H. D. LaCossitt

LACOSSITT

Posted By: Ken Wright (email)
Date: 2/22/2008 at 16:17:46

Maquoketa Sentinel
February 19, 1857

From the Dubuque North West
Death of H. D. LaCossitt

It is with feelings of the most profound sorrow that we announce the death of H. D. LaCossitt, senior editor of the North West. He died at Iowa City on Sunday morning last, at 5 o’clock, of inflammatory rheumatism. His remains were brought to this city yesterday under the care of one of the Masonic Fraternity – he being a member of the order – and placed in the parlor of the City Hotel, where his friends flocked around them, in deep manifestations of grief. At the request of his wife they were removed to his residence on Third street. Some five weeks ago he left for Iowa City, enfeebled in health and energies by over-exertion, with a view to recruit, and act as correspondent for the North West. Shortly after his arrival at Iowa City he had an attack of the Congestive Chills. He was for a few days confined to his room, but still acted as clerk to one of the Legislative Committee’s during the session of the Legislature. He continued to correspond with this paper until a week or ten days before his death, and so sanguine was he of resuming his editorial labors, that on the Tuesday previous to his death, he wrote home seeing that he was to leave Iowa City next morning for Muscatine, whence he would proceed directly to Dubuque.

On the first of the present month he caught a pain in his knee which gradually extended to all his joints, and so affected his whole body as to make every part of it painfully tender. His physicians pronounced his disease inflammatory rheumatism. Under the kindest care and the most skillful medical treatment, he lingered the last week of his existence in great pain and suffering, and died, as we have stated above, on Sunday, the 8th inst., at 5 o’clk,

The friends entertained no apprehension of his death, and were daily expecting him home. But alas! He came home, not to gladden the heart of a wife, who impatiently watched for his return, not to derive a father’s pleasure from the greeting of his little ones, but to cast them all, and also the community, who deeply lament his death, into general gloom. In his death we have to record the loss of a kind husband, a fond father, a true friend, an inestimable citizen, and a man kind-hearted and true, and strictly honorable in all the relations of life. Few events could cast our community into deeper sorrow. He leaves a wife and four children to mourn his loss.