Every so often you find a story as you search that is interesting. Ida M Fisher – The wife of Paul Scheffler apparently shot herself according to the newspaper article.
What’s even more interesting is that the newspaper article not only tells what the cause of her death was, they tell the whole story. They even include that she playfully kicked the boat with her foot, intending thereby to make Mrs. Lavar unsteady and spoil her aim…. Apparently Mrs. Lavar aim was thrown off (being a cripple according to the article) and Ida (Fisher) Sheffler was shot in the forehead causing “a gloom over the happy crowd”.
This was from July 26, 1906. The Plymouth Tribune and is saved in the Library of Congress. I’ve found a few articles cut from papers in photo albums my aunts had collected. They include articles such as Mrs Richter went visiting to her daughter and son in law on Wednesday.
For small country towns, even going into town was a newsworthy even before the advent of cars (and when cars were first available, having a car was a BIG event)…
The event in the article is such a sad event, but yet the way it’s written gives a little look into the way newspaper reporting was viewed at the time. Personally I almost view the newspapers of the time as ‘gossip rags’? They are a great place to get information for family history though.
