Collamer, Jerome

COLLAMER

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/4/2008 at 17:09:07

Maquoketa Weekly Excelsior
April 10, 1873

Sudden Death.

On Thursday, April 10th, our city was thrown into an intense excitement by the death, from accident or suicide, of Jerome Collamer, lumber merchant. The circumstances, as we learn them, are as follows: About one o’clock, Mr. A. Miller, in passing the office of Mr. Collamer, near the Midland depot, heard a groaning within, and at once opened the door. He found Mr. Collamer lying on his back across his bed, his feet on the floor, and his head in a pool of blood. In the center of his forehead was a bullet hole, the leaden missel of death having penetrated far into the brain. His hands were across his breast and an eight inch Smith & Wesson pistol was between them. When discovered he was still breathing, but entirely unconscious and gradually dying. He continued to breathe until about three o’clock, when life became extinct. The appearance of the body and all surroundings lead to the conclusion that he fired the pistol himself. He purchased it the very morning before the shooting, and his friends think that, being unaccustomed to the use of firearms, he was carelessly handling it, and that the shot was accidental.

Jerome Collamer was about thirty-eight years of age, and unmarried. He was a man of the strictest integrity in all business relations; a man of the most rigid morality, and as highly respected as any in this community. He had hosts of friends and not a single enemy. We never heard any one speak ill of him. He was universally beloved. He was raised in Junius, Seneca County, New York, and had been a resident of our city about eight years. A few months since his aged parents came to live with him a nice new house was just erected and fairly settled when the terrible death severed the family circle and desolated the hearthstone. The old father and mother, nearly crazed by the sad, sad bereavement, have the warm sympathy of all. The blow is almost too heavy to bear. The whole community feels a loss; but at the home of those good old people it seems that the light has all gone out.