Elijah Hise, a sitting member of Congress for Kentucky's Third District, shot himself in the head at his home in Russellville, Kentucky on this day. Born in Pennyslvania, he had risen to become one of Kentucky's leading jurists and had also served as a diplomat under President Polk. He had been appointed to the Thirty-Ninth Congress to fill a vacancy and was elected in his own right to the next. The immediate reasons for his suicide are unclear but he had fallen into a deep depression of some duration. He is buried in Russellville. He was sixty-four years old. (By John Osborne)
Source Citation
"Obituaries," The American Annual Cyclopedia and Register of Important Events of the Year 1867 ... (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1870), 562.
Record Data
Date Certainty
Exact
Type
Personal
