Eureka Daily Sentinel

A Sad Suicide.

We copy the following item from an Illinois paper handed to us yesterday. The similarity of names has caused some to believe that the young man referred to and a former resident of Eureka are identical. Some color is given to this by the fact that La Force has corresponded with a young lady in that State for some time past. We are inclined to believe he is not the man mentioned, but give the item, and the reader can draw his own conclusions:

At Otterville, on Sunday morning about 8 o'clock, Miss Hettie Rowden, daughter of Jas. Rowden, living four or five miles northwest of Otterville, on the Jerseyville and Fielding road, committed suicide by shooting herself through the brain. From what we gather from parties present at the inquest, the facts seem to be as follows: Miss Rowden has for some three years or more been receiving the attentions of a young man called Chas. La Force. The young man had removed to a distant State, but correspondence was kept up between them, and they were to have been married a short time ago; but in the meantime the young man's health failed, and on last Thursday she received the news of his death. Sunday morning, while the family were seating themselves at the breakfast table, they were startled by a loud report, and upon rushing to the girl's room found her lying on the floor dead, with a bullet in her forehead and the smoking pistol lying by her side. She had possessed herself of her father's revolver, a Colt's navy, which he the night before had locked in a drawer (the key of which she had by some means obtained,) went to her room, and, standing before a large mirror, placed the muzzle of the weapon to her forehead, and pulled the trigger.