Delilah (Spurlin) Kirkman (1822-1910)

SPURLIN, KIRKMAN, ZINSMASTER

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 2/14/2017 at 19:31:43

From Nevada Representative September 27, 1910 (front page)

DEATH OF MRS. KIRKMAN

Reminder of an Old Senation.

The Des Moines paper report the death in that city of Mrs. Delilah Kirkman, widow of George N. Kirkman, and an old settler in this county. Mrs. Kirkman died a the home in Des Moines of her daughter, Mrs. Zinsmaster, where she had been in the habit of spending her winters and wher she had remained through the past summer, her increasing feebleness making it impracticable for her to come as usual for the summer to the home of other daughters just south of Maxwell. She was 85 years or more of age, and her death surprises those only who knew of her so many years ago that she seemed to them to belong to another era. She was the mother of large family and the Kirkman home on the very south edge of Story county west of the old-time village of Peoria was familiiar place in times reaching back close tothe beginning of the county.

What affords especial interest now in Mrs. Kirkman's demise is its reminder of the murder of Mr. Kirkman thirty-five years ago, the past summer. He was dragged from his bed and from beside Mrs. Kirkman in the night and was hanged to a small tree in the orchard near by. The matter was investigated by a Story county coroner's jury consisting of Wm. Lockridge, E. W. Lockwood and W. K. Wood, and some of the sons-in-law of Mr. Kirkman and one or two other parties were arrested and, we think, were held for preliminary examination; but nothing was ever learned that would fasten the responsibility for the crime onto anyone, and no one was ever brought to trial on account of it. The matter remains to this day a mystery, and so it will doubtless remain to the end, unless there shall be a death-bed confession from someone. While the efforts continued to solve the mystery Mrs. Kirkman was much discussed, and after the efforts were remitted it was recognized that, aside from the fact of the mystery, she was a lovable woman. It also was the correct understanding that her husband had not been a lovable man.