Samuel R. Hitchcock

HITCHCOCK

Posted By: Rebecca Foster (email)
Date: 9/10/2014 at 16:37:41

OBITUARY.

HITCHCOCK

The venerable pilot, Samuel R. Hitchcock, is dead--and day before yesterday he was placed in his lowly bed of rest and peace. Hitchcock was pilot on the upper Mississippi for more than twenty years, and a good one. In the fall of ‘84 he became melancholy--and seemed to dwell on the borders of black despair. One day in June last, there came a complete change to him; he brightened up and became jolly and cheerful over the idea that he was immensely wealthy, owned silver mines and gold mines in Colorado , and a dozen great farms in the county.

Expected dividends did not arrive, and he became violent; and his sorrowing wife and relatives had all they could do to keep him from destroying his own house. Mrs. Hitchcock was skillful at bottoming chairs, and one evening she requested him to carry a couple she had finished to a neighbor. He went away with the chairs, and staid so long that Mrs. H. went in search of him. He could not be found that night, and the next day he was discovered twelve miles from town--had been out all night in the rain. He would give no account of himself whatever. The next day he was brought to Davenport for examination by the county commissioners, who sent him to Mt. Pleasant hospital--and there he died last Friday. Mr. Hitchcock was 51 years of age. He was well known by all steamboat men in the upper river trade. His wife is childless.

Source: The Davenport Democrat, Davenport, Ia., 04 May 1886, p. 1.