Fatal Brawl in the Mining Town of Gilman
A blacksmith is in custody after a deadly encounter outside a hotel leaves one man dead.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Marshal John McQuade, of Gilman, arrived in the city last night bringing John Brackell as a prisoner, charged with shooting and fatally wounding Nick Strassner at that town. James Graham notified the marshal yesterday morning at 3:40 that there was a fight before Davis' hotel. The marshal proceeded to the scene and found Strassner lying on the sidewalk with a serious pistol wound in his right breast, which the attending physician pronounced mortal. The bullet struck him below the left armpit and passed through his body, coming out just above the heart and lodged in his vest. Jack Brackell was caught by the marshal standing near the wounded man holding a 38-caliber pistol, smoking at the muzzle. The marshal with some difficulty succeeded in wresting the weapon from Brackell and hurried him, together with John Dobson and two other witnesses, to jail and brought Brackell to the city in the evening. Brackell prides himself on being very handy with a revolver and is reported to have frequently stated that he would shoot anyone who troubled him. He is 45 years old and is a blacksmith employed at the mines and is a good mechanic. Nick Strassner is 35 years old, a well-to-do and respectable citizen, and has a wife and three children.
“Jack Brackell was caught by the marshal standing near the wounded man holding a 38-caliber pistol, smoking at the muzzle.”
Gilman, once a rowdy coal mining town, was renamed Issaquah in 1899. The story of a fatal tavern brawl reflects the volatile atmosphere of the late 19th-century mining frontiers in the Cascades.
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