William Edwards (1914)

EDWARDS

Posted By: Pat Hochstetler
Date: 8/26/2007 at 10:06:10

Earlham Library Obituary Collection
Earlham, Iowa

ACCIDENT PROVES FATAL

William Edwards was fatally injured by a fall at the new black smith shop of Stanley & Taylor Friday forenoon, sustaining a fracture of the skull that resulted in death at about five o’clock the same afternoon. The peculiarly tragic feature of the accident was the fact that he was merely a spectator a moment before.

In removing the wall between the shop and that of J. P. Nelson it was necessary to support the roof on a temporary pillar, and Will volunteered to assist the workmen in raising one of the roof chords while this support was put in its place. While prying on the end of a wagon tongue used as a lever at the bottom of this pillar, the latter broke and precipitated him upon his head on a pile of scrap iron. He was unconscious but a minute and apparently not badly hurt, for he was able to walk to a buggy, and from that into his home without help. Retiring at once to bed he began to develop alarming symptoms and a physician was summoned, but he was beyond human help and sank rapidly, death resulting from a cerebral hemorrhage. The skull was fractured on the left side and the wound was necessarily fatal.

The life of Wm. Edwards was one of those strangely colorless ones which seem all the more pathetic once they are ended. He was a quiet unobtrusive man, who made few friends and no enemies. At his work he was faithful, and if his life held anything of amusement, it was not evident.

He was born in Morgan Co., Ind. On July 23, 1862, thus being 51 years, 2 months, and 17 days old at the time of his death. In 1881, with his parents he came to Iowa, his father Riley Edwards surviving him.

The funeral services were conducted at the home Sunday afternoon by Rev. Stribbling, and interment made in the Earlham Cemetery.
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Coordinator's note: By calculations of the data given in the obituary, the deceased died in 1913. However, both the County Death Register and the gravestone give the year as 1914.

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