History Knox
Mark Sebastian Jordan authors a column reflecting on the community's history each Saturday.
Author’s Note: I am indebted to the research assembled by John Chidester for the Public Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County, where he did a presentation about this case about five years ago, and to the reference department staff who shared it with me. Next week, we will examine the events that so twisted William S. Bergin, Jr., that he could turn into the kind of monster who would shoot a man in broad daylight on the streets of Mount Vernon, a crime which would lead to his infamy as the only man ever hung for murder in Knox County history.
EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a five-part series on a murder committed by Will Bergin and his ensuing botched hanging. Part I (the shooting). Part II (Bergin’s disastrous Civil War years). Part III (eyewitness to the aftermath of Custer’s Last Stand. Part IV Bergin’s shooting of McBride defied explanation. Part V the botched hanging.
MOUNT VERNON — Billy Bergin was a bright boy, known for his cleverness in school. Part of that swift wit may have come from learning how to deal with ever-changing situations in both his family’s life and line of work.
Billy was born in Meigs County, Ohio, on Aug. 15, 1848. The family moved from southern Ohio to the Cleveland area, and then finally to Mount Vernon in 1858, as his father sought jobs in the hotel business. The Mount Vernon job was running the Cataract House, near the B&O train station on East High Street.
At the beginning of the Civil War, the position of manager at the Franklin House, on South Main Street, opened. Under William B. Bergin’s management, the hotel thrived, and he was able to buy it and rename it the Bergin House.
The adventure of moving and constantly meeting different people who came and went through the hotels his family managed must have whetted young Billy’s appetite for excitement.
With the war between the states dramatically flaring, Billy decided he needed to be in the action. His parents dismissed his eagerness to volunteer, pointing out that he was too young to join. Young William displayed his wild streak then, running away from home, intent on joining the army.
Billy’s father followed his son and brought him home not once, but three times, twice catching up with him in Cincinnati and once in Newark. After the third episode, his exasperated parents decided that the boy, though only 15, was incorrigible. They finally agreed that Billy could enlist if the army would have him, even though the official age for enlistment was 18.
Many younger men got into the army, though, because recruiters would simply ask “are you 18,” and if the youth said he was, that was that. The War Department was clearly aware of that practice, because they issued an official regulation in the summer of 1864 saying that under no circumstances should anyone under the age of 16 be admitted. But by that time, William S. Bergin had not only enlisted, he had already been maimed for life. He was 15.
Private Bill Bergin enlisted on March 1, 1864, and was sent to Camp Dennison in Cincinnati for training as a member of Company A of the 121st Ohio Volunteer Infantry. He was soon sent south, where the Union army was embarking on the Atlanta Campaign.
Due to his young age and quick wit, Billy became a real favorite of his regiment. It’s likely that he worked hard to justify his place in the unit, though it’s equally likely that the trauma of “seeing the elephant” – the euphemism for experiencing the horror of battle for the first time – scarred the boy’s soul.
On June 2, 1864, while the regiment was involved in skirmishes in the Allatoona Hills, northwest of Atlanta, Billy was hit by a Confederate bullet that shattered his right wrist. He was rushed behind the lines, where a battlefield surgeon saw that the wound was severe and life threatening under field conditions. The hand could not be saved, and the shattering of the wrist meant the lower arm couldn’t be saved, either. The surgeon decided that the only remedy that would save Billy’s life was to amputate at the elbow, then cauterize the stump. He grabbed his saw and went to work.
Severe trauma leaves permanent scars on people. The ferocious hand-to-hand combat of the Civil War was traumatic for everyone who participated in it. For years after, veterans were often described as “shell-shocked,” a vague description that has today been replaced with the psychological definition “post-traumatic stress disorder.” Add on top of that a major wound that results in permanent maiming and the veteran must deal with horrendous aftereffects.
But subject a 15-year-old who has not yet made it all the way to adulthood to such trauma?
It’s no surprise that William S. Bergin was never the same after the war.
Billy spent a long recuperation in the hospital. Meanwhile, the war had ended. He was given an honorable discharge in October 1864, after which he returned home to Mount Vernon and resumed his high school studies.
Unable to concentrate on school, he instead sought the influence of friends and connections to get him a job in Columbus as a clerk at the Adjutant General’s office. From there he moved to an army clerk position in Washington, D.C., but that position ended with the war, and he returned to Knox County.
In 1866, Bill Bergin’s condition evidently declined for a time, for he went in and out of a couple of disabled veterans’ homes, including the large one in Dayton. But as he stabilized, that old restlessness returned, and he suddenly left Ohio without informing anyone where he was going.
When family next heard from Billy, they were astonished that he was writing to them from California, where he was working as a bookkeeper for a mining company.
Then he just as abruptly quit the mining company and joined a surveying crew measuring out property all across the west as more and more settlers bought property in the western territories. The crew traveled throughout the Rocky Mountains, camping in places where no permanent settlements were yet established.
By the time Billy Bergin next visited Mount Vernon, it was obvious that he had become a wild rover, a dissipated wreck of a man. He still had his wit and was known for his hilarious way with sarcasm, but he also became known for his epic drinking binges, and his tendency to run up bills that he had no intention of ever paying.
William S. Bergin had started out as a bright boy, easily able to overcome the instability of frequent family moves and constantly changing family work situations. Young trauma, including war, wounding, and wild living, turned him into a shadow of his former self.
Yet one more major misadventure remained before the events which would propel him to the gallows behind the Knox County courthouse. Billy returned to the west in 1873 by reenlisting in the army, seeking a framework which might give him the stability he could not find himself.
Instead, in June of 1876, less than a year before his dark deed, Billy found himself walking across a corpse-strewn battlefield, looking at the earthly remains of Lt. Col. George Armstrong Custer.
(Part III of the story of Knox County murderer Billy Bergin will continue next week with Bergin’s encounter with Indian fighting on the Great Plains, culminating in the infamous Battle of Little Bighorn. Many thanks to John Chidester and Christie Smith-McGowan of the Library of Mount Vernon and Knox County for sharing in-depth research.)
