Newspaper account of the murder of Samuel Breakwell, transcribed by Jan Mackie. The articles have been reproduced as printed, and contain some inaccuracies with regard to dates, places and spelling of names.

The Highland Park Press, Friday, August 19, 1898

Rev. Samuel Breakwell, for twenty five years a prominent citizen of Highwood, was most brutally and atrociously murdered Wednesday afternoon, August 17^th, on the public street in the village of Fort Sheridan or Highwood, by Carl Pethke.

The substantial facts in regard to the tragedy were as follows. Some two weeks ago Mr. Breakwell came from his pastorate in Wisconsin, where he had been very happily and successfully settled over the Baptist church, to the home of his only son, Samuel J. Breakwell, the Highwood merchant. The two weeks had passed very pleasantly for all concerned, the son’s wife and children being delighted to have "grand-pa Breakwell" once more with them, as most of the lives of the children had been passed with him and they were devotedly attached to him and he cared for Samuel J’s wife as for an own daughter.

Wednesday afternoon about two o’clock Mr. Breakwell left his son’s house on the west side of the track, just south of the Summer’s residence, to go to the store over east of the depot. He walked along past the home of his wife, who left him some three years ago, with whom Pethke was living, and across the railway track with Miss Harriet M. Fox, a music teacher from Chicago, to the southwest corner of the depot park, where Miss Fox turned into and diagonally cross the park, while Mr. Breakwell walked along the sidewalk toward the store, till he was about half way from the track to J. S. Prall’s real estate office, when Pethke coming up behind sprang upon him, throwing him instantly to the walk and with his pocket knife, which he seems to have had ready for the purpose, cut seven gashed upon Mr. Breakwell’s face and neck, two of which severed the jugular vein just below the right ear. Mr. Breakwell screamed and his struggles to escape attracted Miss Fox’s attention, who was only four or five rods away, but before she could get around the fence and up to the parties the deed was done and she, with rare presence of mind and coolness of nerve, did all she could to staunch the flow of blood and help Mr. Breakwell. Pethke watched a moment and then walked briskly or ran around the corner by Mr. Prall’s office till just in front of Mrs. Stensohn’s new store, he was stopped by Judge W. E. Cummings, and constable W. F. Edwards, and taken to the new city jail, remarking to some one that he supposed he would "have to take the rope" for that. A dispatch was sent to Coroner Dr. F. C. Knight of Waukegan, who came down on the 3:20 rain and summoning a jury of James McDonough, foreman; G. H. Lockhard, C. J. Roberg, Joseph Miller, Henry Lee and Charles Gordon, who returned the only verdict possible. Mr. Breakwell lived only a few minutes after the attack, and when his old neighbors and friends ran to his aid at his first call, he looked up and said only "Pethke" three or four times to indicate the author of the deed, and then expired and they carried his body to his son’s house, forming such a procession as Highwood never saw before, for nearly the entire village was on the scene ere Mr. Breakwell was dead. It did not seem to us, yesterday as we viewed the scene of the tragedy, that the blood of this little old man could have made such extensive stains on the sidewalk and park fence as we beheld. Like the blood of righteous Abel, it cried aloud for just punishment.

As to the cause of the tragedy, we know more than we care to speak, having lived near and dwelt with Mr. Breakwell for several years before coming to the Park. Mrs. Breakwell was his second wife, whom he married about 1863. Samuel J. and two others living, being the children of his first wife. Some three years ago, after having lived with Mr. Breakwell over thirty years, she left him, abandoned his home and took up her abode on the west side of the track not far from Samuel J’s home. Sometime after, how soon we can’t say, Mr. Pethke went and lived with her and by and by sued Mr. Breakwell for his wife’s board in a justice court and got judgment for the same by default. Mr. Breakwell took an appeal and beat him of course, and at the end of the legal term of two years after abandonment secured a decree of divorce. The failure of Pethke to make Mr. Breakwell pay him for boarding the wife who had abandoned him and gone to living with another man seems to have enraged him so that, we are told, he threatened vengeance on Mr. Breakwell. Indeed some one said to us that he was in a saloon drinking and making similar threats only a very short time before the deed.

Samuel Breakwell was born in Shropshire, England, Feb. 22, 1836. His father was a Wesleyan Methodist preacher, and some of his other sons were very successful business men in the west of England. His first wife , Mary A. Norris, and the mother of his children, died at Fairborn Sept. 24, 1863. Mr. Breakwell had a profitable business there, having the boot and shoe supply of the troops at Aldershot, and at the time same a Methodist preacher. The community was rather rough, but he succeeded in great reforms, social and religious, secured the erection of a commodious meeting-house and the transformation of the place. At the urgent request of a brother in successful business in Monmouth he went there a year or two after his first wife died and thence came to this country in 1873, intending to go to Colorado; but stopping a few days in Chicago he fell in with Ashley E. Mears and so came to Highwood, bought property, went into business and preached for the people at their request. It was about this time that he became a Baptist, and as such he rendered valuable service to many weak churches in this county. He also spent about a year in pastoral work in South Dakota, Elkton, we think. Something over a year ago he sold out his interest in the store and business in Highwood and settled in Darien, Wisconsin.

Mr. Breakwell was a good man: not great as the world measures greatness, but he was thoroughly good and down deep in his heart, below all else, a consuming desire to do people good. He preached the gospel out of pure love for it and love for the souls of men. We had business dealings with him all the time for half a dozen years and never found anything dishonest, unfair or tricky. If he made any mistakes he was always ready to rectify them. Knowing as we have for years the difficulties and burdens of the man’s life, our wonder has been that he did as well as he did. That such a life should go out in such a way, compels us to say with Ruskin, "Behold the cloud."

The funeral is being held this afternoon in the Highwood church conducted, in accordance with Mr. Breakwell’s own request, by Rev. Lewis B. Hibbard, and the interment will be in Lake Forest.

We cannot close this brief and imperfect sketch without congratulating our old fellow citizens of Highwood on their rare self control and respect for the orderly processes of the law, for if ever a villain deserved lynching, Carl Pethke deserved it Wednesday.