Dr. Otto von Schrader (1815-1875)

VON SCHRADER, SCHRADER

Posted By: Anne Hermann (email)
Date: 8/27/2009 at 12:11:25

Jackson Sentinel, Maquoketa, Iowa, June 10, 1875.

THE DEATH OF DR. OTTO VON SCHRADER

Last Sabbath afternoon our citizens were shocked by the announcement that Dr. O. V. Schrader, one of our oldest pioneer citizens, and President of the First National Bank, had committed suicide by shooting himself with a pistol, in his own barn.

Sunday morning last the doctor appeared to be unusually well, and went to the Congregational Church with his wife and family. Mrs. Schrader remained to Sabbath School after the morning services, while the doctor returned home. About half past twelve p.m., which was very shortly after his return, the neighbors heard the report of a pistol, followed by another at an interval of a few minutes, but not one of them dreamed of a tragedy which was transpiring. At the usual dinner hour, 2 p.m., the doctor not appearing, search was made; when he was discovered lying on his back in one of the stalls of the barn, the discharged pistol lying by his side, the blood slowly oozing from the death wound, and life utterly extinct.

For several years past Dr. Schrader had been failing in health, and in attempts to recuperate he had tried a trip to Europe accompanied by his family, and spent the greater part of the past winter and spring in the South and East for the same purpose, but without seeming effect. No one was more conscious of his failing powers than he, and it was evidently this consciousness and the fear that it would result in utter helplessness that urged him to the commission of the fatal act. In fact, that this was the case, is proven by a brief note, which was found after his death, addressed to his wife, and evidently written after his return from church, in which he gives as a reason for the act his increasingly helplessness, and a feeling that he was rapidly becoming a burden not only to his family, but to his friends.

The weapon with which the deed was committed was a breach loading derringer, single-barrelled, and as a ball hole was found in the side of the stall, it is pretty certain that he tried first the power of the weapon in that way, and satisfied in that respect, he loaded it placed it in his mouth, discharged the contents in an upward direction, the ball lodging in the base of the brain, and producing almost instant death.

Dr. Schrader was born in eastern Prussia about the year 1815, and was therefore some 60 years of age. He came to this country when a lad of 11, living in Philadelphia for a number of years, where he acquired a medical education. In 1846 he removed to Maquoketa, practicing medicine for several years among our old settlers, all of whom remember him well in that capacity. The life of a physician, however, was not suited to his tastes, and he soon abandoned it for that of banking, being the founder of the first institution of that kind in Maquoketa, and the germ of what is now the First National Bank, of which he was President and one of the heaviest stockholders at the time of his death. He leaves a wife and seven children, who it is needless to say, have the heartfelt, earnest sympathies of the whole community.

Relatives of the family in Connecticut and St. Louis were telegraphed for, and in anticipation of their arrival the funeral will not take place until today, when the remains will be deposited in Mt. Hope Cemetery.
Peace to his ashes.

Dr. Otto von Schrader Grave
 

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