The Reverend S. Hall Young came to Alaska in 1878 to minister to Fort Wrangel’s Tlingit congregation. He found a community reeling under the stampede of the Cassiar Gold Rush. No one was around to enforce laws, ensure peace, or ensure justice.
He married Fannie Kellogg in Sitka in December 1878. On the newlywed couple’s return to Fort Wrangel, Young was asked to officiate a single funeral for both murderer John Boyd and the murdered Thomas O’Brien.
Reverend Young told the story of John Boyd in “Hall Young of Alaska,” an autobiography written years after his time in Fort Wrangel. Young and the National Police Gazette have the only contemporaneous accounts of the John Boyd story.