A report in the Smyrna Times, dated Wednesday, September 19, 1855, tells the sad tale of the loss of Nehemiah Stayton, a merchant from Staytonville. Stayton was the victim of an accident.
“It was reported in town yesterday evening, by a person from the neighborhood of the unfortunate affair, that on the morning of the same day, Mr. Nehemiah Stayton, a merchant at Staytonville, in this county, about nine miles southwest of Milford, had been sadly, if not mortally wounded by the discharge of a gun in the hands of his father,” the report read.
According to the newspaper, Stayton and his father had gone into the woods to shoot squirrels when the gun went off, lodging the contents in the head and carrying off a part of the skull.
“The old gentleman is some sixty years old and has consequently reached a period of life ill able to sustain the affliction such a misfortune must produce,” the story continued. “The young man was about 30 years of age. He had been married several years and has a wife and several children living.
