The Internet is God's gift to writers!

by Judith Flickinger
(Columbus OH)

I love getting online and looking up obituaries taken from newspaper archives. Not modern day ones but the old ones from the 17 or 1800s when they were very detailed. For instance the death of a beloved child at age 17- "It was her lot to suffer much affliction, being rendered helpless by paralysis, she was confined to her bed for nine years and four months. She bore her affliction with Christian fortitude and patient enduring, looking forward with earnest desire to the time of her redemption, having a desire to depart and be with Christ, which is far better." Recently, I found a very detailed account of the death of a county court judge who got into an argument with a friend after returning from witnessing an execution (by hanging)of a convicted killer. The argument took the ugly turn when the judge was stabbed seven times with a knife that was hidden in his his "friend's" cane. The judge's killer was later found to be the estranged father of the executed killer the judge had sentenced to death. That is just Great stuff!