George W. Gephart

GEPHART

Posted By: Beverly Gerdts (email)
Date: 12/19/2020 at 12:04:50

Columbus Gazette, Columbus Junction, Iowa Thursday, July 20, 1893 page 1

At six o'clock Tuesday morning the fragments of a man were found scattered for rods along the Central railroad track just east of Oakville. They were soon identified as the remains of the section boss, George W. Gephart. The last seen of him alive was at one o'clock that morning, when he left his crew and started for his boarding house a mile east of the villiage. He and his men had been called up during the night to go across the river to Keithsburg for a doctor. This they did and had taken him him, returned and put their hand car in the section house. The other men board at Oakville and Gephart left them at just one o'clock. It was just 2:50 when the train going west struck and killed him. Where he had passed the hour and fifty minutes intervening is not know. It seems probable that he had either sat or laid down on the track and gone to sleep or he had fallen in such a way as to render him unconscious. Just how it happened will never be known. It is certain that the crowd had drank several glasses of beer in Keithsburg, but they thought not enough to impede his going home in the least. It seems that for two hundred yards east of Oakville the track had lately been leveled up and filled in good shape with cinders, beyond that the senders had been dumped along side the track and the space between the ties had been cleaned out ready for the ballast. Gephart had passed safely over the finished part of the work, but only a short distance beyond. It seems probable that he may have stumbled and fallen among these exposed ties and received a hurt serious enough to render him unconscious. George W. Gephart was a son of Andrew Gephart and was raised in that immediate vicinity though his parents removed from there to New London two years ago. It was a revolting accident. He was insured for $2,000 for the benefit of his mother. Legal complications will probably arise over his death.

One of the most distressing accidents that ever happened in the neighborhood of Oakville occurred Tuesday morning about 3 o'clock. George Gephart, the foreman of the section gang at his place and well known y nearly every one in this part of the county, was killed by a west bound freight train and the body was terribly cut up and disfigured. At and inquest held by coroner Lilly the jury, consisting of Mr. P. D. Bailey, Joseph Racer and Mr. Sheik, found a verdict of accidental death. The funeral took place from the Palo Alto church at ten o'clock Wednesday morning, Rev. Geo. Peck officiating, and interment was at the Smith cemetery near Elrick. Shorty, the name he was commonly called, was well liked by every one and a more accommodating man never lived. There will be a face missing that can never be replaced: the friendly greeting we will never hear any more. If sympathy and good words would repay his near relatives for their loss, they would be well paid if they could hear the universal sorrow expressed by everyone at his early and unexpected death.