A Tragic End in the Palouse
A young farmer in Colfax dies by suicide in front of his fiancée following a series of personal disputes.
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.
In the presence of the girl he was engaged to marry, Lawrence Johnson, a farmer 23 years old, took carbolic acid and died in a few minutes while his betrothed and her mother worked to save his life. The suicide occurred at the farm of Mrs. J. C. Dickinson in Pleasant Valley, 15 miles from Colfax. Johnson had Mrs. Dickinson's farm rented and had lived there for more than a year. He was engaged to marry her daughter, 18-year-old Minnie Renshaw. Though the couple had announced dates for the wedding, they frequently quarreled and had postponed the ceremony several times. On Sunday, Johnson asked Miss Renshaw to accompany him to Sunday school, but she chose to wait until the evening service. Johnson went upstairs, wrote several letters, and returned to lie down on the sofa. Miss Renshaw soon noticed a change in his expression; realizing he had ingested poison, the two women worked in a frenzy to save him, but he died in convulsions. A letter addressed to his mother gave instructions regarding his property and mentioned $40 in his pocket. Johnson, a hard-working man with a reputation for being industrious, had remarked that morning, 'A man had as well be in hell with his back broke as in the Palouse country and in debt.' Despite this, he reportedly had no money debts, and his landlord had recently offered to finance his farming for the coming year.
“A man had as well be in hell with his back broke as in the Palouse country and in debt.”
This tragedy reflects the intense economic pressures and social isolation faced by homesteaders in the Pacific Northwest at the turn of the century. The stigma surrounding debt and the precarious nature of agrarian life often led to extreme personal desperation, a recurring theme in the early history of the Palouse.
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