August 4, 1900: John Sabold's Suicide Shocks Community

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

August 4, 1900: The body of John Sabold, a prominent Boyertown businessman and inventor, has been found hanging in his stable at 310 West Philadelphia Avenue shortly after 11 this morning. D. J. F. Merkel was called immediately and unsuccessfully tried to revive him.

There was no apparent reason for the suicide. Sabold was 64 years old, in good health, with no known financial problems, being quite wealthy. Sabold was the main force behind the founding of the Union Manufacturing Company in Boyertown and its first president. He had at least ten patents, including a coal dumping wagon “of unique design,” a machine to make paper bags, a machine to bundle them, and a shutter fastener and lock which he had begun manufacturing recently. He had just sent out a large shipment of them this morning.

His family and neighbors said that he appeared to be in good spirits; he had chatted with an acquaintance outside his home at 11:00 and 15 minutes later he was dead. He had been hospitalized in May, 1888, for a mental affliction, assumedly depression, but it was thought that he had recovered from that despondency.

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