Sebastian Schochling (1821 - 1899)

SCHOCHLING, MCDONOUGH, LAUGHREN, EMARY, SPENCER

Posted By: Karen Brewer (email)
Date: 1/18/2022 at 11:20:33

The Osceola Democrat, Osceola, Iowa
December 21, 1899, Page 5

Sebastian Shochling

Thursday afternoon when the K. & W. train coming north at 3:53 P. M. reached the crossing near Mr. Hennessy's buildings in south Osceola, it struck Mr. Shochling on the right temple cutting a gash of two or three inches and throwing him twenty feet from the crossing where he lay with his head under a culvert. Seeing a man struck, Guy Sherwood had a stop made and he was picked up. Mr. Doss, with whom he had walked down on the way homeward from town, had parted with him a moment before the accident and came to assist. They put him on the train and brought him up to the K. & W. depot, then had Dr. Holland brought with all possible haste. The injuries at first did not appear very serious, those besides the one on the temple being a few cuts and scratches on top of the head and upper part of the forehead. It is supposed serious internal injuries were received but no one knows. He died of coma from shock at 6 o'clock Saturday evening. He was carried home as soon as the first brief examination was finished at the depot, and talked freely of the accident through the night, but could not tell clearly how it happened.

Mr. Shochling was born at Belfort, in Alsace Lorraine, June 16, 1821, and at six years of age came to America, and lived at Pittsburg with his parents, and learned his father's trade of glass blower, at which he worked until a strike in 1856 displaced him. He came to Iowa in 1857, and settled in Jackson Township. Here the family lived till about eight years since when they moved to Osceola. On April 26, 1857, he was married to Mrs. Sarah McDonough Laughren, and with her lived happily until her death a few years ago. Two daughters, Miss Anna, and Mrs. Marie Emary are the children of this marriage. Two daughters, of his wife's by her former marriage had been affectionately reared, and regarded him as a parent. One has died, but her son, Hubert Spencer, and the daughter of the other, both of Creston, attended the funeral. In his youth in Pittsburg he had sung in the choir of St. Paul's Cathedral, and a musician he was, all of his life. Music was his greatest joy.

During all his life among us he has maintained a high character for integrity and good citizenship. He had an unyielding will when once his mind was made up and it carried him with bravery through difficulties. He was possessed of a fund of humor, and many qualities that made him a cheerful companion, so he had been, for years, one of a coterie of retired farmers and businessmen who discourse on every kind of topic daily, in their familiar haunts uptown. It was probably on his way home from one of these pleasant meetings that he was crossing the track on this fatal occasion.

He had always been a faithful member of the Catholic church. Father Waldron, of Chariton, came to him in his extremity, and at his funeral in the Catholic church Monday morning preached to the large concourse assembled to mark their respect for the old man's memory. The interment at Woodburn.