Bridegroom Ends Life Day After Marriage

Kentucky Farmer, Buying Poison on Way to
Ceremony, Takes It Next Morning

Special to the New York Times.  Brooksville, Ky., April 29 – The morning after Charles Overturf, a farmer, and Mrs. Cora Kiskaden, a widow, were married, Overturf killed himself by taking poison, acquaintances in Brooksville learned today.

 The farmer, who was 51 years old and prosperous, bought the poison from a druggist on his way to the marriage ceremony, saying that he wanted to kill rats.

 When he applied, accompanied by Mrs. Kiskaden, for a marriage license, Overturf asked the clerk if $2.50 was not high for such papers.

 At the home of Rev. E. U. Dodson, who performed the ceremony, the farmer remarked to the clergyman that he wished he had “waited another 50 years” before marriage.  Mrs. Kiskaden, then a bride of a few minutes, made no comment on the statement.

 The couple then left town and went to Overturf’s farm, a few miles away.  The next morning he asked his bride to accompany him to the barn.  There he went into a room.  Returning almost immediately, he handed Mrs. Overturf and empty bottle, telling her that he had taken poison.  Aid was summoned and Overturf was taken to the nearest physician, but death came within a short time.

 Overturf’s courtship began when Mrs. Kiskaden went to the Overturf farm to help attend Mrs. Overturf, the aged and inform mother of her future husband.

From the New York Times, April 28, 1924