By Larry Felton Johnson

Often people talk about serious crimes as if they were a modern thing. But it’s easy to dispel that misconception by browsing through issues of Georgia Historic Newspapers. Murder and assault, brutal at times, have always been with us.

The December 24, 1925 issue of the Brantley Countian published this dispatch from Cobb County about a murder discovered on this date in 1925:

SEE FOUL PLAY IN DEATH OF YOUTH

Acworth, Ga., Dec. 18 — Henry Turner, about 19 years of age, son of Mr. and Mrs. J. H. Turner of near Kennesaw, was found in a dying condition about half a mile south of Kennesaw and approximately 300 feet from the Dixie Highway Wednesday night around midnight.

The discovery was made by E. W. Huffstetter, a telegraph operator, who was returning home from duty. Turner’s body was found beside the railroad track.

Young Turner was taken to Nolan’s Sanatorium in Marietta, where he died a few hours later without regaining consciousness. Cobb County Coroner Williams and his jury held an inquest and returned a verdict that the young man died from a blow to the head.

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I did searches to see if any followup articles about an arrest were published in any Georgia newpaper, but came up dry. I’ll keep searching from time to time, and update this article for republication if I find out the outcome of this tragedy.

To read more articles from the Cobb County Courier based on research on the Georgia Historic Newspapers database, follow this link.

About Georgia Historic Newspapers

Georgia Historic Newspapers is a part of the GALILEO project and is housed at the University of Georgia. It’s an amazing resource for anyone with an interest in the history of Georgia and its regions.

According to the “About” page on its website:

The Georgia Historic Newspapers Archive is a project of the Digital Library of Georgia (DLG), a part of Georgia’s Virtual Library GALILEO and is based at the University of Georgia Libraries. Since 2007, the DLG has partnered with universities, archives, public libraries, historical societies, museums, and other cultural heritage institutions to digitize historical newspapers from around the state. The archive is free and open for public use and includes over two million Georgia newspaper pages between 1763 and 2021.

Newspaper titles are regularly digitized and added to the archive. If you are interested in including a particular title, you can visit our participation page. A majority of the newspapers on this site were digitized from the microfilm produced by the Georgia Newspaper Project (GNP). For more information about the microfilm available through the GNP, please visit their website.

To read more articles the Courier wrote with help from the Georgia Historic Newspapers database, please follow this link.