Url Ray Gatchel (1887)

GATCHEL

Posted By: Ida Morse (email)
Date: 12/7/2007 at 14:17:09

Winterset Madisonian, September 22, 1887
Winterset, Iowa

The Winterset fortune teller who all day Wednesday was twirling cups of tea grounds and telling that Mr. Getchell’s child was dead and would be found south of his residence. It was found southwest of the home.
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Winterset Madisonian, September 22, 1887
Winterset, Iowa

Mr. Getchell informs us that Mrs. G. was absent from home at the time their child strayed away but half an hour, not an hour as we gave it.
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Winterset Madisonian, September 22, 1887
Winterset, Iowa

We mentioned last week the wandering away of a two-year-old child of H. S. Getchell. The little fellow strayed away Monday at about 2 o’clock in the afternoon and was not found until Wednesday afternoon. He was found about a mile and a half from home. He had gone to a field on Middle river where his father sometimes worked, and, not finding him, had wandered down the mow almost dry river bed and finally fallen in a pool where the water was not over eighteen inches deep and was drowned. This probably occurred the first afternoon or evening.

Note: The missing child was Url Ray Gatchel, b. Aug. 4, 1885, d. probably Sept. 12, 1887. Gatchel is the correct spelling of the surname.
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Winterset News, September 21, 1887
Winterset, Iowa

DEATH CAME BEFORE THE RESCUERS.

The missing child of Mr. Harvey Gatchel, of which we spoke last week, was found Wednesday after noon about 3 o’clock, drowned in Middle River, about a mile and a quarter from where it had strayed away Monday afternoon.

It appears that the child, a boy a little over two years old, had been left asleep and alone in the house, while its mother was away, presumably about ½ hour at a neighbors, and that it had awakened and unfastened the hook of the door with a stick. On the return of the mother, an ineffectual search was made, when the immediate but sparsely peopled neighborhood was aroused and a search was begun and continued all night, but without effect.

The next day the word went out to town and country, and a search was continued by some three or four hundred men until night, but without effect, when the tired men could only be scattered here and there through the brush and wooded country to merely keep lanterns and fires burning to scare away the wolves. The next morning some six to eight hundred men were on the ground. A tender chord of our common humanity had been touched and men, women, daughters, sons, brothers and sisters took the case of the afflicted parents home to themselves, and felt that they could not rest until the child was found. And this was not all. Provisions for the searchers almost by the load came in. Women began to swell the crowd. The county of Madison had enlisted in the search. The excitement was intense, to say the least.

At noon the men gathered in; no child had been found. The case began to look hopeless. But the father of the child had an idea. The child, he said, had cried to go with him to his work a mile or so north, on the fatal day. So a line was formed a few feet apart, of some five hundred men, headed north, and about 3 o’clock the child was found dead in the river a mile and a quarter form home, and near the cow path usually traveled by the father. But another cruel disappointment awaited the afflicted parents, for with the great shout of “the child is found” came the word “alive.” It was a cruel mistake, and the great concourse of people again sympathized and mourned deeply with the parents.