A Bloody Row at Charles City - 1869

MCHENRY

Posted By: Cheryl Locher Moonen (email)
Date: 2/12/2016 at 11:21:08

The Herald, Sunday, Friday, March 5, 1869

BLOODY ROW AT CHARLES CITY
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A Man Nearly Killed
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On Sunday night Charles City was the scene of a disgraceful and brutal row, which has ere the probably proved fatal to one of the parties. A number of young bloods, one of them a printer in the Advocate office, named McHenry, had been drinking freely and had become noisy and quarrelsome. About ten o’clock in the evening they went to the Union House, where they conducted themselves in such a manner that the proprietor was compelled to order them out of the house. When they entered a young man, a clerk in one of the stores in the place, was sitting quietly by the stove, and not relishing the conduct of the newcomers arose and went out, starting across the street. McHenry, when his party was ordered from the hotel, followed the clerk and overtook him in the street and without any provocation commenced a most brutal assault upon him. McHenry used a printer’s side-stick, a heavy iron bar, with which he beat his victim over the head until his recovery is considered hopeless.

Officers were at once informed of the affair and started in pursuit of McHenry, but he had escaped from the town and at last accounts had not been captured.