From Melancholy Accidents, by Peter Manseau. The book compiles colonial and early American newspaper reports of accidental gun deaths and was published in March by Melville House. Manseau is a fellow at the Smithsonian Institution.

june 4, 1770, Massachusetts Gazette

Some young men, who had been a-gunning, went to Beaman’s Tavern, where one of their guns accidentally went off and killed the landlord’s daughter on the spot; she was at that time suckling her child, who was providentially preserved.

august 11, 1859, Pittsburgh Daily Post

Mr. John S. Sumner had taken down…