Midnight Intruder Terrorizes Wilcox Farmhouse
A woman fights off a home invader who broke into her bedroom in the dead of night, narrowly escaping a violent assault.
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 Saturday night about 12 o'clock, someone broke into Moses Saxon's house, entered the room where Mrs. Saxon was sleeping, and said, 'Now I've got you,' and caught her by the throat. A struggle ensued that awoke her son, St. Clair, who was sleeping upstairs. He in an instant understood that something was wrong, grabbed the gun, and ran downstairs. This alarmed the villain, who made his way out of the house just as St. Clair came into the room, and made good his escape out into the dark of the night. Mrs. Saxon is under the doctor's care, and the last report was that she was growing worse.
“He in an instant understood that something was wrong, grabbed the gun and ran downstairs.”
Violent home invasions are as chilling to the public in modern Colfax as they were in 1900. While the tools of survival have changed, the feeling of vulnerability in one's own home remains a primary civic anxiety.
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