of them) were instrumental in working to get Enoch freed, and even the newspapers that had him convicted before the trial, were petitioning Governor McKinley for his pardon.
I want to thank Enoch descendant Michael Sibbersen of Bowling Green, Ohio, for much of the material related to Enoch and his eventual pardon.
Enoch Young, Prison and beyond_______________
Apparently the good folks of Waldo and Marion County had a change of heart about Enoch Young after he was sent off to prison.....remember, the majority of the jury was in favor of hanging him....and the town folks had put the sheriff of alert of a possible lynching. 12 years alter a Chaplin one, J.A. Sutton began circulating a petition to free Young, The Marion Star(the main paper who had Young and Gilman Houseworth tried and convicted before the trial began in the late winter of 1880), the Marion Independent, the Morrow Independent, the Kenton Times, and others joined in the call....12 years was enough, they chimed in, for a murder committed while under the influence.
Daughter's Ida and Daisy were aged 15 and 12 when the push for Enoch's pardon began....Ida in particular waged a campaign upon the Board of Pardons and Governor McKinley(yes, this was William McKinley who would become President of the United States within a few years). Lawyers, Judge Beer, who presided over the original trial, and ordinary town folks went to Columbus, in person, and via letters and mass mailings to ask for the State of Ohio to free Enoch Young....Young himself sent several letters to the state to ask for forgiveness for his crime.
Finally, 2 years after the push began, with the nod of McKinley, the State Board of Pardons issued the following:
THE MURDERER OF ISRAEL BENSLEY RECEIVES EXECUTIVE CLEMENCY
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His pardon is based upon the condition that he abstain from intoxicating drinks--Through the clemency of Governor McKinley, Enoch H. Young, the murderer of Israel Bensley at Waldo in 1880 was permitted to leave the penitentiary and join his relatives Monday, with the condition from intoxicating liquors.
Young owes his release chiefly to the devotion of his two daughters, who have been untiring during the past two years in their efforts with the Board of Pardons. It was through their lengthy petitions were circulated and numerously signed, asking that their father, broken down with his fourteen years of confinement, be recommended for executive clemency. These daughters, when their father committed the crime for which he was sent to the penitentiary for life, were aged 5 and 2 years. Their mother afterwords married and is now living with her husband at Westerville.
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So on February 26, 1894(one hundred and fourteen years ago this very day), Enoch Young was set a free man.....thanks to a change of heart and his two young daughters.
However, freedom for Enoch was not to last. Young moved back to his native Pennsylvania shortly after gaining his freedom....going to work back in the oil fields of Washington County and the town of Thomas Station. I don't have privy to exactly how Enoch met his demise on February 8, 1897, just under 3 years after his release. The quote is...."Enoch Young was killed in accident involving an oil rig" His body was returned to Waldo, Ohio, and today he rests along with many of my Houseworth ancestors in the Waldo Town Cemetery.
The daughters married and went on with their lives, son Perry, who was born just after Enoch went to prison, married, had two daughters, lived in Kenton, and was killed when he walked in front of a locomotive in 1918, at the age of 38. His former wife, Maria Houseworth Young Anderson, married Al Anderson, had a couple of more children, and died in Kenton is 1912, and is buried there, at the Wolf Creek Cemetery.
There you have it....more or less, the story of Gilman Houseworth and Enoch Young, brothers-in-law, who got drunk one February afternoon in Waldo, Ohio, and another man died......
It is fitting that I finish this story in February. Enoch was born in February 1853, the murder occurred in February 1880, he was pardoned in February 1894, and died in February 1897.
{top-Enoch's request for a pardon...there are about 30 others from daughters, lawyers, politicans, pastors, and others in my possesion}
That ends this story, however, hardly the history of the family....MORE STILL TO COME.
prh
