Mecklenburg County NcArchives News.....The Shooting of Wm. J. Norment April 23, 1840
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Carolyn Shank Carolynshank@msn.com January 7, 2008, 4:19 pm

April 23, 1840  Charlotte Journal April 23, 1840
   EDITOR'S NOTE:
   MR. NORMENT was raised in this vicinity, where his parents now reside; and 
he has left them with many friends and relatives to mourn his melancholy loss.
                        -- EDITOR CHARLOTTE JOURNAL
   DIED, in this place on the 2nd inst., WILLIAM J. NORMENT. While quietly 
walking the street, he was shot down in the most unprovoked and wanton manner, 
by an individual to whom he had given no offense. Probably the annals of crime 
afford no parallel to this most unfortunate and shocking deed. The wretched 
man who perpetrated the act seemed to feel no regard whatsoever for human 
life, nor estimation of its vallue. Apparently, without a ray of feeling or 
reflection, he thrust the innocent and inoffensive into the damp and gloomy 
receptacle of death with all the carelessness and irrational bearing of a 
being raving with madness or stolid with idiocy. While attaching all proper 
blame to the assassin,m the mortifying truth cannot be disguised that a 
tendency to this crime is created and fostered by the customs or feelings of 
the community in which we life. When an individual has been injured, he takes 
the liberty of judging to what extent he has been wronged, and rights himself 
with a strong hand. And it seems when such wrong exists -- when one is out of 
suit with fortune, or disappointed in llife or expectations, his chagrin can 
only be quieted by blood, though it flow from the veins of his fellow man. 
What a sarcastic commentary it is upon the enlighted law, and civilized 
humanity of which we boast, that are lives are held at the uncertain tenure of 
each other's willl! That no guaranty for personal safety is found in the 
consciousness we possess of what is due to each other and ourselves. How far 
was it from the amiable and unoffending NORMENT, that he was about to be 
thrust by the murderer's hand into the presence of the Eternal Judge. He came 
upon unknown, and by his amiable conduct; his gentlemanly demeanor, strict 
business habits and harmless life, had acquired the esttem and confidence of 
all with whom he came in contact -- the enmity of none. He hoped by his 
indutry and attention to buisiness to establish himself in life, and to become 
the prop and support of a fond mother, who in declining years, he wished to 
comfort and protect with as kind a hand as that which tended him. But his 
cherished visions all were doomed to vanish in a moment. Suddenly we were 
called upon to witness his dying agonies on the cold earth of the common 
street, with no kind relative near to close his eyes or receive his expiring 
look. Although surrounded by sympathizing strangers who bitterly regret his 
hopeless fate; there was a dreary solitude in the manner of his end; -- far 
from his native home, his kindred and the friends of his early youth. In this 
busy and callous land, his death will soon be forgotten; but there are those 
in a distant State, whose eyes long hence will moisten and whose hearts will 
throb at his remembrance.
EDITOR'S NOTE:
   MR. NORMENT was raised in this vicinity, where his parents now reside; and 
he has left them with many friends and relatives to mourn his melancholy loss.
                     -- FROM THE CANTON MADISON WHIG



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