The State vs. the Dead Body of Stephen Stalmaker

Date: 
August 30, 1850

Deceased

Stephen Stalmaker
Sex: 
Male
Race: 
White
COD Category: 
Homicide
COD: 
Blunt Instrument
COD Method/Implement: 
plank
COD Inquest Finding: 

upon their oaths do say that the deceased came to his death by blow inflicted on the side of his head with a piece of plank four feet long five & a half inches wide & one inch thick used as the [?] of a door which had fractured the right parietal[?] & Temporal bones by the hands of Thomas Parker

Coroner

Coroner: 
James Blackwell
Coroner Title: 
magistrate acting as coroner

Location

Inquest Location: 
at J.M.C. Freeland's
County: 
Edgefield County, SC

Source

South Carolina Department of Archives & History
Columbia, SC

Perpetrator

Perpetrator: 
Thomas Parker
Inquest Images: 
L19077_0001_112.jpg
L19077_0001_113.jpg
L19077_0001_114.jpg
Transcription: 

he saw Mr Tho Parker & the Deceased Stephen Stalmaker engaged in a fight after which it was ascertained that Thos Parker was stabbed. Some few minutes after the fight he saw the deceased standing some 25 or 40 feet from the store Door and also saw Thos Parker coming out of the Store Door, with the Bar of the Door in his hand and go towards the deceased and heard a blow as if struck with a Board plank or flat piece of timber.

Get in touch

  • Department of History
    220 LeConte Hall, Baldwin Street
    University of Georgia
    Athens, GA 30602-1602
  • 706-542-2053
  • admin@ehistory.org

eHistory was founded at the University of Georgia in 2011 by historians Claudio Saunt and Stephen Berry

Learn More about eHistory

Supporters

+ American Council of Learned Societies
+ DigiLab, Willson Center for Humanities and Arts, University of Georgia