William Morris Buchanan (1849-1867)

BUCHANAN, BLOOD

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 5/13/2017 at 09:41:37

From Nevada Representative October 4, 1907 (front page)

Death of Young Buchanan.

The same number of the Aegis reports one of the most sorrowful events that ever occurred in this vicinity, this being the accidental death of a young fellow named Buchanan, who was one of a party of movers that camped by the ford in the southeast part of the village. The party, as it is remembered, consisted of Mrs. Eunice Buchanan, a widow, her invalid daughter, Mary, a son slightly younger who was her main support and her son-in-law, Lemuel Blood, and his family. They were on their way to Nebraska to take up homestead and camping here, the young man took a shot-gun and went after some prairie chickens. Returning to the camp, he accidentally discharged his gun and he was instantly killed. The screams of his mother are yet remembered by some who hastened at their call. The result of the accident was that the western journey was abandoned; the good people here assisted in the burial of the young man in the Nevada cemetery; and family located here. Mr. Blood bought what is not the Morse farm northeast of the fair ground; Mrs. Buchanan and Mary, and later her grandson Will Blood, lived for years in a little house north of the Baptist church in Nevada. Mary died there nearly twenty years ago; and Mrs. Buchanan died just about ten years ago at the home of her grandson, Will, then a Methodist preacher, at Polk City, and was buried here. Will is still in the Methodist ministry and is now at Bluff City, Kansas. All of the family have been always highly esteemed; but the death of the young man who was the mainstay of his mother and helpless sister make their path a hard one through many years. Some others who knew them very well may have been like the writer in not even knowing of the tragic even which was the occasion of their being here and of some of the hardships which they bore bravely and uncomplainingly.

SUBMITTER'S NOTE: Mrs. Eunice Buchanan was Eunice Herrington Buchanan, widow of James C. Buchannon/Buchanan. Eunice Buchanan's daughter, Sarah Elizabeth Buchanan, was the second wife of Lemuel Blood having married in Bureau County, Illinois on 7 December 1856.

The Blood family is in the 1870 Nevada, Story County, Iowa census and their fifth child, Emma, was born in Nevada in March of 1870. Their fourth child was born in Bureau County, Illinois in 1867. Thus this even occurred sometime between 1867-1870.