July 28, 1916: Family Feud Turns Tragic

By Margaret Leidy Harner from her book One Day at a Time: A Social History of Boyertown, PA.

July 28, 1916: A family feud turned into tragedy Sunday morning. During a discussion at the breakfast table, tempers flared and 22-year-old Newton Buchert got angry. He rushed upstairs for his 38-caliber revolver, came back down and shot at his wife Florence, who was holding their two-year-old son. He missed her but the bullet hit his mother-in-law in the face and he shot a second bullet that grazed her temple. As his wife was fleeing the room, he shot her in the back, missing their baby by a “hairsbreadth.”

Both women ran outside their house on West Fifth Street in Boyertown shouting for help. Buchert screamed, “Oh God, I hope Florence gets over it,” shot himself and died instantly. A neighbor came running and found the women bleeding profusely. He called a doctor, and they were transported by ambulance to S. Joseph’s Hospital in Reading. The bullet in Florence’s back was removed from her breast, and the bullet that hit her mother had lodged in her jaw, fracturing it.

The argument was caused by a discussion of where to go for their Sunday afternoon outing!

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