Suicide of Early Settler

 

In the post Charles and Jennie Wright, I promised a sad family story. This is it.

Well, yes. This is impossible to read.  It is an article taken from the Sycamore True Republican newspaper on March 1, 1913.

 

 

 

 



It says:

 

A shocking suicide of one of the earliest settlers of this place, a well known and respected farmer of mature age has convulsed with excitement the people of the northern part of this town.  On Saturday last, at about 1 o'clock p.m., Mr. Royal Wright cut his throat from ear to ear and died a few minutes later.  He had been ill for several weeks and in a depressed state of mind resembling melancholy insanity.  For seven or eight days and nights he had not slept, and he complained much of his condition of health, and there was evidently a general serious derangement of health.  At the same time, he had come deeply interested in a series of religious meetings held in the neighborhood and his mind dwelt in gloomy mood on the state of his soul.  He was at times happy in the hope that sins were forgiven and again he became gloomy and disparing.  He became sure he would not live much longer, and settled his business, closed his accounts, rented his farm and paid for and stopped his newspaper, gave direction for selling his livestock, and made preparations for death.

 

Saturday Dr. J.W. Garvin called and prescribed for him, he was gloomy and absentminded.  He sat for an hour in the company of J. Siglin his father-in-law, Devine Dean and others, with his little girl of three years on his knee.

 

And while he would answer questions, he took no further part in the conversation.  At about 1 o'clock the doctor left the house, but had hardly turned his horse toward home, when Mrs. Wright screamed from the door that her husband has killed himself.

 

He had passed into the pantry, fastened the door after him, took a razor from the shelf, and cut a fearful gash in his throat under the chin and down to the bone.  He died in one minute.

 

The sad event is ascribed to the religious excitement, but Dr. Gavin states that under the same pathological conditions excitement from any other cause would have produced the same result.

 

He leaves a wife and eight children.

 

 

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Charles Wright, my great-grandfather whom I knew, was the son of Royal.  He was the fourth of these eight children and only 11 years of age when his father took his own life.