Contact: Vickie
Email: stan@wiclarkcountyhistory.org

----Source: The Clark Republican and Press Date: 9-20-1894

Mrs. H. M. Root went to La Crosse Tuesday to take her son Luke (?) to school at that place. From there she will go to Kilbourn City for a few week’s visit.

August Kettle, while at work on a building last week, slipped from the scaffold, spraining his right wrist and breaking his left arm. Drs. Esch & Lacey set the fracture.

Last Friday noon the doors of b. E. Luethe’s mercantile establishment was closed to the public on executions served by Sheriff Page, of two judgments amounting to $3000. On Monday the store was opened by the sheriff who will sell the goods at retail until the judgments are satisfied.

BURGLARS BLOW OPEN A SAFE IN COLBY Burglars entered Henry Merrit’s Flour and Feed Store during the early hours of Wednesday morning and successfully cracked the safe, blowing the door completely off and wrecking the inside. They secured between $10 and $15 in silver, a valuable gold ring belonging to Mrs. Meritt and Henry’s insurance policy, deeds, notes, etc.

SHORTVILLE, WI: Fires have done a great deal of damage in this vicinity, but the recent rains have quenched them.

Vern Snyder is seen in our midst after an absence of two weeks.

Frank Snyder and Myrtle Roberson attended the examination at Neillsville Friday and Saturday.

SHOWER OF HOT OIL DEPLORABLE ACCIDENT TO AN OMAHA PASSENGER TRAIN The freight train on the Chicago, St. Paul, Minneapolis and Omaha railroad, which left Eau Claire last Friday night, was ditched two miles west of Hammond early Saturday morning. The train carried two oil cars, one of which contained gasoline. This tank leaded and caught afire from a hot box. It had been burning about three hours when it suddenly exploded with terrific force. A car of coal and the caboose also burned. The worst accident of the wrick occurred at 10:15 o’clock in the forenoon. While the passenger train from Minneapolis was waiting west of the scene of the accident and the whole trainload of passengers were passing around the wreck to take a train on the other side, the other oil tank exploded. The gragments of the tank whizzed through the air with a noise like bombshells and a shower of burning oil fellupon the people. The list of injured is as follows:

Wm. Conroy, Ellsworth, hands badly burned; C. Drumery, Neillsville, head burned, clothes scorched; M. R. Dickey, Cleveland, Ohio, air burned off, hands badly burned; H. Tudiger, Menomonie, hand and face burned, clothers burned off; R. D. Syyerson, section hand, badly burned; Conductor Fredericks, hands burned hile helping passengers; John Belevick, Minneapolis, hand and face burned; Levi W. Myers, American consult to Victoria B. C., of Wapello, Iowa, hands, face and head burned, body saved by tearing off clothing; Oluf Kvool, Hudson, clothes burned off; entire body badly blistered; Edward Gardner, Hammond, hands badly burned; R. B. Clark, Chippewa Falls, neck and head scorched; Mrs. Nott, Menomonie, hands burned slightly, T. J. Watkins, Louisville Courier-Journal, knocked down by explosion; head scorched; S. M. Curtis, Milwaukee, neck burned. No one supposed there was any danger, as the oil had been burning for some time. The tank contained about 6000 gallons of oil. The Messrs. Dickey, Rudiger, and an elderly man whose name could not be learned, were the most seriously injured. Mr. Rudiger’s clothes were all burned form his body. The hands of several of the injured were so badly burned that the flesh peeled off. Some of the injured people were taken back to Hudson. The conductor and other train men of the passenger, regardless of themselves, worked heroically, getting the women and children to a place of safety.