A Sudden Tragedy at the Homestead
A quiet farming life in Seattle ends in a moment of accidental violence when a young man meets an untimely end.
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.
Monday night, about 11 o'clock, Mr. R. Farwell, aged 20 years, who was boarding in a rooming house on the farm of Herbert Brown on Butt Street, heard a noise in the house and went quietly up to the room of the house next to his. He went to return to his room with his pistol in his hand, when it went off, the bullet taking effect in his own heart and causing the unfortunate man to die but a short time after the accident. He was a nephew of Mr. Brown and had been on the Coast but a few months, having come from Minnesota, where his mother resides. He was a baker by profession and had stayed on account of ill health. He was well liked by all.
“He went to return to his room with his pistol in his hand, when it went off, the bullet taking effect in his own heart.”
In 1885, Seattle was a frontier town where farming still occurred within city limits, and gun ownership was commonplace. This tragic accidental shooting highlights the dangers inherent in a less regulated, more isolated era of domestic life in a rapidly growing Pacific Northwest city.
From readers
No comments yet. If you know something about this story — a correction, a family memory, a source — it belongs here.