James Hemstock (ca. 1841-1909)

HEMSTOCK

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 1/13/2023 at 10:29:31

From Nevada Representative November 3, 1911 (page 1)

NEWS OF JAMES HEMSTOCK

Story County Man Reported Dead in Idaho

There comes through a dispatch from Clinton, Iowa, to the Register and Leader advice that James Hemstock, brother of Thomas and George and the other Hemstocks, died two years ago in Idaho after being missing from the point of view of relatives here for some twenty-five years. The deceased came to Story county with his father's family soon after the war and lived here until some time in the '80s. Then he went west. The rest of the story is given in the dispatch referred to, the authority for which is evidently his brother DeVille Hemstock of Clinton. The dispatch is as follows:

Clinton, Nov. 2.--DeVille Hemstock, a Chicago & Northwestern conductor, has learned that his brother, James Hemstock, who has been missing for nearly a quarter of a century, has been dead for two years, and his body buried beside a lonely mountain trail in Idaho.

There is a romantic story connection with his life. Hemstock, who was 68 years old at the time of his death, was a huge stalwart man, a dead shot with a rifle, and a picturesque character.

About twenty-five years ago, disappointed in love, he went not reclusion in the Idaho mountains, taking up the life of a hermit trapper. His only friends were his dog and a German trapper who also lived alone a few miles from Hemstock's cabin. Missing his neighbor one day the German visited his cabin and found his stricken with appendicitis. He helped the sufferer on his broncho, and started with him for Florence, Idaho, the nearest settlement. The sick man died in his saddle and was buried by his friend on the mountain road, the trapped piling stones on the grave to preserve the corpse from attacks of coyotes and other animals.

That was two years ago. The recluse had never spoken of his past life, his friends, or the place of his birth; and the old German has spent two years endeavoring to locate relatives of the dead man to apprise them of his death. Hearing that families by the name of Hemstock lived in Clinton and Nevada, Ia., he wrote them, and discovered that they were brothers of the deceased.

Conductor Hemstock will go to Idaho next summer to remove the bones of his brother to Nevada, Ia., for burial in the family plot. The dead man was a native of Rochelle, Illinois.