Nelson, Andrew – Died 1894

NELSON, SMITH, DORLAND

Posted By: Joy Moore (email)
Date: 5/19/2024 at 21:00:46

Source: Decorah Republican June 27, 1895 P 3 C 4

Guilty of Manslaughter.
That is the evidence of a Fayette County jury finds against a youth named Willie Smith. In a drunken bout last December he and a companion named Dorland (being tried this week) got in¬to a fight and killed Andrew Nelson, besides nearly killing another Nelson boy. The evidence given leads the West Union Gazette to offer this “Les¬son in Temperance:—
One could not listen long or read far in the testimony of the Nelson mur¬der case without, being impressed with the fact that liquor, and liquor alone, was the beginning and the end of this terrible tragedy. The five young men involved in the case visited the saloons together in the afternoon, and by the time they were ready to start home were in a jovial mood, happy and hi¬larious, a condition that only needed the bottled alcohol they had on the road to quickly fire their passions to fighting heat, to turn their merriment to mur¬der. It matters not what they have been in the talk among themselves as an incitive to fight, the devil was in them and only needed the suggestion of a playful scuffle to occasion the use of pistols and knives, from which one died and another barely escaped with his life, while two others are being tried for the awful crime of murder.
The moral conveys itself through the whole story. There is emblazoned in every line the terrible consequences of the use and misuse of intoxicating drinks.

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