HARRIS, Jesse

JESSE HARRIS’ SUICIDE.

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A Former Resident of Franklin.

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The following account of the sui­cide of Jesse Harris, at one time a resident of this city, appeared in the Indianapolis Sun:

Jesse Harris, a grocer at 242 Oliver ave., West Indianapolis, committed suicide some time Monday night by shooting himself in the side and temple.

His dead body was found at 4:30 Tuesday morning by a bakery wagon driver, in a large wicker chair beside his store, with a large pool of blood on the ground.

The blood had oozed from a wound in his head and trickled down his right arm. Harris is thought to have been crazed as the result of a wound receiv­ed last Saturday morning in a fight with Thomas Robinson.

Harris boarded with Mrs. E. C. Beck, who lives in the house adjoining his grocery. Mrs. Beck owed Robinson money, and Saturday morning Harris went over to Robinson’s to discuss a settlement when they became involved in a quarrel and Robinson knocked Harris against the balustrade of his porch and cut a long gash in his fore­head. Harris was drunk at the time and wandered off into the city. He was found and taken to the city dispensary where his wound was sewed up.

Mrs. Beck says that Harris had been drinking continuously since his trouble Saturday. He brought his revolver from his room and placed it in a drawer down stairs Monday morning, in conve­nient reach, muttering that he intended to get even with someone. Mrs. Beck hid the weapon and then Harris went to a drug store and tried to purchase poi­son, but the druggist refused to sell it to him. He then returned to the house and, it is supposed, searched till he found the revolver.

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Note: The Marion County Indiana WPA Death Index, 1882–1920, referencing Book H-6, page 271, records that Jesse Harris, a sixty-five-year-old white male, died 31 Aug 1897 in Indianapolis.

Submitted by Mark McCrady and Cathea Curry