Alex R. Coryell, 59, a Virginia City policeman who had a heart
attack after fighting with a drunken prisoner in 1891.
They will be honored based on research by amateur history buffs
Frank Adams and Steve Frady.
Adams, a retired detective, and Frady, a former journalist and
firefighter who is chief spokesman for the city of Reno, comb old
newspapers for such accounts.
A law enforcement veteran of 30 years, Adams worked the past 20
as an investigator for the Nevada Department of Public Safety
where he heard stories that piqued his interest about the history
of the Nevada State Police, which existed from 1908-1949.
"Being a detective, I started snooping around, looking at
stuff in archives and going through newspapers," said Adams,
who lives in Mesquite.
"I kept running across officers who had been killed in the
line of duty, but none of them had been recognized."
So, Adams wrote a letter to the James D. Hoff Peace Officer
Memorial committee.
"I got a nice letter back from them that said, 'OK,
smarty, now you are our historian.' Since then, when people run
across names, they give them to me to check out."
The newspaper clips offer sometimes gruesome details of the
deaths of the frontier lawmen in the years after gold brought tens
of thousands of fortune-seekers to Nevada.
Frady has focused much of his attention on the Virginia City
area, where two of the law officers -- Symons and Coryell -- also
served as firefighters.
Symons, a native of Cornwall, England, worked as a policeman in
neighboring Gold Hill. He "was foully murdered last evening
while in the discharge of his duty," the Gold Hill Evening
News reported July 22, 1879.
Symons heard a desperate domestic fracas going on inside of a
house, "and upon entering was shot down by (John) Pritchard,
who, after the victim lay upon the floor, shot him through the
head again and again in the malicious vindictiveness of his
drunken soul. He even gloated afterwards in jail over the
effectiveness of his butchery.
"The result is that Humphrey Symons, one of the best
officers ever seen in this section, has been slaughtered in the
prime of his manhood."
Pritchard was convicted of murder and hanged Jan. 16, 1880.
Weaver, born in Henry County, Mo., was shot and killed by
William Hammond while trying to settle an argument over "four
bits" in a poker game. The Elko Daily Independent described
his death Aug. 2, 1880, under the headline, "A Tuscarora
Tragedy."
"Hammond immediately sprang upon a billiard table and
swearing that no damned officer could arrest him, drew his pistol,
discharging it at Weaver," who returned fire, the newspaper
said.
"The firing continued until both six-shooters were
emptied" and both men died.
Kelley was killed in Austin after he separated two women who
fought earlier that day at a horse track. After the sound of a
gunshot, Kelley was found in front of a saloon "on the ground
in a pool of blood and upon investigation it was ascertained that
he had been stabbed through the heart," the Reese River
Revelle of Austin reported Aug. 7, 1876.
One of the women claimed to have been shot at by Kelley and a
jury meeting at the firehouse the next day concluded she had
stabbed Kelley, although it's not clear of what became of her.
"This seems to be a very complicated case and we find it
impossible to get all the facts," the Revelle said.
Coryell, 59, died after he arrested and fought with a miner who
"had made himself obnoxious in several downtown
saloons," the Evening Chronicle of Virginia City reported
June 25, 1891.
Born 1831 at Coryell's Ferry on the Schuykill River, Pa.,
Coryell was "an openhearted, honest and upright citizen and
as brave as they make them," the paper said.
Last year, Adams and others found his previously unmarked grave
in Virginia City and dedicated a monument there.
