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In 1805, a party of James Heyward, his brother, and some friends departed from a home in Charleston. The men left around the break of dawn so they could arrive in the forests by dawn to spend the daylight hours deer hunting. Around eight o'clock, James' sister Maria heard noises in the library, so she left her chores and looked into the room, where she saw her brother James. James was sitting in a chair with his back facing her. His head hung down like he was sleeping, and when she got closer to him she could see that his eyes were shut. Maria thought this strange, because James never wore a hat or muddy boots in the house, but she decided to leave her sleeping brother alone and go back to her chores. Around noon, Maria heard a commotion in the street and walked outside to see her brother James draped over his horse, dead. She ran to her other brother to see what had happened. Her brother explained that as the hunting trail had gotten narrower, the men had to ride in a single file line, with the hunting dogs leading the way. One of the dogs had spooked James' horse, and he had stumbled. In trying to keep his horse from rearing, James had tried to ward the dogs off with his gun. When the butt of the gun struck the ground, it went off, striking him in the process. Maria began to protest, saying that he could not have been shot, because he had not left with the hunting party earlier that morning. She told her brother how she had seen James in the library at eight o'clock that morning. When her brother protested, Maria assured him that it had been James she had seen. Her brother then explained that she could not have seen him at eight o'clock, because that had been the exact time when the gun had gone off and James had died. |