Undertaker and Brewer Clash Over Maiden's Affection
A romantic rivalry in a Seattle-area suburb descends into a bloody duel with swords.
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.
Two German residents, Miller, an undertaker, and Fleischien, a brewer, both married men, had a duel with broadswords at Georgetown, one of the suburbs of this city, last Tuesday afternoon, as is alleged, over the affections of a maiden. Friends accompanied the principals to the rendezvous. The undertaker, the challenging party, was cut severely about the head, and quit. No arrests.
“The undertaker, the challenging party, was cut severely about the head, and quit.”
Duels over romance were already an anachronism by 1883, but they occasionally surfaced in frontier-adjacent reporting. Today, such personal disputes are handled in court or social media, but they rarely involve broadswords in local suburbs.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.