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AFRICAN AMERICAN RESEARCH
NEWS Sherman Daily Democrat
August 13, 1886 AT HOWE Intelligence was received in the city about 8 p.m. Saturday, that the dead body of a Negro man had been found in a thicket on the farm of Capt. J.C. Marshall, about two miles from the town of Howe. Justice Taylor, of that precinct, was sick, and the nearest justice being Esquire Hinkle, of Sherman, that official was accordingly summoned, and in company with a Register representative left for Howe on the 3:30 train yesterday morning, and arrived in that village in time to procure conveyances for the scene and arrived there before sunrise. The evidence of two young men by the name of Bradshaw and Burnham is corroborative, and is, in substance, as follows: About three weeks ago Sam Brown, the Negro now dead, was taken with a strange fit in the stable lot, just west of Capt. Marshall's residence. While in this spasm it took several parties to hold him, and although he received prompt and skillful medical attention at once, he relapsed into a fever, from which he had just recovered, but which from his actions of late must in all probability have deranged his mental capabilities. This belief that he was losing his mind had been strengthened by the fact that he has been laboring under the hallucination that the spirit of a young lady who recently died in the house is haunting it and he has frequently told stories of what he would hear during the night. On Friday morning he went to the residence of Mr. Gerrell, who lives about a half mile from the Marshall residence, and asked for a couple of charges of duck shot, which he procured, stating at the time that he had seen a dog in the woods near by and that he wanted to shoot it. He came home and Saturday morning got up pretty early, and passed through a room where some young men were sleeping, with Capt. Marshall's double barreled shot gun in his hand. Some one asked him where he was going, and he replied that he was going out to drive up some loose cattle. He left the house and about a half hour after a gun shot was heard, but no especial attention was paid to it. Sam did not return to breakfast, but no attention was paid to the matter, and when he didn't turn up for dinner it was thought that he perhaps had gotten sick again and stopped in at some of the neighbors' houses. About 5 o'clock, the young men, Bradshaw and Burnhan, got on horses and went out to look for him and found HIS DEAD BODY lying in a thicket, about two hundred yards from the farm, and in the direction from which the gun shot report had come. He was lying at full length with his arms out-stretched. His hat sitting to the right of the body, about four feet away, while a double barreled shotgun which showed signs of recently having been discharged was found lying about six feet from his feet. There was a gun shot wound in the left breast which ranged upward, coming out near the neck and which must necessarily have been almost instantaneous. His hands were bloody and the shirt showed signs of having been torn from off the wound. There was the print in the ground where the butt of the gun had been placed, and it is supposed that after placing the muzzle of the gun against his breast he pushed the trigger off with a stick. He was about twenty two years old and bore a good name. The jury returned a verdict in accordance with the above facts. News Index Susan Hawkins © 2024 If you find any of Grayson County TXGenWeb links inoperable, please send me a message. |