William Henry York (1840 - 1873)

Born Feb 1840 in Ogle County, Illinois, United States

Ancestors

Husband of Mary E (Parshall) Jackson — married 9 Oct 1866 in Whiteside, Illinois, United States

Died 11 Mar 1873 at age 33 in Osage Township, Labette, Kansas, United States

Problems/Questions Profile manager: Keith Jackson [send private message]

Biography

William was born in Feb 1840 in Ogle County, Illinois. He was the second child and second son born to Miner York and Margery Irving.

The Bloody Benders

Sometime after Jun 1870, William moved to Independence, Kansas. In Oct 1870, a farm in Osage Township in neighboring Labette County, Kansas was acquired by the notorious Bender family. The Benders -- John Sr, his wife Elvira, son John Jr and daughter (or daughter-in-law) Kate -- built a two-room cabin along the Great Osage Trail. The cabin had a general store in the front room where travellers could stop for a meal or spend the night. From May 1871 to Dec 1872, they murdered at least a dozen (and possibly more than 20) of these travellers and buried their bodies on their 160-acre farm.

At first the disappearances did not attract much attention, as many of the travellers were alone and came from far away places. However, in the winter of 1872, a man and his infant daughter from Independence (about 15 miles southwest from the Bender farm) went missing while travelling to Iowa. A short while thereafter, in early March 1873, William decided to search for them, but he too went missing. His brother Lt. Col. Alexander York gathered 50 men who visited every homestead along the trail leading northeast out of Independence, stopping at the Bender farm on 28 March. Alexander returned on 3 April, when he became convinced that the Benders were involved in his brother's disappearance, but he was unable at that time to find any evidence.

A few weeks later, a meeting of Osage Township men (attended by John Bender Sr and his son) agreed that all farms should be searched, and shortly thereafter, the Bender family disappeared. A few days after their disappearance, a search of their abandoned farm revealed first the body of Dr York, who had been killed on 11 Mar 1873, then the bodies of up to 20 other victims.

At the time, detectives determined the Benders likely fled their farm, after attention was beginning to focus on them, by taking a wagon and team of horses 12 miles north to Thayer. From there, they continued north by train. However, they were never located, and rumors also circulated that they had been killed by vigilantes.

In 1901, Cornelius Stone, a farmer who lived in Osage Township at the time of the murders but had since moved to Oregon, issued a statement confessing to the killing of the Bender family. He claimed that he and John Sperry had been leaders of a vigilante party numbering 12 men that killed the Benders in 1873 and buried their bodies in a sandy creek-bed nearby.^[1] Although the confession was widely reported at the time, it does not appear any action was taken against Mr Stone or Mr Sperry, and the story faded from the news.

Sources

1. ↑ Helped Hang the Benders, The Missoulian, Missoula MT, 29 Aug 1901, p. 2. (Ancestry.com) (requires subscription).

• Ancestry Illinois, Marriage Index, 1860-1920