REPORTED DEATHS IN NINETEENTH CENTURY
JACKSON, TENNESSEE NEWSPAPERS
By Jonathan Kennon Thompson Smith
Copyright, Jonathan K. T. Smith, 1996

(Page 102)

ADDENDUM

One of the better-educated lawyers in the history of Jackson and Madison County was WILLIAM STODDERT whose remains rest under a virtually unreadable slab tombstone in Riverside Cemetery. In a selection prepared for publication, Jay G. Cisco, once editor of the FORKED DEER BLADE, inserted an obituary taken from the POLAR STAR, a newspaper of Trenton, Tennessee, having "lifted" entirely the obituary of William Stoddert from the DISTRICT TELEGRAPH of Jackson, Friday, January 18, 1839 ("Madison County, " by J. G. Cisco, THE AMERICAN HISTORICAL MAGAZINE, volume 8, Jan. 1903, #1, page 47):

The District Telegraph of the 18th inst. announces the death of William Stoddert, Esq., of Jackson, who departed this life on the 14th after an illness of twenty-one days, in the forty-third year of his age. William Stoddert emigrated and commenced the practice of the law in the Western District at an early day. He possessed a fine native intellect with a well balanced mind, and by industry and close application he soon elevated himself to the head of the bar, of which he was a member, and by his correct, honest and unpretending deportment gained the good opinion and esteem of not only those with whom and for whom he transacted business, but of the community at large; in a word, his honesty was proverbial and in William Stoddert were united all the virtues that adorn and ennoble the human character, and in his deatli the society of Jackson has sustained a loss which cannot easily be repaired.

 

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