On December twenty-third, 1896, a half-ton of glycerine blew up near Montpelier, Indiana. Two men and two teams were the victims. The forest was mowed down for hundreds of feet. Oak-trees three feet in diameter were cut off like mullein-stalks. A steel-tire from one wagon was coiled tightly around a small tree. One of the shooters was John Hickok, a giant in stature. He was unusually cheerful that morning. He kissed his wife and daughter good-bye and said, in answer to the query if he would be home to dinner, “You know, Jennie, we are never sure of coming back.”
By the explosion of a magazine at Shannopin, eighteen miles from Pittsburg, in January, 1897, two men and two girls were killed, one man was injured, buildings were shattered and part of the public-school was demolished. The concussion broke windows at Economy and Coraopolis and was felt thirty miles distant.
On February twenty-fifth, 1897, a similar accident at the magazine three miles west of Steubenville, Ohio, blew Louis Crary and Eugene Ralston into bits too small to be gathered up. Both were in the frame building containing the iron-safe that held the explosive when the whole thing went into the air. At Celina, on April second, Cornelius O’Donnell and John Baird perished, one finger alone remaining to prove they had ever existed.
Near Wellsville, New York, on March third, three tons of the stuff let go, probably from spontaneous combustion, leaving a yawning chasm where the magazine of the Rock Glycerine-Company had been erected. Nobody was near enough to be hurt. Next day John Pike and Lewis Washabaugh met their fate at Orchard Park. Washabaugh went to the magazine to examine its contents and the explosion occurred as he opened the door, tearing him to pieces. Pike, who stood a hundred yards away, was killed instantly. On March twenty-second, at the Farren farm, two miles from Wellsville, six-hundred quarts of the compound sent Henry H. Youngs to his death. His young wife heard the warning note and ran bareheaded through the deep mud to the scene. Doctor Clark and Thomas Myers were driving posts five hundred feet from the magazine when Youngs drove past for his load. Myers wanted to leave the spot, fearing an accident, but Clark laughed at him and they continued working. At nine o’clock Myers stood upon a saw-horse mauling away at a post. Suddenly he was thrown over and over, performing several somersaults. He soon realized that the terrible explosion he feared had taken place. With bloody face, bruised body and a limping gait he arose. Smoke ascended over the site of the magazine. Man and horses and wagon were gone. Clark was slowly rolling himself over the ground and groaning from an injury in the region of the stomach. Both men gasped for breath. Scraps of clothing and shreds of flesh were all that could be picked up.
C. N. Brown, manager of a torpedo-company, lost his life on April first while shooting a well near Evans City, in Butler county. He had placed part of the charge in the hole and was filling another shell on the derrick-floor. Face and limbs were blown to the four winds, a portion of skull dropping in the field. Brown was an expert shooter and a can probably slipped from his hands to the floor so forcibly as to explode. He expected to quit the business that week.
Within sight of Marietta, Ohio, on August third, a wagon loaded with nitro-glycerine dropped into a chuck hole in the road, setting off the cargo. The driver, John McCleary, and the horses were scattered far and wide. Half of a hoof was the largest fragment left of man or beast. Thomas Martin, working on the road a hundred yards away, was hit by a piece of the wagon and died instantly. John Williams, riding a horse three-hundred yards beyond Martin, was pitched from his saddle and painfully bruised.
Samuel Barber torpedoed George Grant’s well, in the middle of the town of Cygnet, on September seventh. A heavy flow of gas and a stream of oil followed. The gas caught fire from the boiler, a hundred yards back, filling the air with a sheet of solid flame. Men, women and children were burned badly in trying to escape. Barber, clad in oily clothing that burned furiously, ran until he fell and was burned fatally. A store and office were consumed and the multitude supposed all danger had passed. Forty quarts of the explosive had not been taken from the derrick. The terrific explosion killed five men outright, three others expired in a few hours, nine houses were wrecked and every pane of glass in town was broken. Eight months previously two men were killed at Cygnet by the explosion of a magazine.
Warren VanBuren, of Bolivar, a noted shooter, has exploded three-thousand torpedoes in oil-wells and is still in the business. Three years ago two of his brothers worked with him. One of them tripped on a gas-pipe and fell, while carrying a can of nitro-glycerine to his wagon, with the usual result. All that could be found of his body was placed in a cigar-box. The other brother retired from the business next day, bought a fruit-farm, returned to the oil-country lately and he is again pursuing his old vocation.
John Jeffersey, an Indian pilot, died at Tionesta in 1894. One dark night he plunged into the Allegheny, near Brady’s Bend, to grasp a skiff loaded with cans of glycerine that brushed past his raft. Jacob Barry and Richard Spooner jumped from the skiff as it touched the raft, believing an explosion inevitable, and sank beneath the waters. As “Indian John” caught the boat he yelled: “Me got it him! Me run it him and tie!” He guided the craft through the pitchy darkness and anchored it safely. Had it drifted down the river a sad accident might have been the sequel. Happily Americanite, quite as powerful and much safer, is displacing nitro-glycerine.
Andrew Dalrymple, who perished at Tidioute, was at his brother’s well ten minutes before the fatal explosion and said to the pumper: “I have five-hundred dollars in my trousers and next week I’m going west to settle on a farm.” Man and wife and money were blotted out ruthlessly and the trip west was a trip into eternity instead.