I thought of that too, Grace, but this was in early 1882 and I rather doubt it was a shooting or there'd been more than the 3-4 line article. I've read about some gruesome deaths when people were caught in machines of some kind and the newspaper went to great detail about the person's internal organs being torn out with vivid description. Many of the articles had to be laid aside....I couldn't read them. Another member of my grandmother's adoptive family died when he was in his 20's, according to a newspaper article when he fell dead on the sidewalk stumbling out of a bar, drunk. They didn't hesitate to put in all the details. I found his death record in the court house also and it said about the same thing. I was glad to discount that whole family since they were not my blood line. If future generations prove me wrong, sobeit. juanita > Just a word of caution. You can't believe everything you read in > print. Could it be that they didn't want to say he had been shot in > the paper but rather said he died of an illness. I've seen that done > before. Grace, a native Iowan > > You wrote: > If I'd not been reading the old newspapers on > microfilm in the State Historical Library in Des Moines, I'd never > have known her father died after a 3-4 da. illness, probably > pneumonia. No mention of him being "shot". There was no death record > in the court house, no burial record in the cemetery....nothing but > the small article in the newspaper about him dying.

Juanita, If you have any doubt about whether it was being shot or an illness that caused the death... you might want to check into whether there is a coroner's report. We had a family rumor of a death that was a murder down in KY in 1860. The newspaper was not something available, but the coroner's report gave an interesting account of the gunfight that caused the death of my husbands gggrandfather. Just another angle to flesh out the ancestors we research. Regards, Virginia