A Terrible Accident (1903)

MATTESON, ADKINS

Posted By: Marilyn Holmes
Date: 5/14/2015 at 14:58:30

The Grinnell (IA) Herald
Dec. 8, 1903

A TERRIBLE ACCIDENT

Last Saturday afternoon occurred one of the saddest accidents of the kind that has come to our notice this year.

About one o'clock, immediately after dinner, Mr. F.E. Matteson of Rock Creek township hitched up a team of five year old roadsters which he had worked all summer and started to town with wife and three year old baby. Their eleven year old girl was to go along with them as far as her grandfather's and stood up behind holding to the buggy seat. They had not gone more than a quarter of a mile from home when the team started to run. Nothing had frightened them but they were feeling well and were full of spirits. Up hill and down hill they ran at full speed with Mr. Matteson pulling on the lines as hard as he could. After they had run about three quarters of a mile Mr. Matteson felt his strength going and asked his wife to help him. She was carrying the baby in one arm and in the attempt to grasp the lines with the other got but one of them in her hand. Her strength added to that of her husband turned the horses down the hill toward the west and at so short an angle that the buggy was overturned and all were thrown violently to the ground. Had the other line been grasped instead the horses might have been turned toward the east on the road to town and eventually stopped.

The fall was a terrible one. Mr. Matteson and wife and daughter Hazel were picked up unconscious and the baby was considerably bruised but not seriously injured. They were taken at once to the Adkins home and a physician was summoned. Mrs. Matteson had fallen on her forehead and the fall caused a hemorrhage of the brain. She never recovered consciousness and died at about four o'clock Sunday afternoon. Little Hazel evidently fell on her back and though she regained consciousness has been unable to move her limbs. It is feared her spine is seriously injured. Mr. Matteson was severely bruised but had so far recovered as to be able to come to town yesterday. The three year old daughter is about as well as ever, she having fallen on the buggy robe and cushion.

The funeral services for Mrs. Matteson will be conducted at two o'clock this afternoon from the Baptist church in Rock Creek township.