Surnames: Usadel, Beisner

----Source: Colby Phonograph (Colby, Clark County, Wis.) Thursday, 19 Jun 1952

Two Women Killed in Windstorm

A violent electrical storm lashed by winds which reached velocities estimated at 50 miles an hour, raced over Wisconsin last Friday morning and caused considerable damage in the vicinity of Curtiss and Dorchester, Wisconsin. Two women, Mrs. Anna Usadel, age 71, of Wausau, and Mrs. Henry Beisner, age 60, of Dorchester were victims of the storm.

Mrs. Usadel was fatally injured when the privy she was in on a town of Wien farm was picked up and smashed to the ground by the wind.

Mrs. Beisner and her husband, age 67, were milking the 15 cows in their barn when the storm struck at about 7:15 o’clock. Beisner escaped through the east entrance of the barn but his wife was trapped in the wreckage. She died 10 minutes after she was admitted to the Medford hospital.

Beisner, who injured his shoulder when the barn collapsed, said that he and his wife were at opposite ends of the barn and the work was nearly done. A few minutes before the storm struck she had told him that she was finished and was going to the house to prepare breakfast. A number of cows on the Beisner farm also perished in the demolished barn.

Across the road, their son, Walter, was at work in his barn when the cyclonic winds razed that building. He escaped injury by hiding in the silo "kitchen" and then rushed to his father’s farm.

Besides the Beisner barn, approximately 20 other barns were blown down, a number of others slightly damaged and numerous small buildings wrecked. Several hundred trees were uprooted.