SHEPPARD, HC - Putnam

Monday morning HC Sheppard, who lived on the farm of Ms. Myers about two miles northwest of this city went out hunting with a double-barreled shot gun. He stopped for a short time in a lot of blackberry bushes, and picked about a quart of berries, which he put in his hat and then it would seem, started toward his home, which was a quarter of a mile distant. Two little neighbor boys, named McClnnahan aged 8 and 10 years, were within 30 or 40’ of him and stated that when he started he had his hat in one hand and the gun in the other. In a few seconds they heard him climbing over the fence, then a rail seemed to fall and immediately they heard the gun discharged.  Looking up, they saw Mr. Sheppard staggering toward them, making efforts to speak, but he could do nothing more than utter inarticulate whisperings. The elder boy, Alexander, seeing he was shot, supposed that he wished the information given to his family and ran at once to do so. He had scarcely started when Mr. Sheppard fell to the ground and did not move afterwards. When his neighbors and friends arrived they found him lying on his back, with life extinct. Coroner Lynch was at once summoned and on making an examination found that one barrel of the gun had been discharged and that the charge had entered just beneath the chin and passed up toward the brain, where it is supposed to have lodged. One of the fence rails had a piece torn out of it by the shot, showing that it must have been almost directly over the gun when discharged. The finding of the Jury was in accordance with these facts. The remains were interred in Brick Chapel the following day.  Mr. Sheppard was 30 years old and leaves a wife and two children, and his wife will shortly be confined again.  He was a painter by trade and formerly worked for the Ward Brothers of this city.  His father keeps the first toll gate on the Greencastle & Crawfordsville turnpike   --– transcribed by kbz