Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 21, Number 95, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 17 August 1900 — FUNERAL PARTY STRICKEN. [ARTICLE]

FUNERAL PARTY STRICKEN.

Fast Train Kills Fifteen Pennsylvania Mourners. Fifteen dead and several seriously hurt, some fatally, is the result of a grade-crossing accident at Slatington, Pa., on the Lehigh and New England Railroad. Several families were wiped out of existence and many homes were rendered desolate. Out of a party of twenty-four only three escaped. The accident occurred about 5 o’clock. An omnibus, driven by a man named Peters, was returning to Slatington from a funeral the occupants had been attending at Cherrysville. The coach belonged to Henry Bittner, of Slatington, and the dead and injured were nearly all relatives of Sophia Schoeffer, at whose obsequies they had been present. The train was a special, and consisted of an engine and one car. At the point at which the collision occurred there is a sharp curve in the road, and the omnibus came along at a good rate of speed, the occupants unconscious of any impending danger. As the vehicle swung around the curve the engine and car came in sight*. It was too late to stop either the omnibus or the train, and, as the driver of the former whipped up the four horses to cross the track ahead of the train, the latter crashed into its middle. The occupants were thrown in all directions, bruised and bleeding. The fifteen dead were killed outright.