The Sudden Loss of a Young Editor
James Williams Holton, the young heir to the Yakima Republic, passes away at twenty-two.
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.
On Wednesday morning the community was greatly shocked and pained with the announcement that James Williams Holton, only son of Col. and Mrs. C. M. Holton, had died suddenly at 1:30 a.m. of typho-malarial fever and peritonitis. 'Jay,' as he was called by his many friends, was born on the family homestead at Potter, Yates county, New York, and was twenty-two years old on the eighth day of May last. He was but just entering upon a useful career, having returned a few months ago from the east, where his education was completed, and taken active management of his father’s paper, the Yakima Republic. The funeral services will be held from the family residence, Friday, at 2 o’clock, p. m., and will be conducted by Rev. S. H. Cheadle, and be under the auspices of Progress lodge, No. 51, I. O. O. F., of which the deceased was a member. The body will not be interred here but will be taken to Portland, where it will lie in a vault until such a time as it can be taken to its final resting place at Battle Creek, Michigan.
“The citizens of Yakima have only the most heartfelt sympathy for Mr. and Mrs. Holton and Miss Myrtle in their great bereavement, and seldom does death occur where the feeling of sadness enshrouds so many.”
Typho-malarial fever was a common and dreaded diagnosis in the frontier era, often resulting from contaminated water supplies. It serves as a stark reminder of how fragile life was in early Yakima before the development of modern public health infrastructure and sanitation.
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