VEST, daughter -1885

VEST

Posted By: Tammy (email)
Date: 10/21/2010 at 13:54:09

This afternoon Mrs. W. H. Vest went to see her neighbor, Mrs. Bell, leaving her two little children, a boy about four and a girl about two years old alone in the house, and on returning after an absence of ten or fifteen minutes discovered the house full of smoke and realizing the danger of her children ran into the room to rescue them. She found the little girl insensible on the floor at the foot of the bed and picked her up and ran out, meeting Will Smith at the door who rushed in and crawling around on his hands and knees found the boy under the bed and pulled him out insensible from suffocation, the blood running from his nose and mouth. The children were carried to the home of A. G. Smith near by. The little girl was dead but the boy showed signs of life and Dr. Wm. P. Penfield and Dr. O. J. Furst were called who succeeded in restoring the little sufferer to consciousness. Mrs. Vest had hung a piece of carpet on the clothes rack near the stove before going out and it is supposed the children in playing around the room had pushed it against the stove when it caught fire and filled the room with smoke. A hole was burned through the floor and the carpet around the stove was on fire which was put out with a pail of water by Will Smith. The taking off of their darling in such a manner is a sad blow to the bereaved parents, and the community deeply sympathizes with them in their most dire affliction.

--Grundy County Republican (Grundy Center, Iowa), 18 February 1885