James Clingenpeel 1856-1899

CLINGENPEEL WHITE

Posted By: Connie J Swearingen-Volunteer (email)
Date: 8/19/2012 at 23:11:27

Mapleton Press
10 November 1899

James Clingenpeel From Near Danbury Suicides’ While Temporarily Demented.

Mr. James Clingenpeel, a well to-do farmer living about two miles south of Danbury, met death in a peculiar way last Friday night. He had been suffering for three weeks with typho-malarial fever, and in his delirium, and while his nurse was absent from his bedside, got out of bed, unlocked two doors and escaped with only his night clothes on. His adopted son, Will Clingenpeel, and his sister, Mrs. Peter Moore, of Morning Side, were with him, and he insisted on the boy going to bed in the early part of the night. The boy obeyed and Mrs. Moore stayed with the sick man, who told Mrs. Moore that the light hurt his eyes and he asked her to take it to the kitchen and make him some soup. While she was away Clingenpeel got up, unlocked two doors, and escaped. He went to the river, leaped in and drowned. This was a short time before 12 o'clock midnight.

The nurse returned from the kitchen, being absent not more than five minutes and found the bed empty, the doors being left open showing that he had gone out. The alarm was immediately given, a searching party formed, and after a three hours' search he was found about three o'clock in the morning dead in the Maple River, about half a mile from the house. His fever was running a very favorable course, except that he was gloomy and despondent and told Dr. Talboy, who saw him on the previous evening that he would not live till midnight. He had always been a sober and industrious man well thought of by all who knew him, and the only explanation for the tragic ending is the effect of the disease upon the nervous system.

The deceased was born in Indiana, August 18, 1856, and -was therefore forty-three years of age. In 1877 he married Miss Olive White and soon moved to Iowa, locating in Liston Township, Woodbury County, where he has since resided.

Mr. Clingenpeel leaves a wife and four children, three boys and one girl. He belonged to the Methodist Protestant church at Mapleton.

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