CAREY, Barney 1812-1875

CAREY

Posted By: S. Ferrall - IAGenWeb volunteer
Date: 8/26/2023 at 16:26:31

The death list has been augmented this winter to an alarming extent by those who have perished from exposure to the rigors of the terrible cold weather we have been experiencing. Nearly every portion of the western and north-western country has reported victims of the storms chilling and fatal blasts, and now comes our own county to add one to the already long list.

Last Friday forenoon at an early hour, a man was discovered lying in the snow in a field on the Lamb road, in Lafayette township, about six miles from Lansing. On approaching him it was ascertained to be Barney Carey, a farmer of that township, stiff and stark-frozen to death.

He was in Lansing Thursday afternoon and started home about five o'clock. He was a man addicted to drinking and often getting intoxicated, but upon inquiry we have learned that he was not under the influence of liquor when he left town, nor on the way, for he stopped and conversed with his brother-in-law, Mr. Hogan, on the railroad track about two miles below Lansing, and was sober then.

He was riding with one of his neighbors when last seen alive, and it seems had jumped off from the sled, and undertook to cross the fields, which would be a nearer and quicker way for him to get home than round by the road. It must have been after nightfall when he undertook to cross the field, and as he was very thinly clad, having on nothing but a common shirt, pants and an old cavalry jacket, and the cold being intense, he became so benumbed and stupified as to be unable to make his way through the deep snow and sank helplessly and hopelessly down where he was found.

The unfortunate man leaves a wife and two children.

~North Iowa Journal, Wednesday, February 10, 1875; pg 3

Note: Burial is in Oak Hill cemetery