Paulding County GaArchives Obituaries.....Hicks, John October 1879
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Candace (Teal) Gravelle http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00023.html#0005680 December 3, 2006, 3:37 pm

"The Carroll County Times"
Carrollton, Carroll Co., Georgia

NEWSPAPER Issue of OCTOBER 10, 1879

GEORGIA News

From the Atlanta Constitution of the 4th inst., we learn that John Hicks, a 
resident of Paulding county was found dead on Wednesday of last week in the 
woods a few miles from Dallas. Suspicion points to Jerry Shelton, a resident 
of Dallas as the guilty party, as the two men were on bad terms and Shelton 
has not been seen since the murder was committed.

----

NEWSPAPER Issue of Friday, OCTOBER 17, 1879

CARD FROM JERRY SHELTON, ABOUT MURDER OF JOHN HICKS

To Editor of the Times; Please allow me space in your journal to refute a 
false rumor which is now going the rounds, maliciously accusing me of murder 
of Mr. John Hicks of Paulding county. The account makes out that John Hicks 
was murdered some time ago in Paulding county; that the residents of Dallas 
are highly incensed at this murder; that they are trying to solve the 
mystery, and that they have got it solved making out the suspicion that 
Jerry Shelton is the murderer. The rumor as it is published purports to be 
an affair of great notoriety, and that the residents of Dallas and vicinity 
are my accusers, and yet the tale comes from a "private source" and is 
anonymous. In the first place, there is no mystery to solve as Hicks shot 
himself accidentally; and in the second place, I was over fifty miles from 
the place of the tragedy, at the time it occurred. To substantiate this, 
reference can be made to R.M. Rainey and his son J.R.T. Rainey, both of 
Altoona, Ga., and to Mid Baker of Acworth, Ga., who were with Hicks at the 
time he shot himself. It was about the 15th of last September and was some 
where on the line of Paulding and Polk, some twenty miles from Dallas. My 
neighbors will testify that I was at my home, near Whitesburg, Carroll 
County, at the time.

When I heard that I was accused of this fictitious murder, I hastened to 
Dallas to see if I could "solve the mystery" but I have failed so far to 
even find out who was my accuser. Every circumstance of the Hicks' affair is 
falsely stated, and that I think, not by mistake, but by design, in order to 
slander me, because I am already implicated in a criminal case. My accuser 
entirely omits to mention that Hicks had a gun and that he was hunting with 
some others who were nearby when he shot himself. On the contrary, he 
intimates that Hicks had no gun, and that he was by himself. He does not 
mention even the possibility of the affair being an accident, but makes it a 
murder without giving one item of evidence, or introducing a single witness.

It is charged that I have a "bad record". If such malicious accusations as 
the "private source" makes against me were true, then, indeed, I would have 
a bad record. I acknowledge that myself and Hicks were not on good terms, 
but I could not help the accident of him killing himself. I am sorry he did 
kill himself, but I will not omit this opportunity of stating that the 
difference which existed between us, did not arise from my insulting his 
wife, but from the fact that I was a witness against him in a criminal case 
of his beating a negro woman. I scorn to detract from the character of a 
dead man, and would not have mentioned this, if it had not been necessary to 
explain the whole matter. Respectfully, Jerry M. Shelton, Carroll county, 
Oct. 14, 1879.


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