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Samuel T. Whitehead died 1865

WHITEHEAD, SHIPTON, BALDWIN, CANTILLON

Posted By: Cheryl Locher Moonen (email)
Date: 9/14/2016 at 23:01:15

Dubuque Herald – October 4, 1865

A CASE OF SUICIDE AT DURANGO
~
A Man Takes Strychnine for an
Unfaithful Wife
~
Yesterday morning coroner J. O’Hea Cantillion received information that his services were needed at, or near Durango in this county, a man by the name of Samuel T. Whitehead having died suddenly there under circumstances which induced the suspicion that his death was the result of violence.

Coroner Cantillion accordingly went to Durango and made an investigation of the case which developed the following facts:

Samuel T. Whitehead was a returned solider, having served in the Wisconsin regiment and having been enlisted from Prairie du Chien in that state. He had been married several years and by his wife had two children. He married at Durango a woman named Shipton, but about four years ago she deserted him to live with a man by the name of Baldwin, going with him to Ohio and taking with her one of the children, leaving the other with the father. Since his wife left him he seemed very much “troubled in the mind,” as his brother Charles Whitehead expressed in his testimony before the coroner’s jury on the inquest.

When he returned from the Army he took his child and came to Durango, where he had formerly resided, and where his brother and mother reside, and has been living with his brother since that time. On Monday morning he complained of being unwell, and went out into the woods, not returning until night. About dark his brother saw him coming towards the house leaning on a stick and evidently being unwell. When he reached the house he complained of being sick and called for a drink of water. He soon showed symptoms of having been poisoned, cramping, and being seized with convulsions. At 5 1/2 o’clock in the evening he died.

A letter in a sealed and stamped envelope, directed to Mrs. Martha A. Baldwin, was found in his pocket, which, on being opened was found as follows:
Durango, Dubuque, Iowa,
September, the 21st A. D., 1865

Dearly Beloved One: I embrace the present opportunity to write a few lines to you. Perhaps you will think me very foolish in writing to you, and perhaps I am, but as it is the last one I expect to write to you, you may have a soft place left in your heart big enough to forgive me for this and if you should not have it cannot hurt me for I don’t expect to be alive when you receive this. So after all it don’t make much difference whether I am forgiven or not.

In the first place I will say that when we were married, I loved you with all my heart, and it seemed possible that my love for you increased the longer we lived together, and all my wishes were to see you happy, but when you left me it almost broke my heart. But I bore up with it as best as I could, but you were never long out of my mind. God alone can know what I suffered. But when I was discharged from the service and came back again, it was for the worse. So I left there and came back to Durango, but it was no better than before.

So I have made up my mind that it is better to die by my own hand than to suffer on in this way any longer, and if anyone should ever ask you the occasion of my death you can tell them you were. So goodbye forever in this world.
SAMUEL T. WHITEHEAD


 

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