WALLACE, James 1862-1927

WALLACE

Posted By: Tammy (email)
Date: 4/14/2015 at 07:41:26

Farm Hand Hangs Himself In Barn Near Reinbeck

James Wallace Takes His Life While Supposed To Be Despondent

Resident Co. Many Years

Act Committed Monday on Clark Brown Farm, Seven Miles North of Reinbeck

Apparently despondent over the failures of his life, James Wallace, 65, employed by Clark Brown on his farm seven miles north of Reinbeck, was found hanging in the Brown barn shortly after noon Monday. Mr. Brown made the discovery when he returned from the field for the noonday meal. Having wondered why Wallace did not come to work, Brown made a search of the barn, to find Wallace hanging by a rope fastened over a rafter in the hay mow.

From all indications Wallace had hanged himself about 10 o'clock. He had been working at the Brown farm since Feb. 4, when he came there from Conrad. During the last three or four days Mr. Brown had noticed that Wallace seemed very melancholy. It is presumed that he had become despondent because, at his age, he had not accumulated anything, and also that his wife had divorced him. Wallace had eaten breakfast and when Mr. Brown left for the field he supposed Wallace would follow him within a short time.

Mrs. Wallace is employed on the B. J. Stam farm, south of Reinbeck, and has a 16-year-old son with her. The couple had two daughters, 32 and 22 years of age, living in Omaha.

Surviving Wallace are three brothers and a sister. They are George Wallace, of Tama; Phil, of Waterloo; Dall, who lives in Missouri, and Mrs. Jane Callahan, of Dinuba, Calif.

L. D. Coffman, of Grundy Center, county coroner, investigated the circumstances of Wallace's death but decided that an inquest was unnecessary.

Funeral services were held from the Coffman home in this city on Tuesday and was attended by the two daughters from Omaha, his son from Reinbeck, and the brother from Waterloo.

He was buried in the Grundy Center cemetery.

--The Grundy Register (Grundy Center, Iowa), 16 June 1927, pg 1