Tragedy in Two Acts on the Cowlitz
A young man's accidental death in the woods is followed by the complete destruction of his family's home by fire, leaving the mourning parents with nothing.
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.
Last Monday, the 14th inst., the little settlement on Stillwater, a tributary of the Cowlitz River, about 10 miles north of Castle Rock, was startled by the report of the accidental shooting and death of a young man named Justice Booth, son of Henry and Isabella Booth. It appears that a party of young men had gone out to run in a deer, and the boy, whose life was to terminate, in company with two other boys, had taken his stand on a log in the creek. From the nature of the wound, he is supposed to have been standing on the log with the butt of the gun resting between his feet and the muzzle held by one of his hands. The gun must have slipped from its resting place and, striking the hammer against the log, discharged the weapon. The ball took effect in the forehead, ranging up and backward, carrying away the whole top of the head, producing death instantly. While the distracted parents and sympathizing neighbors were assembled at the house where the mutilated remains were lying, the dwelling of Mr. Booth, which had been left but a short time, caught fire and burned to the ground. Everything was destroyed. Only a plow and wagon and the clothes which the family had on them at the time escaped the general destruction.
“While the distracted parents and sympathizing neighbors were assembled at the house where the mutilated remains were lying, the dwelling of Mr. Booth... caught fire and burned to the ground.”
Accidental gun deaths in the backcountry remain a hauntingly frequent reality in Washington’s rural geography. The loss of a family home during a moment of profound grief echoes the vulnerability of frontier life, where a single calamity—be it a fire or a faulty piece of equipment—could erase a family's livelihood in an instant.
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