Rensselaer Semi-Weekly Republican, Volume 22, Number 88, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 23 July 1901 — More About the Railroad Wreck. [ARTICLE]

More About the Railroad Wreck.

Last week’s Kentland Enterprise devotes over a page to the railroad wreck which resulted in the death of Mabel Ross and Lulu Rider of Kentland, and Mrs. Fred Gilman, and the dangerous injury of Miss Dora Wickwire, of Goodland, with portraits and sketches of the tvo Kentland girls. The accident occured about 7 o’clook Wednesday morning, July 10th on the Chicago & Alton R. R., between Norton and Marshall, Mo., and about 75 miles east of Kansas City. It wbs caused by a collision with a stock | train, the conductor of the latter | having left a way station in a misunderstanding of orders The tourists’ car was thrown on top of the engine. Mrs. Gilman was, no doubt, killed instantly. The Kentland girls were both frightfully scalded, but those who * cared for them, did not seem to recognize their injuries as necessarily fatal. Probably they also had internal injuries, such as inhaling the scalding steam, or otherwise. Miss Rider herself, however, realized better than those who attended her that she was very dangerously hurt. Miss Ross was conscious all day and had her burns dressed several times. About sp, m., on the relief train nearing Kansas City, she began to fail rapidly, and died at 5:30 about 10 hours after the accident. Miss Rider died two hours later, at a hospital in Kansas City, Both girls were born in Kentland, in the spring of 1876, there being only 21 days difference in their ages, and were inseperable companions. In characters as in persons, they were truly beautiful, and truly to them well apply the words, “In their lives they were lovely and in death they were not divided.” Not less highly esteemed in her community was Mrs. Gilman, of Goodland, and her death was even a greater tragedy than that of the others, because it deprives a large family of young children from the inestimable treasure of a loving mother’s care.