David S. Terry

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David S. Terry.

David Smith Terry (March 8, 1823–August 14, 1889) was a California politician, perhaps best known for his having killed United States Senator David C. Broderick in a duel.

Terry was born in Christian County, Kentucky. From 1855–1859 he was a California State Supreme Court Justice, serving as the 4th Chief Justice from 1857.

David Terry was always known for his fiery temper. In 1856, he stabbed Sterling A. Hopkins, a member of the San Francisco Committee of Vigilance and was arrested, but was not tried.

Terry was an advocate of the extension of slavery into Kansas, and the slavery issue proved to be divisive to the California Democratic Party. Although he had been a close friend of David Broderick, he accused Broderick, a Free Soil advocate, of having engineered his loss for re-election in the 1859 state elections. Terry issued inflammatory comments at a state convention in Sacramento, which offended Broderick.

On September 13, 1859, Terry and Broderick met just outside San Francisco city limits. The pistols chosen for the duel had hair triggers and Broderick's discharged early, leaving him open for Terry's shot. At first Terry thought that he had only wounded Broderick, but the Senator died three days later.

Although Terry was acquitted of murder, he left the state and went to serve in the Confederate States Army during the American Civil War. He came back when the war was over, but was unable to re-enter politics.

Terry became entangled in a mysterious divorce case in the 1880s. A young woman named Sarah Althea Hill claimed that she was the legal wife of silver millionaire William Sharon. Sharon denied that they had ever married, but Hill wanted a divorce and a share of Sharon's treasure. She lost her case and eventually wound up marrying Terry. The Terrys appealed, and federal judge Stephen J. Field, a former friend of Broderick's, heard the case.

Field ruled against Mr. and Mrs. Terry in a final appeal, and the Terrys vowed vengeance. David Terry assaulted Field at a train station in Lathrop, California, near Stockton, California. Field's bodyguard David Neagle (a former United States Marshal in Tombstone, Arizona) shot and killed Terry.

David S. Terry is buried at Stockton Rural Cemetery in Stockton.

Sarah Terry became insane, and spent the rest of her life at the Stockton State Hospital for the Insane, where she died in 1936. She is buried in the same gravesite as her husband. Terry's first wife, Cornelia Runnels, is buried next to David Terry.