Jolly Old England
Sir
William de Traci (lineal ancestor of Thomas Tracy, the immigrant
to Connecticut) was one on the Knights who killed Thomas a Becket. (OK,
OK. So this isn't how Sir William died, but it is still
interesting,
right?)
Sir
John Rix, Earl of Offord, was beheaded about 1536 by order of
Henry
VIII, for befriending Anne Boleyn.
George
Horsey died in Newgate Debtor's Prison, London, in 1644.
and France...
Rolfe
de Kuype was killed in battle fighting with the Duke of Anjou in
1569.
Bad Accidents!
John
Scarborough was "slaine by charging a great gunne" at Roxbury,
Mass.,
in 1646.
Thomas
Brownell was killed by riding his horse into a tree! He
was
killed in an accident the afternoon of Sept 24, 1664. He had
stopped
at the home of Daniel Lawton's father and, upon leaving, invited Daniel
(age 21) to ride home with him to Portsmouth. The ride became a race,
and
soon Lawton passed Brownell. Lawton looked back to see Brownell
riderless
horse and returned to find Brownell lying beneath a tree. Seeing
a great amount of blood on the ground, Lawton realized that Thomas
Brownell
was dead.
John
Watson, Jr., was killed at Hartford, Conn., in 1724 when a cart
loaded with rails, on which he was riding, was upset and overturned .
In 1779, Jedediah
Tracy died by being thrown from a horse as he was riding to mill
in Preston, Conn.
Daniel
Stanbury died in 1795 "from wounds received by being jammed on
shafts
of a cart" in New York City. (Ouch!)
Thomas Husbands was killed in a London brewery accident.
He
was employed as a "brewer's servant" and died from an accidental fall
from
a cart at the brewery on 13 May 1859.
Nasty Diseases
John
Denison died of the plague in 1582 in Bishop's Stortford,
England.
Stephen
and Margaret (Cooke) Williams each died of the plague in 1625 in
Great Yarmouth, England.
After attending
others
during the Plymouth Colony epidemic of 1633, Dr.
Samuel Fuller died of the diesase.
John
Seymour had "a cancer in his jaws and face" at the time of his
death
in 1758 at New Hartford, Conn.
Abel
and Thankful (Moss) Doolittle each died of smallpox in 1764 in
Watertown,
Conn.
William
Steele died of smallpox in 1777 in New Hartford,
Conn..
He was buried in an unmarked grave.
Thomas
Tracy contracted smallpox in the Revolution and came home to
Lenox,
Mass., to die in 1777.
Killed by Indians
Captain
John Luther died at the hands of the Indians at Delaware Bay...
in Swedish America [now the state of Delaware] in 1644.
In March, 1676,
during
King Philip's War, Capt. Michael Pierce
and
a group of Englishmen and Indians pursued the hostile Indians into
Rhode
Island. At Pawtucket, their party were attacked and most of their
party,
including Capt. Pierce, were killed.
John
Sprague was also killed in the Pawtucket Fight in King Philip's
War in 1676.
John
Smith was killed by Indians at Hatfield, Mass., in King Philip's
War in 1676.
Ezra
Rolfe was captured and killed by Indians in 1689 in Haverhill,
Mass.
"The savages again made their appearance on the 17th of the following
October,
when they wounded and made prisoner of Ezra Rolfe, who died three days
after being taken."
Bad Swimmers
Zachariah
Rhodes drowned in the waters off of Pawtucket, RI, in 1665.
Dirck
Franszen Van Dyke drowned on the Jersey shore somewhere opposite
lower Manhattan in 1691.
John
Price died by drowning in Glastonbury, Conn., in 1737.
In 1779, John
Gibson, of Irvine, Scotland, died by drowning in Dublin Bay .
They Just Didn't Get Up
In 1694, Capt.
George Denison died during the session of the General Court at
Hartford,
which he was attending.
William
Trowbridge died at sea, probably on a voyage to the West Indies
in 1704.
Joseph
Newhall died in a snowstorm while returning on a trip from
Boston
to Lynn, Mass., in 1706.
In Swansea, Mass.,
Deacon Melatiah Martin went to the well
for
a pail of water and was found lying dead by the well-curb in 1761.
In 1826, Jonathan
Winslow died suddenly while seated at his breakfast table in
Charlton,
Mass.
Alvah
and Sally (Benedict) West each died at the Mormon camp during
the
winter of 1846-47 on the Mormon trek from Nauvoo, Illinois, to Utah.
Bishop
Chauncey Walker West died while on a trip to San Francisco to
negotiate
payment of funds for the Mormon laborers who constructed the Central
Pacific
Railroad line. Bishop West had been awarded the contract to
complete
a 200-mile section of track from the Humbolt River, east across Nevada
to Promentory Point, Utah. California Governor Leland Stanford,
one
of the backers of the Central Pacific, had guaranteed payments to the
Mormon
crew if their work was completed on time for the Golden Spike ceremony
at promentory, on 10 May 1869. When the work was completed and
payment
was not made, Bishop West made several trips to California to extract
payment
from Gov. Stanford. An exhausted Chauncey West collapsed on his
last
trip and died on 9 January 1870. He was only 43 years old.
Two months later, the railroad company finally made payment to the
Mormons.
Murdered
Heber
West was murdered in barroom
brawl.
He was shot to death at the "notorious dive, den and saloon, 555"
in a fight in Pocatello, Idaho, in 1890. Pocatello at the time
was
a rough-and-tumble frontier town. The newspaper account of
Heber's
murder reads as follows: "Last night while a dance was in
progress
at a saloon and dance house here, H. W. West, machinist employed in the
Union Pacific shops, was shot and instantly killed by Deputy U.S.
Marshall
Chas. Phelps. It seems West was becoming noisy and was ordered
off
the floor by Phelps, this led to hot words and Phelps was knocked down
by West. While on the floor, Phelps drew a revolver and shot West
through the heart. The murderer made his escape but was captured
by Sheriff Woodin at Eagle Rock, Idaho, at eleven o'clock this
morning."
Charles Phelps was subsequently arrested, tried, and sentenced to four
years in the Idaho penitentiary.
And finally... some post-mortem silliness!
Joseph and Elizabeth Keeler were buried in Ridgebury Cemetery,
Ridgefield,
Conn., in 1757 and 1763, respectively. His tombstone was later
used
in trapping woodchucks and was broken into pieces.