-

 From “Obituaries of Benton County, Arkansas” by Barbara P. Easley

"Gertie Gramling, July 10, 1902
Miss Gertie Gramling of Avoca committed suicide last Thursday night by drinking Carbolic Acid and death occurred within half an hour. Miss Gramling was only sixteen-years-old and the suicide is supposed to have been the result a quarrel an hour or two previous with her sweetheart. She was in Rogers Thursday but went home on the evening train. Her father clerks in Hunter Peel’s store at Avoca.:
She was actually 15-years old.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

-
Image
 Was George Washington sterile? Today marks the 1731 birth of Martha Dandridge Custis Washington, our first "First Lady", although the term was not in use at the time.  She married for the first time at age 19 to Daniel Parke Custis who was almost 20 years her senior.  During their seven year marriage which ended with his death, Martha gave birth to four children, two survived to adulthood. Custis' death left Martha a very wealthy widow.  On her own she managed five plantations that were left to her, with 300 slaves and the equivalent of $4,000,000 in today's money.  And she apparently negotiated with her British factors in an able manner. Unlike the matronly, frumpish image we have of Lady Washington today, contemporary accounts demonstrate the 28 year old whom Washington (and others) courted to be attractive and lively.  Since early colonial days, in New England love was considered to be a necessary prerequisite for marriage.  Not so in Virginia wher...
Read more
-
Image
  At six o’clock in the evening on July 23, 1914, nearly one month after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand   and his wife by a young Serbian nationalist in Sarajevo, Bosnia, the ambassador of the Austro-Hungarian Empire to Serbia, delivered an ultimatum to the Serbian foreign ministry. Acting with the full support of its allies in Berlin, Austria-Hungary had determined in the aftermath of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination to pursue a hard-line policy towards Serbia. Their plan, developed in coordination with the German foreign office, was to force a military conflict that would, Vienna hoped, end quickly and decisively with a crushing Austrian victory before the rest of Europe—namely, Serbia’s powerful ally, Russia—had time to react. On receipt of the ultimatum, Serbia at once appealed to Russia, whose council of ministers met on July 24 to determine a course of action. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Sazonov voiced his belief that Germany was using the crisis over the archdu...
Read more
-
Image
  Professor Thaddeus Lowe was born August 20 in 1832. During the Civil War, Lowe became "Chief Aeronaut" for the U.S. Army after he ascended into the air above Washington to demonstrate for President Lincoln the usefulness of tethered observational balloons for map making, artillery spotting, and observing enemy movements. Lowe was just one of many accomplished balloonists to demonstrate the technology's usefulness, but by the end of the summer he took over the position from John Wise. Under Lowe, the Balloon Corps made over 3,000 ascensions and supported numerous campaigns. It disbanded in 1863 due to financial and personnel problems, but left its legacy as the first U.S. air force.
Read more