Lima Farmer Commits Suicide

LIMA FARMER COMMITS SUICIDE

F.C. Kaercher Puts a Bullet in His Brain

COULDN'T PAY MORTGAGE

Supposed to Have Temporarily Deranged His Intellect - Killed Himself While Breakfast Was Preparing

[From Friday's Daily Argus.]

Frederick C. Kaereher, a Lima farmer, committed suicide by shooting himself in the head, at 7: 30 o'clock this morning, in a fit of despondency.

"Mr. Kaercher has for years been a hard working farmer in Lima and has a large family of children. For several weeks past he has been suffering from despondency over his financial condition and the worry is believed to have somewhat unbalanced him mentally. Last Wednesday evening he left home without the knowledge of his family and did not return until last night. He is said to have remarked that he was going in search of money. Last night he seemed more despondent than ever.

This morning, while Mrs. Kaercher and daughters were getting breakfast they heard a shot from the room where Kaercher had been sleeping. When they reached his side he was dead. The shot had entered about the middle of his forehead and pierced the brain.

News of the suicide did not reach here until about 11 o'clock today, when Undertaker Dieterle and Coroner Watts went ont to the Kaercher residence. Mr. Kaercher's daughter, Miss Martha, who was employed at Chris. Spaeth's store on S. Fourth avenue, was taken home, being told that her father was very ill. She had been home in Lima yesterday and returned here last night, when she told Mr. Spaeth that she thought her father was not in his right mind.

It is said by some of Mr. Kaercher's friends here that the cause of his despondency was some trouble he was having over a mortgage of $1,400 on his farm which he thought was about to be foreclosed and that he had worked himself into a fit of melancholia about it.

Frederick Kaercher was 45 years of age and had been a farmer in Michigan all his life. He has two brothers in Lima and another in Scio. He leaves a wife, five daughters and one little son. Four of them are young ladies in their teens, Misses Olga, Martha, Hannah and Emma. The little daughter and son are small children.