The Ouachita Telegraph - Norwood Barton Accidently Shoots Self Date: Mar. 2004 Submitted by: Lora Peppers ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** The Ouachita Telegraph Wednesday, March 24, 1869 Page 4, Column 1 HORRIBLE AND HEART-RENDING ACCIDENT A Boy Shoots Himself Dead with a Fowling Piece. Norwood Barton, a most interesting and gifted lad of twelve summers and the third son of E.D. Barton, Esq., of the parish of Assumption, accidentally shot himself dead with a shotgun on Wednesday evening last about 5 o'clock. Young Norwood had gone into the woods with his two little brothers, aged respectively seven and nine years, and a colored boy somewhat older, in search of the cows, which he was in the habit of driving home at night, taking his gun along, as usual, for the purpose of hunting. Not succeeding in finding the cows, he mounted a stump, in order to obtain a better view of the pasture. In doing so, he let the gun slip from his hand, with the muzzle pointing upward towards his breast. It fell against the side of the stump in such a manner as to explode a cap and discharge the whole contents of one of the barrels into his right lung, killing him almost instantly. His only words were addressed to one of his little brothers: "Herbert, run to the house quick, and tell ma I've shot myself dead." Several workmen, who were engaged in chopping wood a short distance off, hastened to the spot just as the unfortunate lad was breathing his last. They bore his lifeless and bleeding body to the house and into the room of his heart-broken mother and father, whose almost tearless agony, added to the speechless grief and anguish of the younger members of the family, thus early, and in so sudden and awful a manner bereft of their darling brother, playmate and friend, constituted a scene which it was, indeed, most painful to witness. N.O. Times. # # #