OBIT: Archie SAMPLE, 1943, Rockwood-Somerset, Somerset County, PA

File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Meyersdale Library.
Transcribed and proofread by: Richard Boyer.

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ARCHIE SAMPLE

Locked Himself in Clothes Closet and Hanged Himself
Life-Weary and Sick Bachelor's Novel Way of Ending His Troubles

  A sick and life-weary bachelor, Archie Sample, aged 67, locked himself in a 
clothes closet, then hanged himself by the neck with a strand of telephone wire, 
thereby ending all his earthly troubles.
  The tragedy occurred in the home of George Zimmerman along the water-level 
road between Somerset and Rockwood, where Sample had lived for six months.
  Mrs. Zimmerman heard the thud caused by the overturning of a stool on which 
Sample stood while adjusting the noose around his neck after he had fastened the 
other end of the wire to a rafter overhead and kicked the stool from under 
himself.
  Hastening to the sick man's room after she heard the unusual noise, to find 
out what had happened, Mrs. Zimmerman found the room empty.  The occupant could 
not have left the house without her noticing him.  So she tried the clothes 
closet door to see whether he might be in there.
  Finding the door locked from the inside she called her husband and he in turn 
summoned official help.  On learning that there was no ceiling to the closet, an 
officer went into the attic, and, peering down into the closet, saw Sample's 
body suspended from a rafter.  The officer lowered himself into the closet and 
unlocked the door from the inside.  Coroner Dosch was called and the body was 
then taken down.  The coroner pronounced it a plain case of suicide.
  A niece of the unfortunate man was notified of the tragic death of her uncle, 
and she requested that the body be sent to Greensburg in her care for burial 
there.

Meyersdale Republican, October 21, 1943